Does SEO Stifle the Creativity of Content?

A really interesting piece published by The Drum just before Xmas ponders the best practices for writing content that remains fresh, relevant and engaging, yet still retains SEO keywords for the all-mighty Google to pick up on. This is a situation that many marketers like myself find ourselves in. Our main role is obviously to publish content through a variety of formats and through a range of channels, whether it is via social media, a website, published articles, editorials or blogs like this. The responsibility is to generate the all important ‘buzz’ about either product, company or brand to the relevant target audience; yet if like me you have journalistic tendencies which underpin all written content, you can run into trouble in terms of SEO strategy.

My own motto in terms of my work is, ‘why have one adjective when you can have five?!’ Free-flowing, fluid and figurative language is great! It paints a picture of a story, illuminating the bare (possibly often boring?) facts, bringing the words to life by injecting visceral content in place of images. Favourite website? Thesaurus.com (I know).

Creative writing is just as much an artistic skill as graphic design, and here at Netbiz Group, we offer these services and we do them well. Content writing however must always be mindful that the content does indeed grab the audience attention, but contain the correct data to point said audience in the right direction of the content.

Creative Compromise

The reality is to find equilibrium by balancing out the inspired creativity of the piece but backed up by organic SEO keywords and other more technical SEO engineering and coding behind the scenes. This is a compromise; if a written piece is literally peppered with SEO keywords solely for optimisation purposes it looks forced, contrived, inauthentic and insincere which is in blatant contrast to the whole objective of content writing, that is, to engage and connect with the viewer/reader/user. Flip reverse it- marketing and other communications are there to support a brand, there is undoubtedly a reason for writing the piece in the first place- for the company, and not the ego. Therefore, long-winded Shakespearean sonnets are out, and catchy headlines, inserted images and broken up (yet still relevant text) is in.

Here at Netbiz Group we have a combination of creative and content writers, supported in-house by our SEO agents, ensuring that while any external correspondence can be enchanting and engaging, it also remains purpose appropriate.

Keeping it real (and trying to keep it simple in terms of flowery adjectives but nothing my SEO guys can’t optimise!)