Robot Art Print by johnwgolden. Buy it on Etsy for $20.00

I have a great big pet peeve and it’s search engine optimization. Why do I hate it? Because it’s often done to please robots first and customers second. The problem with that is that robots don’t buy stuff. So while your super lame looking SEO might bring robots in droves, you’re going to sound like a moron to customers.

What do I mean? Let’s say I wanted to optimize this page for “SEO consulting.” I might write something like

Hire me to do your SEO consulting. My SEO consulting skills are second to none. You’ll be so delighted with SEO consulting skills that you’ll recommend me to all of your friends. Get started today with my reasonably priced SEO consulting packages for small business.

Holy crap! Could I have said SEO consulting a few more times? What human wants to read that? Probably none. But to robots, this is good stuff. I’ve got lots of “keyword density” going on with the phrase “SEO Consulting”. Not only is this good for my SEO, it’s also good for using as a landing page in my Adwords campaigns. (If you’ve ever used Adwords you’ll see that they give your landing pages something called a quality score. It’s the robot’s estimation of how much your landing page has to do with the keywords you’re bidding on. The more relevant your page appears to be in robot’s estimation, the better your quality score, and the better price you’ll get when you bid on your keywords.)

So it’s a conundrum, isn’t it? How can you please robots and sound interesting to humans? Here are a few ways you can write something that will attract the robots and interest your customers:

1. Teach Them Something
How to do it: Write a page on your site (or post on your blog) that teaches people how to do something your customers are interested in learning. If you sell bridal jewelry, write something about how to to shop for a wedding band. If you sell dog collars, write something about how to keep your dog cool and comfortable on a hot summer afternoon walk.

Why it works: You’ll naturally write phrases relevant to your customers which will attract both people and search engines. Teaching customers how to do something also gives you some credibility with them so they’ll find your brand more appealing than a competitor who hasn’t taught them how to do anything.

2. Take Them Shopping
How to do it: Write gift guides for various people or occasions. (e.g. Valentine’s Day, Christmas, geeks, men, foodies, artists, etc.). Feature your own items and maybe even team up with a cross-promotion partner and include some of their items in your guide in exchange for their listing your items in their gift guides.

Why it works: Customers that are stumped for gift ideas sometimes search for “gift ideas for geeks” or “gifts for dad”.  You can send those searchers your way with your gift guide pages.

3. Make them Laugh
How to do it: Draw a clever comic if you’re an illustrator.  Write a top 10 list of most outrageous bridezilla moments if you sell bridal jewelry.

Why it works: Funny content can go viral easily. People share things that are funny with their friends. Getting your content shared builds tons of back links to your blog or website and that brings in customers and link juice for search engines (search engines give more weight to websites that have other websites linking to them).

Bonus Points: When you craft your optimized pages, figure out what phrases you want to optimize for and work those into your copy. You can do this by using Google’s Keyword Tool to see what keywords and key phrases get searched often. Then select the ones most relevant to your business (preferably some that don’t have truckloads of competition)  and make sure you incorporate those words and phrases into your copy.