While writing for search engines may seem to make a lot of sense, we should think clearly about WHY we are doing that. Is it because we want to make search engine crawlers happy? Yes, perhaps, but we only need that in order to bring in Human readers to read our articles.

So let’s stop focusing for a moment on how we do writing for search engines, and focus more on writing for Humans, because people like you and me don’t care about backlinks and linkwheels, and whatnot.

What do people enjoy seeing in the articles they get to read online?

Here’s the starting point of all that we’re about to discuss. Some of the following items you already researched in the last few Lessons that we’ve had, which is great because it will make this other lesson much easier to understand. In case you missed the other lessons, please go back and read them. The best part is that you have them on your email, so it will be really easy for you to find them.

Okay, let’s get this squirrly lesson started.

A topic that makes them think: ‘Oh, I did actually want to read about that’

This is a reaction they can have whether they know it or not. But it’s the first building block that helps with getting your Human readers to have kind of like a Eureka moment.

Of course, we’ve covered this aspect in Lesson 2 and Lesson 3.

 

People enjoy seeing an interesting spin or an interesting flavor being given to the articles they read

This tip right here is what makes people SHARE your article and helps drive a lot of traffic your way. It’s very important to do research the right way, after you’ve established what your topic will be.

Remember Lesson 4, about finding the right spin you can give to your articles? That one will help you to get this right.

Also, Lesson 5, which gives you the exact tools you’ll need.

 

They like a good Headline. How to build one?

Good Headlines. Very important thing, because it’s what will get people clicking your link to get to read your article, whether they see the link in search engine results, guest posts, or even social media.

So how do you build a great headline for your articles?

Here’s some pretty nice resources to learn from:

Jon Morrow’s ideas. Read Here.

Those headline hacks are awesome! You can read just the first 5 pages and still get a lot of value and ideas on how to build headlines that will make your Human readers crave for more articles from you.

Here’s one from Unbounce

The one from Unbounce explains a few basic stuff, some which you may already know, but in case you don’t, then go ahead and read it.

REMEMBER: don’t get lost in this. You need to place in the headline, the TOPIC that you’ve researched in the last lessons to make it really effective. Write it exactly in the form you found it, otherwise the whole strategy of optimizing for Humans will fail.

 

Placing a compelling image in your article

Very important when optimizing for Humans. The Squirrly Live Assistant helps you by reminding you to include an image in every blog post. It’s important on so many levels, starting with the fact that it will make your page look better, a picture’s worth a 1000 words, it looks awesome on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ would be boring without them, etc.

Squirrly also helps you a lot with finding images that you can use, and you can also choose to get just free-to-use images (which are copyright-free).

The image is something that can stop people looking at feeds, and have them actually click on your article and read it.

 

Having great On-Page SEO is important for Humans. WHAT?!

Wait?! Are we still talking Humans here? Yes, we are. Read on:

Bad on-page seo is where you try to put your topic idea (or keyword) as many times as possible in your article, because you think search engines will love that. They won’t!

Squirrly tells you exactly how many keyword mentions you must have in your article, in order for both Search Engines and HUMANS to love your article.Great on-page SEO must also regard the human readers, not just the crawler. The guys at Google also know that, that’s why they’ve tweaked their algorithm so much.

Also, if you wouldn’t have the keyword or topic name written inside your article, people would start getting the feeling that they’re reading about something else. Squirrly warns you about this as well.

If you don’t have any important strong points in your articles about your topic, that’s bad. If you do, then make sure you bold it. Reading a 1,000 or 2,000 words article that has no Headlines (H2-H6) or no Bolded text is just horrible and it will send away your Human readers as fast as they came in. Squirrly helps with this as well, through the Live Assistant (the thing with the green lights on the right of your Add New Article section of wordpress).

 

Great! I’m happy I finally discussed this idea with you. Optimizing for Humans is actually tied to optimizing for search engines, and I guess it makes sense, since the guys at Google have the mission of offering Human readers the very best from the web. If they didn’t care about this stuff, we’d never find anything good to read on search engine results.

When writing for search engines from now on, please keep the Human readers in mind as well

In 2 days, you will get the final Lesson from this second training program of ours which is all about optimizing your content for Humans.

My hope is that you have now seen why it is important to keep your human reader in mind when writing content. It’s the key to real long term success.

The final lesson will be a great lesson that should teach you how to measure the success of your optimized articles. Remember the mindset (from Lesson 4): it’s not just about creating something, it’s about making sure that what you create has maximum chances to “make it” out there in the real world. In the next lesson, you’ll get the tools that will help you verify if your optimization really works or not.

Okay, that was all for today. See you next time.