A lot of times SEO is an after thought and is a final coat of paint. In working with multiple companies, I’ve seen patterns where there are great content pieces created then sent to the SEO team.

This process says “Hey, we wrote content, write meta title and description and get us to page 1”. And that’s like the title of this blog.

While, we never underestimate the power of the meta title to help with ranking and the description in conjunction with the title to help with CTR, they aren’t the only factors.

Also, we never underestimate the skill of a great writer. Great writers, even if they don’t understand or even know about SEO, will most times write SEO optimised content.

Great writers write for the reader. They research, address problems, present solutions, and have an opinion – all in a clear and entertaining way.

Now, imagine if this writer had SEO input. It’s the perfect power couple. SEO folks help inform great writers about their readers – their target audience.

SEO folk help share information on who their readers are, what types of content they enjoy reading, how they find the content that these writers create and other very technical things.

Content can be generated in two ways:

Intrinsically.
This means that someone just decides to write. An idea is birthed, researched, written, edited, and published. All motivation and efforts were based off an intrinsic idea; unaffected by the target audience.

A good approach for this method is for the writer to share ideas or rough drafts with SEO, SEO researches, adds recommendations, write, edit, publish.

Extrinsically
This means that content ideas can be generated by picking the minds of the target audience and learning what they want, how they find it, and consume it.

A good approach for this method is to start with SEO, flow into the writing pool, then reviewed by SEO, edited, then published.