I’ve obviously been in quite a good mood recently, as I haven’t yet vented my spleen on this blog. I think the time has come!

Ok, so I subscribe to Google Alerts, and through this I came across a piece of writing that was on one of the many article directories available…

Of course, the whole point of putting your article on these sites is to drive traffic to your own website, and generally ‘put yourself out there’ as a particularly ace and knowledgeable person, so you’re going to need some search engine friendly content.

Unfortunately, this poor chap has got a bit confused. Fair enough, he’s found his keyword, and by God has he stuck to it – but he’s forgotten the concept of a sentence in the process.

Which is the part of SEO that gets my goat. Of course you need keywords, we all know how important it is to be up there in the rafters of Google. But don’t sacrifice readability (or words like ‘in’ and ‘of’, which are really quite useful), for getting that keyword stuffed into every short paragraph.

Remember, Google is a lot like your dad when you’re a teenager. Sure, you can get away with the naughty stuff (like keyword stuffing or getting home at 5am) for a short time, if you’re clever about it. But dad isn’t as daft as you’d think, and pretty quickly he’s going to come down on you like a ton of bricks. And you’re going to look like a complete nugget.

Fortunately there are lots of lovely people out there who optimise content in a way that makes Google happy (they tidy their room instead of getting drunk), and it has the added benefit of making sense when you read it. Which is nice.

Hey, its hard being a freelance writer Lancaster.