Who Do You Write For?

I’ve had this question sitting in the back of my mind for the last day or so and I was curious to find out what other’s answers may be. The who in the question refers to your readers or the search engines. If you still aren’t sure on what I am trying to get at keep reading.

Some of us use our blogs to blog about personal things going on with us. Writing for a search engine and writing for a reader are 2 very different things. When you are writing for your readers you are allowed more freedom in what you write. You can get a little bit personal and include your readers into your posts, which by the way is a great way to inspire them to comment. If you have a small number of readers you typically should be able to keep up with what they are doing, interacting with them, commenting on their blogs and building relationships. You can usually link over to one of their posts and in turn they will send you a link back or at least talk about you (hopefully in a good way) in one of their future posts.

In the other hand we have writing for the search engines. When you write a post meant for a search engine you have to focus on your title, a great introduction paragraph to grab your visitor’s attention and content that deserves to be linked to. Your visitors most likely won’t be a reader, they will be a complete stranger and know nothing about you or who you are. They are interested in the information that you have provided rather then who provided the information.

Don’t get me wrong, you can still get personal in your post but you have to go about it a certain way. While your personal posts may link off to random content your post for the search engines has to have structure. While you should always check your posts for spelling and grammar errors, you readers can understand if you slip up every once in awhile. You already have their trust and they know who you are and realize that you are a human. You have to assume that visitors to your site don’t know you, they don’t trust you and they are only there to find what they are looking for. If you don’t give them what they want they have no reason to stick around and will leave.

I write my posts for both search engines and my readers. Some of my posts give out useful tips and tricks and then there are posts such as this one aimed toward my readers and their opinions and thoughts. While the main idea behind my blog is to detail my experiences in affiliate marketing I also want to help others and hopefully solve their problems.

I am interested in what you have to say. Does your blog target your readers, visitors or both? Do you think it is possible to write for each in a single post?