Pages Written for Search Engines

The distinction that was drawn

Yesterday's update is framed around whether content was made primarily for search engines or primarily for people.

That sounds like a question about intention, which is unknowable, and in practice it leaves marks that anybody can see.

A page written to answer somebody contains things only a person answering somebody would include.

A page written to occupy a position contains what such a page needs and nothing else, and the absences are the tell.

What is missing from a page built to rank

• Specific figures of any kind.
• Anything the writer could get wrong.
• Limits, exceptions, or cases where it does not apply.
• A recommendation against something.
• Anybody's name.
• A reason this business is the one saying it.

The third is the most reliable. Real knowledge comes with boundaries, and a page that applies uniformly to every reader was not written by anybody who has met the variety.

Uniform coverage is the signature

The structural version of the same thing.

A page built to rank covers every subtopic to roughly the same depth, because coverage was the objective.

A page written by somebody who does the work is uneven: three paragraphs on the thing that actually causes problems, one sentence on the thing that never matters.

That unevenness is a feature and it is the first thing an optimisation process removes.

Where a page gives equal weight to eight considerations, the writer had no basis for ranking them, which means they were working from other pages rather than from experience.

Look at your own pages and ask which section is longest, and whether it is longest because it matters most.

The answer that never arrives

The reader-facing consequence, and the one that costs enquiries.

These pages establish the question, explain that the answer depends, list the factors, and close by inviting contact.

They are complete by any structural measure and contain no answer, which is exactly what the update describes as promising something not delivered.

A reader arriving with a question leaves without one, which is visible in the figures as high traffic and very short visits.

That combination is the closest thing to a mechanical test available, and it costs nothing to look at.

A worked example

A business had thirty-one pages, of which eleven were written by the owner and twenty by a supplier.

Read side by side, the difference was obvious without knowing which was which.

The owner's pages had prices, durations, a case where the usual approach was wrong, and one that recommended not doing the work at all in certain circumstances.

The supplier's pages had none of those, covered every angle evenly, and each closed by suggesting the reader get in touch for advice tailored to their situation.

All eleven of the owner's pages produced enquiries. Three of the twenty did.

That distribution had been visible in the figures for two years and nobody had put the two sets side by side.

The test to apply

Three questions per page, which takes a minute.

Could a competitor publish this page with only the business name changed.

Does it contain anything the writer could be wrong about.

Does a reader with the question leave with the answer.

A page failing all three was made for search engines regardless of anybody's intention when writing it.

A page failing one is worth improving. A page failing three is worth removing or rewriting entirely.

Fixing rather than removing

Since these pages sometimes cover subjects worth covering.

Add the figures, which exist in your records.

Add the limits: when this does not apply, when it is the wrong approach, and who should do something else.

Add a name and a line of qualification.

Cut the uniform coverage down to what actually matters, which usually shortens the page substantially.

And move the answer to the opening, since these pages almost always bury it.

That is an hour per page and it converts a liability into something worth having.

It was frequently not your decision

Worth saying, since businesses in this position tend to feel caught out.

Most of these pages were produced by suppliers doing what they were asked to do, against a brief specifying topics and volume.

The advice at the time was to cover more ground, and the pages are the result of following it.

What has changed is the mechanical consequence rather than anybody's honesty.

If somebody is producing content for you now, the useful conversation is about where the material comes from rather than about how much of it there is.

Do it before the figures move

A timing point, since the rollout is running and will take another week or so.

Anything you change now is being changed on judgement rather than in reaction, which is the better basis and produces calmer decisions.

If your figures do move, you will want to know what you had before, so record them now regardless of whether you touch anything.

And if they do not move, the pages failing all three questions were still worth fixing, since they were producing traffic and no enquiries either way.

That is the useful position: make the changes you would have made anyway, and treat the update as a prompt rather than a diagnosis.

The counter-case

Not every plain page is a problem.

Ordinary informational pages, opening hours, and straightforward descriptions of a service are not written for anybody in particular and do not need to be.

Some subjects genuinely have general answers, and a page giving one is not deficient for lacking a war story.

There is also a risk of over-correcting into pages so full of caveats and exceptions that nobody can extract the answer.

Apply the three questions to the advisory pages, fix the ones that fail, and leave the plain descriptive pages alone.

What to do

1. Put your best page beside your worst.
2. Ask whether a competitor could publish it.
3. Ask whether anything could be wrong.
4. Ask whether the reader leaves with the answer.
5. Add figures and limits to the ones worth keeping.
6. Cut the even coverage down to what matters.
7. Talk to whoever is producing content now.

Step one does most of the diagnosis, because the difference between the two kinds of page is obvious in comparison and invisible when each is read on its own.

The reader-side version of this is covered in a page that ranks and helps nobody.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.