Don't cater your content to SEO. Make SEO work for your content.

I can’t remember where I saw it, but I never forgot it. 

In 2016, I read a piece about harassment women face while they’re exercising outside. The author’s tone was edgy and empowering. Erin Bailey’s voice was clear and strong. She described her experiences and then spoke directly to the readers, telling them, “We deserve more. A whole lot more...I want you to speak out. I want you to break your silence. I want to hear your stories.” 

I instantly felt connected to Erin’s words. 

I wasn’t the only one who the piece struck. It went viral overnight (and this was before the #metoo movement took off). TIME, HuffPost, Boston Magazine, SELF, Bustle, and the Daily Mail all picked up the story a few days after she posted it. Erin quickly rose to micro-influencer status. She currently has 15.5k followers on Instagram.

Why did it go viral?

Erin didn’t have much of a following before that piece. She published it on her website, not in a well-known publication or even on Medium. I doubt she optimized it for SEO (the URL doesn’t even have keywords in it). I doubt she had a distribution strategy beyond sharing it to her Instagram and Facebook accounts.

The marketing lesson here is that “good content gets found” as John Bonini, growth and user acquisition specialist, says.

Her piece didn’t go viral because she unlocked some SEO secret. It went viral because she had something interesting to say and she said it well and there were people who wanted or needed to hear it.

As far as I know, her strategy wasn’t to pick a few keywords and center a piece around those. It was to take a stance on a topic that she knew would resonate with her target audience (young women athletes). And she knew the audience persona intimately because she was part of that group. 

I’m guessing that Erin didn’t write it for Google’s SERP ranking algorithm. She wrote the piece for herself and others like her. 

Of course, SEO strategies matter. But the goal isn’t to cater your content to SEO. It’s to make SEO tactics work for your content. 

Good writing that resonates will go far on its own.