Any blogger or webmaster who has been in the business of content creation for some time is likely brainwashed by the tenets of SEO. Despite the fact that SEO more often than not can seem like an abstract art, everyone has their own preconceptions about what to do and what not to do in order to please Google, Bing and others. Sometimes, however, SEO is not the best approach in terms of priority when attempting to appeal to the masses. Other times, embracing other reasons as the foundation of your content will inevitably lead to good SEO on its own. Below, we’ll discuss four valid reasons why forgetting about SEO at times can be a good thing.

To Produce Great Content

The meat and potatoes of your website or blog is the content, and we often want to ensure that it is well received within the confines of SEO. As SEO evolves, however, quality work is being rewarded more than technical consideration. Search engines monitor in many ways how people engage with your content and then use that to determine where you stand. If technical writing is getting in the way of pleasing your readers, then try writing with the intent to create great things instead. Many have been rewarded for this approach.

To Augment and Accommodate User Behaviour

You have hopefully been keeping track of all that your readers and users are doing on your website, and also how they respond to any changes in tactics deployed by you. With that being said, which is better: doubling your traffic in a nominal sense, or improving engagement rates among your existing audience? In many cases, using metrics to determine what your users like and dislike AND putting it to practical use in boosting their clicks, shares, purchases and more is a much more valuable strategy than using SEO to boost your overall traffic.

To Grow on Social Media

The rules of pinging for SEO on the web do not necessarily apply in the world of social media. In fact, you may have noticed – depending on the size and scope of your website – that your social media presence outranks your website in search. Social media is powerful for SEO, but the use of social media does not follow traditional SEO guidelines. Users on social media want beautiful images, compelling videos, short updates from your brand and mostly content that doesn’t solely seek to promote you. Follow these rules and ditch traditional SEO when trying to grow social media.

To Advertise with Dollars

When spending money to reach an audience, you do not approach it from the same perspective as you would when pinging for SEO. Sure, many components such as keywords are still relevant, but your ability to automatically target a relevant audience via the metrics you specify makes this all about appealing to a specific sliver via what you say. Since SEO is not designed to be a tactic that persuades or convinces individuals (but rather, search engines), it is OK to abandon the tenets of SEO when producing ad copy or compiling the main dynamics of your paid ad campaigns.