My Boss tells me personal narrative content isn't read online and bad for SEO, anyone else disagree? b/c I do!

[GoAbroadKP]

I am in a constant debate that content 1st person or 3rd person doesn't make a difference in terms of SEO and what people on the web want to read. What do you all think? Does it make a difference?

[MoosaHemani]

From personal Narration if you mean a story about something that happened to you and how you feel about it. Then in that case i am with you... The world is moving towards personalization... even in the SEO world people love to hear personal experiments, tests instead f theory articles!

Technically speaking content that have a touch of personalization tend to go more viral as compare to the one that only talks about boring theory...

I think if you boss want straight 500 words of article and a link at the end to get SEO benefits.... so the time is over for that... today if you are not creating valuable and engaging content you are almost wasting your time as far as SEO is concern!

Hope this helps!

[GoAbroadKP]

Yup, I mean personal experiences, specifically to a travel experience, as we are a travel website. We are creating a writing contest and they are wanting to restrict 1st person experiences, doesn't make sense to me!

But I agree the more personal and a piece of content that hits the user emotionally will be the most impactful!

As you said, content that is straight 500 words with links, is dead content these days!

Thanks for the feedback! I am mostly hoping for responses so I can prove my point! As with all SEO'er it is easier to convince with data!

[KaneJamison]

Hi Jonathon,

This won't cause any problems. The only argument one could make to support this theory is if one type of content tended to earn more links. An example would be authoritative content like Wikipedia. I don't believe this to be the case. 1st person voice can be just as link-worthy and perhaps more likely to get shared socially.

Honestly, there's room for both types of content on your site: a resource page written in 3rd person tone about a subject, and a blog article in 1st person with a personal recount about the area. Use the 3rd person content to target a keyword phrase like "Museums in Rome" and the 1st person content for a phrase like "Best Museums in Rome".

Hope that helps.

[Devanur-Rafi]

Dear Jonathan,

Moosa and Kane have given nice insights. Here are my two cents. No matter what, an original piece of content which is unique, fresh, relevant and link worthy, always gets great traction online and goes viral with little to no help. So all that we need is try and come up with such content. All the SEO goodies will follow it after...

Best regards,

Devanur Rafi.

[GoAbroadKP]

Hi Kane,

You are spot on, there is room for both types of content! We are in a panic mode to get as much content up as we previously lacked pretty much any type of content being a directory!

I like your suggestions with museums, I think that is a good strategy!

[ThompsonPaul]

Gonna be blunt... a travel writing contest that doesn't allow first-person stories is simply ridiculous. (Disclosure: I work predominantly in tourism/travel too)

Travel is an incredibly personal experience. A travel guide that lists attractions of a city is one thing, but an inspiring, exciting, or moving storing of how one person experienced that city is far more likely to actually inspire others to start thinking about visiting there as well. It's the personal stories that allow a reader to start to visualize themselves doing and enjoying the things the writer is talking about.

Travel is aspirational and emotional - people don't do it because they have to but because something inspires them to do it. That inspiration doesn't come from a logic-based laundry list of places and events (facts), but the ability of the visitor to imagine themselves in and enjoying the destination (emotions). And that comes in large part from reading others' experiences. Even most travel fiction is based on first-person narrative for that reason.

Sure, once you've captured their attention in the dreaming phase, you need solid guidebook-like info for followup. But even then, people are looking for personal connections to assess the validity of the guidebook recommendations. One need only to look at the explosion of TripAdvisor over the last couple of years to see that even guidebook info is more effective when accompanied by personal stories (reviews).

The writing contest is a great idea for generating interesting  real content. Don't  neuter it by removing the emotional connection to the stories.

There's more than my $.02

Paul

[GoAbroadKP]

I couldn't agree more! I believe the only reason that they didn't want personal narrative is because of some bad information about that style being bad for SEO; but as I have expressed to them, it's not!

Appreciate your response!