Here’s why it’s best to write as a person, not a brand, for SEO.

Many of us write content for company websites, and we do so in the tone and style of the brand rather than the person: here’s why you should avoid doing this.

You have probably heard of Google’s EEAT guidelines: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust.

In a nutshell, this means that your content needs to demonstrate these qualities to rank well.

If you want to get the best SEO results on your website, you should write as a person rather than as the brand you represent.

Why is this (potentially) good for the SERPs?

Faceless copy is exactly that: faceless. With no author, personality, or tone of voice demonstrating your content’s human-written nature, what stands it apart from AI-generated copy?

If you write in the ‘we’ sense, you are trying to relay the collective opinions of a team of people:

We offer our clients the best value-for-money services they can get.

There are two things wrong with this sort of statement.

Firstly, who is ‘we’?

Yes, I understand it is your company, and the term reflects the people who work for it, but it’s faceless.

Secondly, I assume this statement refers to your existing clients, not me.

Ok, so I am being a little obtuse here, but:

• The Faceless “We”: It often comes across as corporate-speak, which can lack the warmth or relatability of a more personal voice.
• Impersonal “They”: Yes, exactly. Using “they” subtly distances the speaker from the reader, implying it’s aimed at a general group, not directly at the reader or potential client.

The semantics of written copy are often overlooked. Being different takes time and costs money.

Admittedly, you also have to consider the market you are talking to, so cultures put the product or services’ technical and reliability details, whereas other cultures tend to buy into the ‘person’ selling the product.

That second option goes for us here in the UK, so if you are writing sales copy, it’s best to put a person behind it.

Not all sales copy can be written in the first person.

This is probably true, but where possible, it should be as it better serves Google’s EEAT guidelines and connects better with people.

You deal with a brand for large corporations, but for smaller businesses, you deal with people.

Let’s take the example of signing up for a new bank account—let’s use Starling Bank as an example.

When you open an account, you don’t speak to the boss (CEO or whatever they are called – actually you don’t even speak to anyone – the entire process is automated.

So what you are buying here is the brand, not the people behind it.

This sort of brand equity is reached through investing millions in advertising, marketing, and PR—sure, one person had the idea behind Starling Bank, but venture capitalists and swanky advertising and marketing agencies made this possible through heavy financial backing.

It took around £148M to get that back off the ground (much of it spent on the legal side of setting a bank up. Source. Source.).

A big wedge was also probably spent convincing customers to trust this new tech-based start-up.

It certainly was not then that CEO Anne Boden alone wrote blog posts that ranked in the search.

The point here is that if you throw enough money at something, people start to believe in the brand, irrespective of who is behind it.

SMEs, on the other hand, simply don’t have the cash to do this. In fact, Starling Bank themselves highlight this on a blog: 85% of UK startups are bootstrapped, so advertising, marketing, and PR spending comes out of the owners’ own pockets.

When you are an SME, you are often the brand.

As you are the brand, talk for the brand rather than trying to sound like a faceless corporation.

Using natural language in your website copy instead of bland corporate speak does several things:

1. Visitors know they are dealing with a person and will probably expect to talk directly to that person.
2. You avoid terms like “they,” “they,” “we,” and “us” and instead use terms like “I,” “me,” “you,” and “us.”
3. You stand a higher chance of ranking your SME than you might think as you help fulfil Google’s EEAT criteria naturally – it’s you. You have the experience, expertise, authority, and trust.

As an SME, you can seriously outperform your competition in SEO using this technique—especially if you are just one person offering a service similar to a large company.

This is not easy, but Google wants to connect searchers with websites that meet the EEAT guidelines, so it’s a start.

If it’s just you or a few people, celebrate this fact on your website and write in the first person. Rather than trying to be a big brand, focus on being a small brand with real experts who are passionate about what they do.