The page that ranked but couldn't convert

A parks and recreation team rewrote their program registration page following SEO advice they'd found online. They added their target keyword to the page title, the H1, two H2s, and the first paragraph. They hit a "keyword density" target of 2%. They added a meta description with the keyword in it. Three months later the page was ranking on the first page of Google for their target term.

Bounce rate: 84%. Conversions (online registrations): unchanged.

The page ranked because it contained the right words. It didn't convert because nobody could use it. The content was dense and machine-sounding, organized around keyword placement rather than the user's actual task. Visitors arrived, failed to find what they needed quickly, and left.

This is the gap between optimizing for search and writing for humans. And it's a gap that Google has been actively closing for the past several years, through algorithm updates that reward content people find genuinely helpful and penalize content that exists primarily to rank.

The good news: writing well for humans and writing well for search are more aligned than they've ever been. The bad news: a lot of the SEO writing advice still circulating online predates that alignment. This post explains how to approach both goals at once.

What search engines actually want now

For years, SEO writing advice was largely about signals: use the keyword in the title, in the first 100 words, in at least one H2, in the meta description, at a density of roughly 1-2%. This advice wasn't wrong, exactly. It reflected how search algorithms worked at the time.

Those algorithms were trying to solve a hard problem: figure out what a page is about, at scale, without being able to read it the way a human does. Keywords were a practical shortcut. If a page mentioned "building permit application" eight times, it was probably about building permit applications.

Modern search algorithms are significantly more sophisticated. Google's systems now use large language models to understand semantic meaning, not just keyword frequency. They evaluate whether content demonstrates genuine expertise and experience on a topic. They measure behavioral signals: do users who land on this page stay and complete their task, or do they leave immediately and click a different result?

The shift is real and it has a name. Google's helpful content system, updated significantly in 2022 and incorporated into the core ranking algorithm in 2024, explicitly targets "content that seems to have been primarily created for ranking purposes rather than to help or inform people." Pages written to manipulate rankings, rather than to be useful, are now a ranking liability.

This doesn't mean keywords don't matter. It means that keyword placement is table stakes, not a strategy. The strategy is usefulness.

Start with intent, not keywords

The most important question before writing any page is not "what keyword am I targeting?" It is "what is the person searching for this actually trying to accomplish?"

Search intent falls into four categories, and the right content structure depends entirely on which one you're addressing.

Informational intent

The user wants to learn something. "What is AODA?" "How does a building permit work?" "What does a digital experience architect do?" Content for informational intent should be structured to teach: clear definitions, explanations of how things work, and answers to likely follow-up questions. Wikipedia-style comprehensiveness is valued here. Conversion-focused calls to action are premature and can feel pushy; they're appropriate at the end but shouldn't dominate.

Navigational intent

The user is trying to find a specific thing they already know exists. "Oakville recreation registration login" or "City of Hamilton contact page." Content for navigational intent should make the destination obvious and reachable within one click. A well-structured homepage, a clear service finder, or a site search feature serves this intent better than any amount of content writing.

Transactional intent

The user is ready to take an action. "Register for swimming lessons." "Apply for a building permit online." "Book a consultation." Content for transactional intent should be ruthlessly focused on completing the task. Every sentence should either explain a step, set an expectation, or answer a blocking question. Anything that doesn't help the user take the action is friction.

Commercial investigation intent

The user is evaluating options before making a decision. "Best CMS for a municipal website." "WordPress vs Drupal for government." Content for commercial investigation intent should be balanced, specific, and honest about tradeoffs. Readers are sophisticated. They distrust content that sounds like marketing and trust content that helps them think.

Mismatching intent is the most expensive SEO mistake you can make. A transactional-style page targeting an informational query will rank poorly because users bounce immediately. An informational essay targeting a transactional query will rank poorly because users can't complete their task. Get the intent right before you write a word.

Heading hierarchies that serve both search and readers

Headings do two jobs simultaneously. For search engines, they communicate the semantic structure of your content: what the page covers, how topics relate to each other, and which concepts are primary versus supporting. For human readers, they create a scannable outline that allows someone to find the section they need without reading the entire page.

Both jobs require the same thing: headings that accurately describe what follows.

The most common heading mistakes

Keyword-cramming: Turning a natural heading into a keyword target. "Building permit application online services process city of Oakville" is not a useful heading for a human reader. "How to apply for a building permit online" communicates the same topic, passes the same relevance signal to search engines, and is fifty times more readable.

Vague headings: Headings like "Overview," "Details," "More information," and "Introduction" communicate nothing to a scanner and almost nothing to a crawler. A heading should tell the reader exactly what they'll find in that section. "What documents you need before applying" is a useful heading. "Required documentation" is marginally better than "Overview" but still vague. "The four documents you need to apply online" is excellent.

Skipping levels: H1 → H3 with no H2 in between breaks the semantic structure for both crawlers and screen readers. Every heading level should represent a genuine hierarchical relationship to its parent.

Multiple H1s: Each page should have exactly one H1. It signals the primary topic of the page. Multiple H1s fragment that signal and create accessibility problems.

Writing headings that work for both audiences

A simple test: read your heading out loud. Does it sound like something a person would say? Does it tell you what you'll find in the section? Could you reorganize the page using only the headings and still understand the structure?

If the answer to all three is yes, the heading is doing its job for humans. It will almost certainly do its job for search engines too, because search engines are increasingly good at understanding meaning rather than just matching strings.

Plain-language writing and why it ranks

Plain-language writing is often treated as a courtesy to readers, a nicety for accessibility and inclusion. It is that. It is also a direct ranking signal.

Here is the mechanism. A user arrives on your page from a search result. If the page is dense, jargon-heavy, or difficult to follow, they leave quickly. That behavioral signal (high bounce rate, low time on page, no task completion) tells Google's systems that the page did not satisfy the user's intent. Over time, the page drifts down in rankings as better-performing alternatives demonstrate consistently higher user satisfaction.

Plain language keeps users on the page. It reduces the cognitive load required to extract the information they came for. It helps them complete tasks and find answers. All of those behaviors feed back into ranking signals positively.

Specific plain-language practices that also support rankings:

Short paragraphs: Two to four sentences. White space is not wasted space. It gives readers visual breathing room and reduces the "wall of text" appearance that causes immediate abandonment on mobile devices.

Front-loaded information: State the most important thing first. Search result snippets often pull from the first sentence of a section. Users scanning a page read the first sentence of each paragraph before deciding whether to read further. Both behaviors reward putting the key information at the start.

Define terms on first use: If your audience includes non-specialists, define acronyms and technical terms the first time you use them. "AODA (the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act)" rather than assuming the reader knows the acronym. This serves plain-language standards and helps search engines understand the relationships between terms.

Active voice: "The city requires all permits to be submitted online" is passive and slow. "You submit all permits online" is direct, fast, and more useful. Active voice creates shorter sentences, which are easier to scan and easier to extract as featured snippet content.

Concrete specifics over general claims: "Many municipalities have improved their websites" is useless. "Municipalities that redesigned their online permit portals reduced call volume by an average of 30% within the first year, according to a 2023 MISA Canada report" is useful, verifiable, and citable. Specific claims earn featured snippets and direct answers. General claims earn nothing.

The over-optimization traps

Over-optimization is the technical term for writing that has been adjusted so heavily for search signals that it reads unnaturally to humans. It is counterproductive for the reasons described above, and it has become increasingly detectable by search algorithms. Here are the patterns to watch for.

Forced keyword insertion

The sentence is written naturally, then the target keyword is inserted in a way that changes the sentence's meaning or rhythm. "Our building permit application online services are easy to use" instead of "Applying for a permit online is straightforward." The forced version contains the keyword phrase; the natural version does not. The forced version reads worse and is no longer clearly more effective for rankings.

Exact-match anchor text overuse

When all the internal links pointing to a page use exactly the same anchor text, it looks manipulated. Natural internal linking uses varied, descriptive anchor text that fits the surrounding sentence. "Learn more about the building permit application process" and "review the permit requirements before you start" and "the full list of required documents" are all better anchor texts than repeating "building permit application" every time.

Keyword variants as separate headings

A page with the headings "Building permits," "Building permit application," "Building permit application process," and "How to apply for a building permit" is not covering four distinct topics. It is covering one topic and using heading slots to place keyword variants. From a user's perspective, the page looks repetitive and unorganized. From an algorithmic perspective, it looks thin. Consolidate related topics under one clear heading and cover them thoroughly.

Thin content padded to a word count

Longer content is not inherently better content. A 300-word page that answers a specific question completely is more useful than a 1,500-word page that says the same thing five times in different ways. Write to cover the topic thoroughly, not to reach a word count. A useful test: after writing, go through the draft and remove every sentence that doesn't add new information. If the page is better without those sentences, they should go.

Meta descriptions written only for crawlers

A meta description stuffed with keyword variants ("building permit application online building permit city building permits Ontario") is not a description. It is not written for a human deciding which search result to click. A genuine meta description is a sentence or two that tells the reader what they'll find and why they should click. It is the ad for your page in the search results, and it should read like one.

A practical writing framework

Here is the sequence I follow when writing content that needs to perform well for both search and readers.

Step 1: Map the intent first

Before writing or researching keywords, identify which of the four intent categories this page addresses. Informational, navigational, transactional, or commercial investigation. The answer determines the entire structure and tone of the page.

Step 2: Find the user's blocking questions

What would a person searching for this topic need to know to successfully complete their goal? List every question they might have. These questions become your heading structure. You are not creating headings and then filling them with content; you are identifying genuine questions and then writing headings that answer them.

Step 3: Research keywords as vocabulary, not targets

Use keyword research tools (Google Search Console, Semrush, Ahrefs, or even Google's autocomplete) to understand how your audience phrases their questions. This tells you what words to use so your language matches theirs. It is vocabulary research, not a list of terms to insert.

Step 4: Write for the human reader first

Write a complete draft without tracking keyword placement. Write to answer the questions your reader has, in plain language, in the order that makes sense for their task. Read it out loud. Fix anything that doesn't sound like natural speech.

Step 5: Review for search completeness

After the first draft, check that:

Step 5 is a review pass, not a revision pass. If you find yourself rewriting sentences to insert keywords, that is a signal that the writing in step 4 didn't naturally reflect the topic. Go back to step 4 and ask why.

Step 6: Check intent alignment one more time

Read the complete draft and ask: if someone searched for this content and landed on this page, would they find what they were looking for? Would they leave satisfied or frustrated? Would they take the action you're designing for (if the intent is transactional)?

If the honest answer is "probably not," the draft needs revision, not more keywords.

The summary checklist

Use this as a pre-publish review for any page you care about ranking.

Intent and structure

Writing quality

Search completeness

Over-optimization check

If your content isn't converting despite ranking, the gap is almost always intent or usability, not keywords. Get in touch for a content audit that identifies exactly where the disconnect is and how to fix it.