“Concept > Context (for the image or example) > Image or Example.”
“In other words, start with the concept you’re introducing. State it plainly. Then, provide context for the example or image you’re about to introduce. Then include the example or image.”
The second major skimmability issue can actually be spotted well in advance, prior to ever reading a single line of the content itself.
Go back to the overall structure again!
“One skimmability problem that is easy to illustrate with examples (and highly applicable to many web writers) is when you’re unable to understand what a section or article is about from just the header title(s). That’s why I always look at the table of contents or stacked headers on the left side of the Google Doc before I start editing an article.”
In other words, start by familiarizing yourself with what is being proposed, the nested information under each section, and how these sections build on top of one another to get a general sense of the problems, challenges or examples that will ultimately be most appropriate later on.
Lindley continues this example with another one:
“For example, if I see the H2 ‘Content Marketing’ in an article titled ‘Types of Digital Marketing,’ I am pretty sure that section will describe how content marketing is a type of digital marketing. But if I see the H2 ‘Fire Up Your Keyboard’ in that same article, I’m confused, and I know there’s a problem.”
How do you know whether you (or your writers) are on the right track?
Again, back out of the actual paragraphs to take in the proposed article as a whole.
The table of contents or header structure can help, as can literally minimizing the text sizing in your browser to zoom out and consider all of the content together, like so:
Last but not least, here are three additional “don’ts” Lindley recommends following to help avoid interrupting the reading flow or risk losing the reader:
Don’t make the reader squint to look for details in images that help them understand what they’re looking at.
Don’t make them scroll back up to the paragraph text to look for help understanding what they’re looking at.
Don’t make them read your explanation below the image or example and then go back up to the image or example to finally understand it.
3. Search intent: Focus editing on reader clarity, less on phrasing or semantic keywords
Over the last decade of working across hundreds of brands, I’ve noticed that good writers often make bad editors and terrible content managers.
The reason comes down to a skill set mismatch, where good writers excel at ingenuity and saying the same things in different ways, while good editors instead laser-focus on consistency and clarity.
For example, take a look at the following “edits”:
As you can tell, these are done by a good “writer,” perhaps, but as an editor, it’s often missing the point.
The best editors are often akin to a coach. Their job is to sit at the intersection of the brand, the reader and search intent, then make sure to erect “bumpers” on each side to keep writers clear on the primary direction of travel.
“The best editors maintain a radical focus on the reader. They’ll even break well-established writing rules to serve that focus,” affirms Lindley.
“Getting into more specific areas of focus, editors should put structure, skimmability and search intent at the center of nearly everything they do.”
“The other stuff – images, line edits, spelling, grammar, etc. – is important. But you can have all that extra stuff completely perfect and still have a bad article because you’ve neglected structure, skimmability or search intent.”
“That’s not to say editors shouldn’t care about other concerns. They should, but if I only had 30 minutes to spend editing an article, I wouldn’t change a single word before I addressed those three Ss.”
Lindley is also a proponent of role specialization, where “strategists focus more on keywords, distribution, and the like,” while the writer can “focus on the sentence-level stuff.”
The editor might review all of these details prior to publishing, but none of them outweigh structure, skimmability and search intent.
How do you help enforce (or reinforce) these principles in practice? Especially at scale or higher volumes across a broad team?
The best way I’ve found is to make editors track time against every article, writer, and content type. Then, set established benchmark thresholds for each.
For example, after publishing thousands of articles each year over the past few years, we’ve noticed that if editors continuously spend over an hour editing certain articles, it actually indicates:
A process problem (identify underlying gaps in briefs/templates).
An internal documentation problem (ICP/product positioning communicated + re-trained).
A role/expectations problem (editors wanna rewrite vs. edit).
A delegation problem (editors/content managers ‘need to do it themselves’ vs. building a systematic workflow with the first three above).
And often not a “writer” or “editor” problem.
Here’s how to set up this internal feedback loop to make sure everyone is focused on the highest and best use of their respective times (and skills):
You should have estimated editing time ranges, including caps, to edit each content type, format, or length.
Add time tracking per article and per writer (even more true if editors are fixed cost / in-house / full-time).
Use this baseline data to identify trends, patterns and bad habits (rewriting vs. editing).
Force editors to flag underlying issues or gaps – not just fix surface-level issues – that should have been better spelled out, structured or illustrated for writers in preceding steps.
Review these issues weekly to create new supporting resources to continually re-train your editorial team.
This feedback loop has two benefits:
Editors’ editing-per-piece effort will drop like a rock, resulting in a better experience for them.
It also allows editors to edit more content in the same amount of time, which is a better ROI for you.
The end result is that more editing comments should follow Lindley’s recommended three S approach, providing broad, strategic recommendations like the comment below early on – as opposed to the individual rewording of sentences at the start of this section.
A balanced content strategy delivers evergreen results and boosts revenue
There’s a constant tension when writing for search and readers. Lean too far in either direction and the final outcome can often sacrifice one at the expense of the other.
The trick, as with most things in life, is to lean into the gray area filled with nuance. While also avoiding knee-jerk reactions that try too hard to oversimplify.
If you want readers to consume, engage, save, and share search-driven content, the answer isn’t to start cutting important context like your introductions. Instead, you should be writing introductions that deserve to be read.
Building your publishing process (and editing) around the three S approach are a perfect start to walking this fine line.
Because structure, skimmability, and search intent aren’t just simple, practical guardrails for editorial teams.
But also the foundation behind writing marketing content that also gets evergreen results at the same time.
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