It’s a commonly held belief about SEO that content that has been optimised for search will sound clunky and robotic. It really doesn’t have to. The web content team at Asana shows us how.

I took to Google this week wanting to know how Asana could integrate with Slack.

My search query: “slack asana”. (I was feeling lazy.)

Still, it got me to exactly the content I was looking for. (That’s just how good Google is these days.)

Here’s what I found:

Optimised content on the Asana site reads conversational. See for yourself: https://asana.com/apps/slack.

To someone in the business, it’s pretty apparent that the introduction was written with SEO objectives in mind.

Keyword and key phrases are closely packed in the heading:

“Instead of Asana vs. Slack, let’s talk about using Asana with Slack“.

The density continues in the first paragraph:

Rather than asking “Should we use Asana or Slack” think about “How can I use Asana and Slack together?”

We all know “thing” vs. “thing” searches are very popular (and effective). Including a vs. line in the heading and a variation of it in the first sentence no doubt helped to fix the result in pole position on the search results page.

But the Asana team have used just the right tone to make the inclusion of these phrases sound conversational and natural. It doesn’t read like intentionally optimised content.

More proof that it is possible for content to work for search and users without detracting from the experience. It just takes a bit of creativity.