For thousands of years, we’ve always written for each other. For
humans. The invention of language, and the many improvements since
that led to the widespread availability of text through magical
computer boxes has always been towards that end.
Until the last few years. Until the rise of Search Engine Optimization
(SEO).
For what it’s worth, I like writing for humans. For people. I put a
lot of thought into how to phrase things, how to explain ideas the
best way, and how to tell compelling stories to get you interested in
the topic.
To me, writing is at its best when we use it to get our ideas across,
from fantastical worlds of fiction with vivid setting and intriguing
characters, to pouring out the wisdom we’ve accrued into solid form
for others to enjoy.
SEO, on the other hand, is pretty much the opposite of that.
It’s maybe the three least exciting letters since “IRS” or “CPA”
(sorry to my accounting friends, but I’m trying to make a point).
Whether it’s a blog, a creative venture, or marketing your business,
SEO is an integral part of your success. We’ve reached a point where
it’s arguably more important to write such that search engines know
what the heck you mean than that humans do.
Let me say that again. It’s more important for Google to like your
headings and understand their keywords than to write compelling work.
What do I mean? Is that a hot take? Let’s unpack.
Search Engine
Optimization
and You
If you’re here, and it isn’t because you like me on Threads (a small
blessing some have given me), then you probably found this through a
search engine. Really, based on the
overwhelming statistics,
you probably found me through Google.
What that means is my success in being discovered, in having your
attention focused on my ramblings at this moment, depends on whether
Google smiles upon me. This can be a great thing, but it has also led
to the internet becoming plain and, honestly, kind of weird.
Not in the classic “wow the internet is weird,” meme kind of way, but
in a much more benign and much more frustrating way.
Try this: Google something you’re interested in learning about.
Let’s say, “easy curry recipes to make at home.” What you’ll see in
the results is that all of the headings on all of the listings will
contain some mash of the words from your search, usually in a
reasonable order.
Sometimes they're not. Sometimes we even get into situations where
local restaurants name themselves “Thai Food Near Me” in an attempt to
game the system. We’ll get to that later, both in its consequences and
its hilarity.
Most likely, though, you’ll see “easy chicken curry” or “easy chicken
curry recipe” or “quick curry recipe,” and, ignoring the focus
on chicken that I didn’t include in my search, this is largely useful.
It helps me find the info I want quickly, and all of the links I click
from there will, admittedly, help me make some (chicken) curry.
This is the beauty, and the power, of keywords. Google takes my
search, stuffs it into a magical algorithm box, and spits out results
it thinks I’ll like based on its
space wizardry and web crawling.
When looking for a recipe, this is almost always a good thing.
I get quick and easy results accurate to what I need, and I
can move on to making tasty curry. All of which is pretty cool.
This breaks down a bit though when we start talking about marketing,
especially content marketing, and about the ever-homogenizing march to
front-page discoverability.
Writing for
Machines
There are a lot of criteria for how Google (and other search engines)
rank content and what tends to rise to the top of the heap. The
science of how that works is, essentially, what SEO means.
Put simply, to earn favor with the magical algorithm box, I should
play nice, include plenty of keywords I want to rank for (but not so
many it’s literal nonsense), and ideally, prove that lots of people
care I exist based on consistent traffic and external links from
other sites to my own.
Where that gets weird is when people try to game the system. For a
while, someone could stuff a ton of relevant words in a page and it
would seem more related and thus appear higher in the rankings.
Google and other search engines are way smarter than that, however,
and have since improved their algorithms to detect this blatant abuse
and punish it.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Those sites still exist. There’s all sorts of
weirdness out there: invisible text, text colored as the background so
humans don’t see it, entire paragraphs of the same words repeated over
and over, and more. But they’re not terribly interesting, or
problematic. They get filtered out and functionally disappear.
The bad ones are the ones that seem almost human, uncannily so, but
that are just a little bit wrong. They have strangely-phrased sentences
that appeal to search queries more than actual human grammar, and seem
to repeat themselves. They can be longer than necessary in order to
seem more substantial, and are often really, really hollow.
What irks me is how these sites aren’t designed to be user-friendly.
To extend the curry metaphor, a recipe needn’t be a 10-minute read.
Hell, sometimes it’s better as a quick video and a paragraph of
explanation, or a list of ingredients and simple steps.
Yet, that’s not what happens. Often, you might stumble across a page
promising an easy curry recipe, yet instead tangents into all sorts of
semi-related topics, repeats the ingredients list over and over in
different ways, and seems to tell each step 2-3 times.
It’s not clear for humans, but it’s not meant to be.
It’s writing for the machine.
Writing for
Humans
So we know now that to get onto that coveted first page of Google, I
need keywords, ideally similar to popular search queries, and a heft
of repetition.
If I succeed, people will click on my thing. My silly little strategy
worked, and they’re here. Great. Now they can read the content! The
reason I bothered with SEO!
Except my god, how boring is my writing if I do that. My last blog was
a small example of this homogenization.
"6 Things To Know When Buying a Business."
It’s effective and honest, sure, but there is exactly no
personality to it.
That’s not to say it’s a bad post—in fact, I highly recommend it
(watch out, I’m biased). But it is to say it’s not how I’d like to
write that title, or the headings, because I’d rather make it more fun
for you without balancing for discoverability.
My problem is I like personality. This is how I actually am. This is
my actual writing style. I enjoy choppy sentences, vague sassiness,
and using all manner of ridiculous word choice to keep your attention.
I like writing like this because it’s fun, because (hopefully) it’s
more interesting to you, and because it’s a real reflection of what
you would experience when stumbling across my path in real life. I
like writing like this because it’s authentic.
SEO doesn’t feel authentic. It feels like I’m playing a game to
convince the algorithm to serve me up to more people, only I’d feel
ashamed to have those very same people arrive on my site only to find
the same bland writing style, the same titles, the same headings as
every other freaking site on the internet.
This is not a post on making chicken curry. It doesn’t need to be
objective and flat.
Honestly, neither does a recipe about making chicken curry. I think
it’d be fun to come across a recipe that is, itself, a little bit
spicy. In fact, convince me why it should be chicken! Make me care
about your way of creating the dish.
But I digress. The recipe serves its purpose. It’s there so I can get
in, learn what I need, and get out. And in being as discoverable as
possible, it succeeds in reaching me with its personal take on the
“right” way to make curry.
I’m not here to provide you with an objective fact as quickly and
efficiently as possible, though. Maybe I’d do that on Threads, or X,
or by making a reel since they’re designed to be lightning fast. But
this is long-form writing. The experience, and the approach, matters.
Long-form writing is, to me, about connection. It’s about storytelling,
authenticity, and leisure. I don’t want to make you read a
boring 15-minute lecture. I don’t even want to write it.
Instead, I would love to take you on a 15-minute journey that leaves
you with a feeling of thoughtfulness, and a realization that “wow, I
can’t believe it’s been 15 minutes.”
I want you to have fun here. And SEO isn’t fun.
Why
We Write
Chances are, you know some of this already. If you’ve written on the
internet before, or run a small business, you’ve invariably run up
against SEO.
You might be using a plugin to abstract it away, like Yoast for
WordPress or the myriad other excellent tools that will genuinely help
you improve your ranking on Google. Some of them even do it without
(totally) destroying your writing, and that’s excellent.
And look, I get it. Ranking on Google helps you succeed. It drives traffic.
Traffic improves sales. Your livelihood is at stake.
For me, though? I want to write with the intention to hand-craft every
word and every sentence. It may be imperfect, but it’s real, and it’s
the closest we’ll get to human connection across screens and
potentially thousands of miles.
I’m happy you’re here. I want to write for you, and so that we may
understand one another better through meaningful, authentic language.
After all, isn’t that why language exists in the first place?
Resources
Google has
plenty of documentation
on what’s behind the space wizardry and how to play nice. I’d take it
with a grain of salt since they wouldn’t possibly reveal the secret
sauce, but it is an interesting look into how results are ranked, if
you’re curious.