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Spent 3 years obsessing over keyword density before a client pointed out my blog posts sounded like robots wrote them
She literally said 'I feel like I'm reading a manual for a toaster' and that's when I realized I'd been sacrificing readability for some imaginary SEO gold standard that probably stopped mattering after 2016. Has anyone else had a reader call them out on writing that's too stiff?
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kai_butler831mo ago
My toaster manuals are way more engaging than those posts.
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sarah5311mo ago
About six weeks ago my friend Jen tried to read a long post about local politics and fell asleep halfway through. Her toaster manual though, that thing kept her up for an hour past her bedtime. She told me she actually learned the proper way to defrost bagels without burning them. Said the diagrams were way more helpful than any article she's seen online lately. I think she's been referencing that manual more often than she checks the news now.
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grant_foster791mo ago
Have you tried writing like you're talking to a friend over coffee? That's what finally worked for me... I just started reading my drafts out loud and if they sounded stiff I'd rewrite them.
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