That day I stopped writing for search engines

I spent two years stuffing keywords into every blog post. Got great rankings but nobody stayed on the page. Then a client sent me a recording of someone reading my post out loud. Sounded like a robot wrote it. Threw out my whole content calendar that afternoon and started writing for actual humans instead. Anyone else have a moment where they realized their traffic was hollow?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_john1d ago

Yeah totally. Used to think SEO meant cramming keywords into every paragraph. Saw this one post of mine get page one rankings for a decent keyword and felt like a genius. Then I actually read through the analytics and my bounce rate was like 90 percent. People clicked and left almost instantly. That data hurt but it was the push I needed. Now I just write like I'm talking to a buddy over coffee and honestly my posts get shared way more.

umamartin1d ago

Pretty sure my old posts were just keyword soup with a few actual words sprinkled in like seasoning. Google probably thought it was a bot farm. The 90% bounce rate wake up call hurts but it's basically the internet's way of saying your content is garbage politely. Now I aim for 70% helpful info and 30% keywords and somehow people actually scroll past the first paragraph. Who would have thought treating readers like humans instead of search engine bait works better.