I hate SEO
Can you tell from this post title that I've spent two days sucking the life and interest out of a written text, in order to make it "better" for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Honestly, all those keywords and the carefully keyword-rich headings and blah blah blah might bring people to the site -- once. But with every word that "doesn't have a purpose" stripped out and all that keyword crap mathematically measured and inserted at just the right spots to catch that robot crawler's algorithm -- who would want to read that garbage?? Not I.
I am deeply amused by SEO and the philosophy behind it. Hey webmasters -- you do know that several thousand (perhaps million) other text writers in the very same field as you are busily tweaking their websites in exactly the same way? And every last one of the thousands of you are determined that all that dry, robotic keyword calculation is going to get your site into the Top Ten search results in Google!
First, O mathematically astute web designers, I think you need to tell me how all ten thousand of you will be in the Top Ten after all doing exactly the same thing.
I've done experiments where I've written blog posts that were excrutiatingly exact when it came to doing all the "right" things with keywords, Meta Descriptions, bolded headings with good keywords, great links with the right keyword texts, blah blah blah -- and those posts (on popular topics) got not. one. single. hit. Not one -- in months. Not one.
Then I tossed off one fun little blog post about how I loved the alphabet, with no thought whatsoever for keywords or any other SEO scheming -- and it gets hit after hit after hit after hit. It's got nothing that would make an SEO expert proud, and it's full of things that would make that expert cringe. And it gets a ton of traffic.
So to say I've been grumbling at how the site I'm currently working for is making sure their text is exquisitely SEO-correct but is dry as dust is an understatement. And further, I've been grumbling especially because these people are taking three writers who aren't SEO professionals and are making us try to produce professional SEO work -- and they're not paying us what SEO professionals make. To say I am furious is also an understatement. And because they know we all need the money and can't say no, they can get away with it.
But I almost said no yesterday. I almost walked.
Honestly, all those keywords and the carefully keyword-rich headings and blah blah blah might bring people to the site -- once. But with every word that "doesn't have a purpose" stripped out and all that keyword crap mathematically measured and inserted at just the right spots to catch that robot crawler's algorithm -- who would want to read that garbage?? Not I.
I am deeply amused by SEO and the philosophy behind it. Hey webmasters -- you do know that several thousand (perhaps million) other text writers in the very same field as you are busily tweaking their websites in exactly the same way? And every last one of the thousands of you are determined that all that dry, robotic keyword calculation is going to get your site into the Top Ten search results in Google!
First, O mathematically astute web designers, I think you need to tell me how all ten thousand of you will be in the Top Ten after all doing exactly the same thing.
I've done experiments where I've written blog posts that were excrutiatingly exact when it came to doing all the "right" things with keywords, Meta Descriptions, bolded headings with good keywords, great links with the right keyword texts, blah blah blah -- and those posts (on popular topics) got not. one. single. hit. Not one -- in months. Not one.
Then I tossed off one fun little blog post about how I loved the alphabet, with no thought whatsoever for keywords or any other SEO scheming -- and it gets hit after hit after hit after hit. It's got nothing that would make an SEO expert proud, and it's full of things that would make that expert cringe. And it gets a ton of traffic.
So to say I've been grumbling at how the site I'm currently working for is making sure their text is exquisitely SEO-correct but is dry as dust is an understatement. And further, I've been grumbling especially because these people are taking three writers who aren't SEO professionals and are making us try to produce professional SEO work -- and they're not paying us what SEO professionals make. To say I am furious is also an understatement. And because they know we all need the money and can't say no, they can get away with it.
But I almost said no yesterday. I almost walked.