Is Writing For Search Engines Killing The Web?
August 20th, 2008
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Photo by Danard Vincente
Somewhere out there in a parallel universe, Herman Melville was born in 1976. In 2008, he completed his novel Moby-Dick, and took it to someone who he hoped would publish it online.
“Hi, I’m Herman.”
“Hello, Herman. I’m Stan.”
“Well Stan, I’ve got a novel here that I’m really proud of. I wanted to see what you think of it.”
“Alright Herman, let’s see what you’ve got.”
Stan grabbed the manuscript and started reading: “Call me Ishmael. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.”
“No, no, no. This won’t do at all.”
Melville’s heart sank. “What do you mean? This is my masterpiece! It’s a deeply symbolic exploration of obsession, religion, idealism versus pragmatism, revenge, racism, hierarchical relationships, and politics!”
“Yeah, that’s all well and good, but where the hell are your keywords?”
“Keywords?”
Stan let out a dejected sigh. “You’re one of those people, aren’t you? Let me see if I can explain this in words you understand,” he said with restrained sarcasm. “There’s this search engine called Google. You have to make Google happy or it won’t send you traffic. Without traffic, no one will ever find you, so it’s all that matters.”
“Yes, but…”
“I know what I’m doing here, Herman. Let me take a crack at the first few sentences and show you how it’s done.”
A few minutes later, Melville was reading the revised version: “Whales whaler make money whaling Alaska sperm whale blue whale humpback whale killer whale right whale beluga narwhal dolphin porpoise fish shark lobster crab blubber blowhole baleen plankton krill…”
“What have you done?”
“Do you like it? It’s optimized for every species of whale and all related sea creatures. And the keyword density is fantastic.”
“But it’s all wrong! You’ve drained its soul with your cheap hacks!”
“Oh, stop being so dramatic! Welcome to reality. You’ve got to include relevant keywords if you want to be found. No one is going to try to find you by searching on ‘Call me Ishmael.’”
“But some of these keywords aren’t even relevant. What’s with this ‘make money whaling Alaska’ bit? My book has nothing to do with making money or Alaska.”
“Well, it needs to. My keyword research revealed that ‘make money whaling Alaska’ gets plenty of searches and has surprisingly little competition. You’ll need to rewrite your entire book around that keyword so you get the #1 spot on Google.”
“But if we did what you say it takes to be found, no one would want to read it.”
“That’s OK, because you can make money from these AdSense ads. Take a look.”
Melville looked at the monitor and his jaw dropped.
Looking For Whales?
We have whales.
New and used.
Ebay.com
The Great Whaling Ebook
Make $250,000+ profit per whale.
Guaranteed. Fully automated.
TheGreatWhalingEbook.com
He left in disgust, and the Great American Novel never saw the light of day. Sad, isn’t it?
This might be a bit extreme, but writing for search engines often conflicts with writing for people.
Far too often, I see people coming up with a high-paying keyword first, and then deciding to create a site around it without considering much else. You can look up the keywords with the highest cost per click and decide that you want to start a site about “m__________ attorneys san diego” (I won’t spell out the m-word). But if you don’t care about m__________ or attorneys and you don’t live in San Diego, do you really think chasing that keyword is a good idea?
What if the best paying keyword has the most competition? What if the cost per click for your main keyword plunges after you put a lot of work into it? What if you’re not motivated to keep writing about it for the long haul? How many useless posts and Ezine spam articles will you clutter the web with? Won’t someone please think of the children?
It reminds me of that old salsa commercial where all the directors are sitting in a boardroom. The chairman asks, “Gentlemen, should we manufacture salsa [everyone on the left raises their hand]…or oven mitts? [everyone on the right raises their hand]”
“SEO is something I know I can do better, and I’m sure one day I will, but when I tried to write for keywords in my first few posts, I didn’t like the result. It felt about as natural as astroturf. So, now I just write. When I’m all finished, then I look to see if there are some keywords I can recognize. Weak, I know, but until the writing is as fluid as water, I don’t want to worry about SEO.”
August 20th, 2008 at 1:08 am
That’s trying way too hard to get google’s attention. I cannot write articles with intention of using n number of keywords. It kills flow and grace of the original article. Loved Writer Dad’s quote that you have picked up. Fully agree and relate with it.
Avani-Mehtas last blog post..Decoding Anger – Anger Management Series Part I
August 20th, 2008 at 1:33 am
Hi Hunter,
It’s sad when someone builds a whole site around one or two keywords. Let’s face it, how many posts can a person write using the “m” word or any other “high paying” keywords.
On one had I would like to use more keywords to attract new bloggers, but on the other hand, I like my words to flow, to express who I am. The other hand is winning the battle, so I’ll settle for slower growth, referral traffic and peace of mind that I wrote for my audience.
Reading the keyword dense rewrite reminded me of your “blog post rehasher”. Did you use it on that?
August 20th, 2008 at 3:45 am
Excellent post, Hunter.
I loved the story. It makes the reality of keyword stuffing very easy to understand.
Personally, I never keyword stuff or write for search engines. Like Writer Dad, I write what I want to write, and if at the end it plays well for search engines then so be it.
I’ll occasionally swap things around in my code for search engine purposes, but never the actual content. First and foremost I’m a writer, not a search engine marketer.
However, so far, my approach seems to have worked. 60% of all my traffic comes from search engines and I have many page 1/2 rankings for high quality key phrases such as “motivational songs”
Thanks for the excellent post.
Jamie
Jamie Harrops last blog post..Blogger Interview Series – Liz Strauss
August 20th, 2008 at 6:09 am
Hunter – I agree with you that our niche is not the best for the Google search. It’s an overkill to write articles with SEO in mind. It’s similar to writing articles to please search engine rather than the very readers that we are trying to attract.
Shilpan
Shilpan | successsoul.coms last blog post..Mark Twain’s Thoughts on 3 Topics You’d Rather Not Discuss
August 20th, 2008 at 6:22 am
I never blog with SEO in mind and I find it really hard to write that way even for clients. I have a new copy writing job now that requires SEO and I always get nervous with taking this kind of work because it really goes against my grain as a writer. Writing should be about the message – whether it’s a personal one or a marketing one – and SEO is a barrier to that message.
But if you write for the web professionally, then what can you do? It goes with the territory.
Kelly
August 20th, 2008 at 8:10 am
Great point about SEO – I know some people successfully built businesses around it, but it just doesn’t work for everyone.
August 20th, 2008 at 8:37 am
My advice? Write so that people will link to you rather than for search engines. I’ve found that the traffic I get from backlinks is waaaaay stickier than traffic I get for keywords that I want …
My 2 cents –
Dave
August 20th, 2008 at 8:40 am
I don’t care for the ‘drive by’ readers anyway. I like developing a consistent readership.
August 20th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Wow, Hunter. I was really enjoying the post all on its own, but then you finished it off SO perfectly. Thanks, I’ve never seen myself quoted before. It is the truth, though. I can’t write for keywords. I write, and then see what keywords I can recognize. I don’t want to contribute to the murder of the web.
August 20th, 2008 at 10:29 am
We write for two audiences: the reader, and the spider. But the minute we think the spider is more important than the reader, we are left with bugs that like us, and people who don’t care.
Harmonys last blog post..Silver Medal – Golden Effort
August 20th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Hi Hunter – keyword stuffing sucks. I’ve done it before and the results were terrible.
As Barbara said – it’s even worse when someone builds a whole site around a couple of keywords. People go to webpages – there’s no such thing as a homepage anymore.
Blogs are far user friendly than static websites. To optimise a blog post, you only really need the keyphrase in your title and once in the first and last paragraph.
By the way – did you realise, 10,500 webpages have the keyphrase – “Call me Ishmael” in the title. And there’s 907,000 webpages that contain that phrase. That’s a lot of competition for the opening line of one book.
Cath Lawsons last blog post..Relationships: Are You Kissing Goodbye To Success?
August 20th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Great post, Hunter. Yeah, this is a pet peeve of mine. I know I get more hits with titles with key words but it sounds so damn sterile.
I suppose if none of us did this Google would have to change.
Kind of like what if no one voted in the upcoming election? Haa!
I like Writer Dad’s quote. E
Ellen Wilsons last blog post..The Forward Momentum of Bloggery
August 20th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
This reminds me of a story I once read of what would have happened to Shakespeare if he were a woman. What would have happened to a great writer like Melville if he were writing today, during the time of google? Believe me there’s a similarity in there somewhere
Great post Hunter, enjoyed it!
Marelisas last blog post..Lessons to Teach Your Children (Part 1)
August 20th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
SEO is nice. But ultimately, I’m guiding by one principle when it comes to social media marketing for business: “Solve. Don’t sell!”
If you solve people’s problems, it’s easier to build community and have people share in your brand experience. I don’t want to be sold to nor do I care why you’re the best. I want to know how you’re going to deliver a positive brand experience to me…I care about how you’re going to solve my problems.
Ricardo Buenos last blog post..Solve. Don’t Sell! Be Personable. And Respect Others.
August 20th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Hunter – What a marvelous “show don’t tell” post. Maybe I am blissfully naive, but I ‘d rather believe that writing that flows beautifully like water will always find it’s level and be there to refresh us all.
Janice Cartiers last blog post..Searching For Subtle Color
August 20th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Great story to get the point across. I like the quote from Writer Dad too. I find that it is possible to go for the long tail keywords if one writes naturally and then do a little modification. Honestly, SEO and landing on the first page of google is not as hard as most of us make it out to be. With social bookmarking, it is actually easier. Having keywords in the article or post title can also be helpful!
Evelyn Lims last blog post..10 Insights Into The Power Of Thoughts
August 20th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
I agree. This is very timely for me. I was just writing a post about SEO – inspired by the discussion on Cath Lawson’s blog and by what you said there. Writing for search engines does conflict with writing for people, and needs to be done – if at all – very carefully.
I think I am going to publish my own thoughts on the subject on Friday.
Vereds last blog post..Thank You For Smoking
August 21st, 2008 at 1:48 pm
This is a very extreme example (I’ve been doing SEO for 3 years) but I definitely agree with and understand your points.
BTW, you have an excellent writing style, I kind of knew what the post was going to be about but I still read every single word
August 21st, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Wow, lots of comments! I agree that this is an extreme example, but I think extreme examples are often best for getting the point across. I think it’s sad that well-optimized sites based on a high-paying keyword can do well, and I hope that search engines will learn to ignore spam sites that are based purely on SEO instead of useful content.
@ Barbara, I didn’t use the rehasher, but now you’ve given me an idea: an SEO rehasher!
@ Writer Dad, now you’ve said something else that’s very quotable: “I don’t want to contribute to the murder of the web.” And yes, it is murder!
@ Dave, I agree that traffic from links is much better than traffic from search engines, because a referral is much better than a random visitor.
@ Marelisa, yes, there is a similarity in there. I once read something about what would have happened if Michelangelo had been identical twins!
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:25 am
I agree. There are times when I’m reading a blog and it’s so obvious that the person is more interested in earning a living (not a crime) than writing for people. But the blogs I stick with are those with content that interests me. Otherwise, it feels like the times when you do a search for something like “quilting” and end up at a porn site.
August 23rd, 2008 at 12:08 am
@ Dot, when I come across a new blog, I usually decide in the first few seconds whether I want to ever come back to it again. If it’s clearly not written for people, I’m outta there! After all, there are plenty of blogs out there that are written for our species.
September 2nd, 2008 at 1:47 pm
[...] Hunter Nuttall and Andre Kibbe of Tools For Thought just convinced me, in their very articulate comments below, to take the reader counter off my site. Since I don’t see any evidence whatsoever that the counter has any positive effect on subscription rates, it just seems like bad marketing to highlight a weakness right on my homepage, when other areas are so strong. [...]
September 15th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
“…where the hell are your keywords?” That cracked me up.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:42 am
@ Dot, hey, you came back and recommented three weeks later! Welcome back to this post!
October 8th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
[...] This post was inspired by a recent discussion on Cath Lawson’s blog. Monika Mundell of The Writer’s Manifesto Blog observed that linking needs to be done correctly, in order to maximize search engine results. The discussion heated up a little, which is a good thing in my opinion, and then Hunter Nuttall observed that writing for search engines often conflicts with writing for people. This got me thinking about my own approach to writing this blog. Hunter further elaborated on the topic in his excellent post Is Writing For Search Engines Killing The Web? [...]
October 17th, 2008 at 9:04 am
[...] highly on Google), you’re articles can start to sound awkward and uninspired as you start to shape articles entirely around keywords. If you’re obsessed with the social media, you may stop writing articles that are unlikely to [...]