I’m young enough to recall the early days of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Sometime around the early aughts, Google Search decided it would help Internet users find the most relevant content on the Web by targeting certain keywords in the content. I was fresh out of college and grinding away in one of those pennies-per-word content mills that seemed ubiquitous at the time. Client orders flowed in for website copy that “incorporates this keyword a minimum of 10 times” in about 300 words. The Google algorithm wasn’t yet sophisticated enough to detect keyword stuffing, so people went at it.
The websites of ambulance-chasing lawyers were among the worst offenders.
Today, the Google algorithm is much more selective, weeding out the keyword stuffers and focusing more on quality. The old habit of trying to game the system, however, remains alive — this time, in the form of blog posts.
Let’s talk about blogs.
Blogs have become an easy way to expand websites with fresh content, and they can be keyword optimized like any other page. SEO services like Yoast recommend a dozen ways to optimize blogs for search: everything from shortening sentences to including subheadings.
The problem is, this has turned modern blogging into a more convoluted form of keyword stuffing. Instead of treating blogs as a unique value-add for consumers, website owners see them as a cheap way to improve their Google search ranking. The content is largely mined from similar blogs and cleverly rephrased to avoid accusations of plagiarism.
I believe the practice is contributing to the “rotting Internet” Jonathan Zittrain recently wrote about in The Atlantic.
What’s a blog for, anyway?
Blogs were never designed nor intended to be SEO tools; they are, first and foremost, an informational value-add for consumers. Blogging began because writers and subject-matter experts discovered they had unique and interesting ideas to share with the world. The decision to blog grows from the realization that the rest of the website cannot fully express the value of the owner’s knowledge, product, or service.
As I told a client recently, when you think about your business and your audience, the blog theme and content direction should be immediately apparent. You should come away humming with ideas. If they’re not and you’re not, you probably don’t need a blog. And starting one solely to boost a site’s search rankings is sure to backfire.
Prepare to plummet.
Blogs without a clear value-add come with a revolving door of copywriters. Said writers will struggle to come up with in-depth topics to cover and quickly exhaust the content possibilities. From there, the quality of both copywriter and content deteriorate rapidly. After all, blogging is ultimately a demonstration of expertise. If there’s no expertise to demonstrate, there’s no content.
And when Google further refines its algorithm to weed out the blog stuffers — which it inevitably will — all those poorly written posts will drag a website straight down into the Google sandbox. Website owners, especially in the ecommerce sector, are much better off focusing on customer needs and improving the site content they already have.
No shortcuts.
For blogging to have a successful place in a marketing strategy, website owners have to get clear on what blogging is and how it serves their audience. “Serves their audience” is the key phrase here. Advertising, social media, and email marketing grow the business; blogging grows the customer. Using blogs to boost search rankings is a short-sighted strategy with diminishing returns. Invest wisely.