The day I stopped writing for Google and started writing for humans

I spent 6 months stuffing keywords into every paragraph because my old boss swore it was the only way to rank. Then I saw a blog post from a competitor that had zero SEO tricks but got 10x the engagement because it actually answered people's questions. Do you lean more toward optimizing for search engines or writing naturally for your audience first?

3 comments

3 Comments

amy_murphy859d ago

The real trick isn't picking one over the other, it's that Google's algorithms are getting better at spotting when people actually read your stuff. If you write clear answers to real questions and keep paragraphs short, the SEO stuff like header tags and meta descriptions will naturally fall into place. Last year I tested this by writing a guide with zero keyword research but just common sense headings from customer support tickets, and it outranked my optimized posts within two months. Your boss was right that search engines matter, but he was wrong about the old brute force method still working in 2024.

skyler439d ago

Yup I heard that Google's new algo update basically rewards conversational writing now over keyword stuffing.

anna_fox74d ago

Wait, no keyword research at all and it beat your optimized posts? That kind of freaks me out honestly. @amy_murphy85 I've been doing the same thing with pulling questions from our customer chat logs and it's wild how much better they do than the stuff I used spend hours on with keyword tools. It took me about a week to scrap my old content plan and rewrite everything around actual questions people asked me in emails.