Throw ALL the SEO Writing Rules out the Window. Again.

Sometimes I think they change all the SEO writing rules just to mess with the little people. You know: the bloggers and entrepreneurs and start-up owners who are underfunded and overworked but passionate as anything.

Maybe that’s not fair to the big tech companies out there who decide all this SEO stuff. But regardless of the motivation behind the decision to throw all the SEO writing rules out the window – again – it still messes up the little people.

As such, bloggers and entrepreneurs and underfunded, overworked start-up owners… You’re going to have to get even more passionate than you were before. Because that’s pretty much the only way you’re going to get any online attention these days.

It used to be that you just needed keywords, which you could put anywhere around the site you wanted. The more the better!

Clearly, that was a great way to promote really pathetic writing practices. So the SEO gods changed it. As well they should have.

After that, bloggers and entrepreneurs, start-up owners, medium-sized companies, Fortune 500s and random 15-minutes-of-famers had to compete for attention through a series of practices:

• Keep your keywords or key phrases in the title of your article.

• Let your lead sentence or paragraph feature those same keywords or key phrases.

• Strategically use them throughout the copy – without going overboard.

• Use them again in the last sentence or paragraph.

There were some other rules and suggestions, of course, but those were the biggies when it came to actually writing the content readers would be able to see.

It gave bloggers and entrepreneurs and start-up owners a chance.

But now comes SEO 3.0 (or whatever it may be at this point), where “content is king!” That’s the line you’ll find across any search results if you look up “SEO rules for 2018” or “Best SEO Practices for 2018.”

Content is king.

The thing is though, when they’re talking about “content,” what they really mean is “time.” As in time to write a 1,500 or 2,000-word article that nobody is actually going to read anyway, just skim.

Now, for anyone who doesn’t write for a living, 1,500- or 2,000-word articles might not sound so bad. They’re just words, after all. And there are… what? Maybe 12 words in the average sentence? So that’s 125 to 166 sentences.

Piece of cake!

Except when you consider how many pages that is. In which case, we’re talking 3.75 to 5. Or more.

Who has time to write that?

The answer is nobody except for businesses big enough to hire writers who have no other job but to write. Maybe that’s certain start-ups since they often have backers and funders and all that.

But bloggers and entrepreneurs? They don’t stand a chance.

Which means that content is king, indeed. But in a completely different way than what the SEO experts mean (or say they mean).

Content is king in that it’s all you’ve got going for you. It’s you, your words, your presentation of those words, and then your ability to get those words out to everyone.

Your ability. Not SEOs. Because SEO’s given up on you.

So really and truly, throw all the SEO rules out the window. Then pray you have the passion to do what it’s going to take to get online attention anyway.