Copycat Content: SEO Tools Got Us Here, Humans Will Get Us Out.

That’s another reason why I won’t get in the SEO game.

I can, technically, backport all the links, but the blog is driven by finding the insights, ideas and nuggets from what I encounter. There is no “set formula” to achieve it. Further, I use this blog to exercise my writing, to make relevant content and drive forth more meaning.

That’s why, they say, the best blogs are driven organically.

There had been a discussion about Ghost versus WordPress at some point in time, and I had interacted with someone on Twitter too. Writing, for the sake of search engine optimisation, kills the creativity process. Ghost, as a blogging platform, is excellent, but they have a perverted financial model. Giving away the product for free while trying to make it up by “hosting costs” will make it difficult to sustain. WordPress has cracked the formula, instead.

When we adopt their recommendations wholesale, we end-up creating copycat content: (emphasis mine)

We include the same keywords, headers and examples “because the existing search results include them”—even when they don’t make sense.

We fixate on an SEO score straw-man, instead of vetting content for the qualities that really matter, like originality, clarity and interest.

We consolidate other people’s ideas, instead of bringing our own to the table.

SEO tools are extremely useful, but only when used in conjunction with the creativity and critical faculties of a real human being. They’re best used for evaluating the currently-ranking content, and finding ways to create new, novel angles on the same topic—matching unserved “gaps” in search intent, and answering questions that the current articles don’t address.