It's Not Your Imagination. The Internet (Somehow!) Continues to Get Worse

A brief explainer of SEO content from someone who has been writing it through every stage of its development and decline

For as long as I’ve been freelancing, much of my work has been writing for brands and outlets looking to drive traffic through varying forms of content marketing and roundups. While the format has changed over the years based on SEO, algorithms, and consumer patterns, this type of writing still makes up most of my assignments. I appreciate the ability to pay my bills with full-time freelance work, but I think it’s time to have a chat. Because in case you haven’t noticed, your search results have probably recently become a lot stupider.

I searched “old house slippers” for my sister after she asked me ‘if I was a shoe, what would I be,’ And it was ALLLLL shopping results.

First, here’s a quick rundown of how SEO content has changed over the years. This isn’t science, but it is my first-person experience.

When I first started writing in 2012, clickbait was the name of the game. 10 Ways to Lose Weight… Number Five Will Blow Your Mind! Sites during this era relied on ad revenue—the more traffic the post got from people desperate to know the secret of Number Five, the more impressions the ads received and the more income was generated. I wrote my own array of clickbait during this time, most notably for the now-defunct site XOJane in an essay they titled “My Summer As the Most Despised Wrangler in Yellowstone.” It was an entirely clickbait hed, but it grabbed readers’s attention and allowed me to be cyberbullied for XOJane’s generous rate of $50.

Working the Yellowstone job where I wasn’t actually despised. XOJane did me dirty

Once readers became savvy to clickbait’s ploy, strategy shifted to embedded content marketing, which was exactly what it sounded like: brand marketing in the form of editorial content. These articles were pretty basic, but now brands and content marketing agencies were hiring me to write informational, easily digestible posts targeted at their core consumers. In the outdoor industry, this meant instructional roundups, Top 10 lists, and branded advice pieces. I wrote How To Build a Car Camping Kit for Osprey, Gregory hired to me write Best Day Hikes in National Parks, and I published pieces for KOA with campgrounds roundups and advice for visiting the surrounding regions. These posts drew people to the brand’s website while building consumer trust. It was actually pretty fun! The content was fairly basic, but I had a demonstrated knowledge of my subjects and it made up the bulk of my work for a few years.

Around 2017, third-party affiliates started taking the place of banner ad revenue, and content strategy shifted in a huge way. I already wrote about affiliate marketing’s destruction of honest gear reviews, so we don’t have to go into it again. But with this shift, websites switched focus from location guides and advice articles to product roundups with links the website received a portion of revenue from. On high-traffic posts, this proved incredibly lucrative.

One of my articles for Gregory, written under the brand name.

Once this became visibly valuable, every company and outlet wanted to land at the top of search results for every item possible. This meant that generic outlets were targeting niche topics, often with writers and editors who didn’t know what they were talking about, with formats tweaked and twisted to fit whatever Google demanded.

And those Google demands change frequently! I can’t tell you who’s making these decisions or what actually drives the algorithm, but maybe you remember the age of keyword cramming. The more keywords you plugged into your copy, the higher your roundup would land. My friend was writing copy for a local climbing gym at the time, and I remember him asking me in despair to read his landing page copy: “Is there any other place you see where I can put the words Yoga Class?”

During this time, your search for “why is my spider plant turning brown” might have looked something like this:

“Ever wonder why your spider plant is turning brown? We’ll tell you below why your spider plant is turning brown, so keep reading to find out why your spider plant is turning brown below and help fix your spider plant turning brown with our tips below.”

IT SUCKED. But then the algorithm changed and started punishing this strategy in an attempt to garner more accurate results. Roundups and e-commerce became less about keyword cramming and more about short product descriptions with a lot of products. Our “best of” roundups suddenly required 15, 20, sometimes 30 items, but they only wanted a few sentences for each. And because the outlets wanted hits in every category, our assignments shifted from within a our area of expertise to whatever product, category, or keyword the publication deemed important.

Actual footage of my writing process

Eventually there were so many random outlets writing about niche topics and pushing out the experts (like Rolling Stone’s pressure cooker roundup ranking higher than Bon Appetit’s) that Fall of 2023 saw a huge shift in how Google treats different types of copy.

This most recent algorithm change effectively punished those basic roundups to help better information reach the top of search results, but it’s been a mess. It’s making your searches worse, and the new SEO requirements mean roundups are frustratingly tediously to read and write, without having much better information.

My inclusion requirements for some buyer’s guides now include intros, summaries, personal bios, expert bios, how to shop, what to consider, FAQs, multiple pros and cons, product descriptions, and a half-dozen specs. Product descriptions also need to be twice as long because Google is indexing sites to see which roundups are more in-depth, and each piece winds up around 4,000 words long.

Because keyword cramming is punished but keyword appearances are not, we’re supposed to rephrase the same information multiple times, albeit slightly differently each time throughout the piece. I tell people it’s like a scream-inducing recipe blog from 2013, with 15 subheaders before until you get to the recipe. What kind of cheese is best in grilled cheese? How do I know when my grilled cheese is done? What is the best temperature to cook grilled cheese at? What can I add to my grilled cheese? The publications (and recipe blogs) want their FAQS to hit the valuable Google Q+A real estate, but the reader just wants the recipe (or the list of items). For the love of god.

This are where publications want their FAQs to land

Along with those content requirements, Google is now “rewarding” expert quotes and lowering the status of single-source or entirely first-person pieces. That means that for everything from socks to sex toy roundups, we need external quotes and interviews. Which is arguably better because it provides external input and can help guide metrics, but it can add several days and multiple back-and-forth to the process for the sake of a few quotes. Plus PR agencies, experts, and brands are going to get pretty sick of us dropping into their inbox asking if they have anyone who can comment on bike tires. Or side tables. Or miniature blenders. Or hypoallergenic earrings.

We are no longer writing to the consumer—the target is SEO, not a good article. No one wants to read through 4,000 words of How to Choose a Throw Pillow, What Dimensions are the Best for Choosing a Throw Pillow, How I Know I Have the Right Throw Pillow, What Kind of Materials are Common in Throw Pillows? What is the Right Throw Pillow for Me? Just show me some good throw pillows, but actually don’t because it’s just going to be whatever is available on Amazon. Just drive yourself to the store and ask someone for their recommendations, scroll Reddit, or ask a friend what throw pillow they like.

Another standard writing position for me. Yes I have back issues and neck issues <3

This is not just limited to the outdoor industry. My friend in the sex / fitness category has been running into similar issues, including demands for high-ROI product inclusions, a buyer’s guide that had so many SEO target requirements it ended up being 7,000 words long, and requiring “experts” who meet certain metrics that Google will respond positively to.

“Editors keep asking for AASECT Certified Sexuality Educators,” she told me, “which is an expensive certification primarily held by CIS, white educators.” She utilized the required sources, but also sought additional, more relevant experts who didn’t have the AASECT certification. Not only did she receive pushback from her editors, but they removed the sources and input from the final article.

Contractors don’t have much (or any) say in what we are assigned. Our work isn’t guaranteed, and if we’re difficult to work with, they’ll go with someone who doesn’t question irrelevant FAQs and ask to use non-affiliate items because they’re better products. So it’s a delicate balance, and I’m trying to toe the tone. I do good work, I file clean copy on time, and I don’t question the inclusions anymore. I am grateful for the work I have and I’ve made amazing friends in the community, but I’m still going to do my best to be honest and open about what is driving traffic and why things have changed recently.

I felt like a sad island in my internet writing despair, then three separate people sent me writer Nicole Qualtieri’s recent post

The downward spiral of SEO and affiliate grabs is a tough pill to swallow, and I have to believe that it can’t go on like this forever. More people will start using community-sourced information like Reddit, Facebook groups, and in-person sourcing when they realize so much information is just playing to search results and not actually helpful. And somewhere out there, people do want quality writing and honest recommendations. Plus, there are glimmers of hope! Outdoor writer Nicole’s Qualtieri started her own editorial Substack, writer Ryan Wilchens started the print magazine Trails, Defector is as real as it gets, and literary outlets like Longreads and High Country News features continue to do really well with readership and paying writers fairly. People want personality, they want real writing. I believe it will come back.

I have pitched countless Behind the Scenes articles like this to different publications, believing we owe the reader a peek behind the curtain of SEO content and tips for how they can navigate it. I have been continually rejected (duh), because if we’re honest to the consumer, the consumer might stop clicking.

I will keep writing about this here (it is clearly unpublishable). I know I didn’t get into tips about how to navigate it, but I totally can, just drop me a message or specific question. I’m easy to get ahold of. Just use your search engine.