I stopped writing for search engines

1. 61

   canadawest99posted 13 years ago

   The techniques of SEO are not that hard to master, but for me, it really became a waste of time, so I stopped and just started writing articles for humans with catchy titles.
   
   For me, finding low competition, high volume keywords becomes harder and harder.   Even when I found a good topic, getting it into the right position was tough requiring extensive backlinking that sometimes doesn't even work.  Also, Hubpages didn't like some of my aggressive backlinking techniques either, so I had some articles deleted because of it.  Lastly, google is changing its search parameters hundreds of times a year so you never stay put in the searches anyway.

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      paradigmsearchposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      A posting after my own heart.

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      Richieb799posted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Hope they don't change there parameters too much, one of my best articles slipped a rank down this week, the result on my earnings has been devastating the last 2 days

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   Uninvited Writerposted 13 years ago

   I always think it's best to write for people first...

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3. 89

   RedElfposted 13 years ago

   It all goes back to what I was told when I first started here - content is king.
   You're right UW - if I write articles that are interesting to people, as opposed to search engine ranking which changes so often, I will have a better result (and a more interesting writing experience).

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   Pcunixposted 13 years ago

   Good for you.  I hope more people join the ranks of those of us who are interested in real readers.

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   shazwellynposted 13 years ago

   Yes, this is actually the key to success.  Backlinking is a waste of time, frankly.  I've given it up a while now.

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6. 68

   Peter Hogganposted 13 years ago

   Writing for humans; I think you will find most SEO's have been doing this and promoting it for years.

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   LindaJMposted 13 years ago

   Yes, write for people... but it is cool when people using search engines can find the articles they want to read.

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      EmpressFelicityposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      In other words: write the hub for people, but write the title for search engines.
      
      I've learned the hard way that catchy, "journalistic" titles are usually crap for attracting organic traffic.  For example, early on in my hubbing career I wrote a hub entitled "Confessions of an Eco-Sceptic", about how I came to question my former beliefs about global warming.  It excited a fair amount of interest within Hub Pages itself, but after a few months the traffic dropped to zero.  I re-engineered the title to include what I hoped was a search-engine friendly phrase, and it's only now starting to get a tiny trickle of organic traffic.

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         TopUniverseposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         I like your idea of writing for human at the same time it has some thing related to search engine.

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   sofsposted 13 years ago

   Oh what a relief... to hear this...am I not glad, I am a people person and only write for people, you just made my day!!

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   Thrillerposted 13 years ago

   Firstly, if you have NOT been writing for Humans, then you have been wasting your time and effort.
   
   Secondly, backlinking doesn't take up too much time if people know how to go about it smartly
   
   Finally, if you don't want to do SEO then there's good news as Google has modified its algo to unearth the good readable articles from keyword spammed ones

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      J Sunhawkposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      "as Google has modified its algo to unearth the good readable articles from keyword spammed ones."
      
      Do you have a link for that? Would like to read it. Thanks.

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         EmpressFelicityposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         Do a search on latent semantic indexing... that might come up with something.

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            Pcunixposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            LSI, if perfect, would devalue keyword research, not linking.

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    Bill Manningposted 13 years ago

    Google has not done much about it. Articles and websites with the most backlinks still rank the highest, regardless if the articles are crap or not.
    
    I'm making sure all my articles are hitting the right key words while at the same time making them worthwhile to read. You can do both.

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    Cordaleposted 13 years ago

    So you posted this to pretty much tell everyone your pissed your bad at SEO and you no longer wish to make money off of hubpages. Fair enough.
    
    Goodluck

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12. 0

    Revive@OwnRiskposted 13 years ago

    Writing for a search engine never occurred to me, nor does it sound interesting at all. I guess as much as I complain about humans, I'm still writing for them. (Lucky bastards...)  

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13. 86

    IzzyMposted 13 years ago

    Well excuse me if I missed something here, but I thought the whole idea was to write for humans, but in such a way that non-human search engines could pick up your article so that HUMANS could read it.
    Yeah the top of the charts - so to speak - is loaded with sites that have 1) been around for years or 2) have loads of backlinks or 3)have the exact search title. (they tend to be newer).
    But none of these things really address the content. One particular keyword phrase I aimed for (before I really knew what I was doing) has the competition having the #1 in google with an article full of spelling errors. Another keyword phrase struggles with a .edu site that gives no information, just a list of links.
    So they haven't got it right yet.
    In fact, some brilliant articles trail well behind the rest and sit 20 page searches in, just because they are new and badly formatted for SEO.

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    Cheeky Girlposted 13 years ago

    It's simple. Write good quality topical Hub articles, and write about things that are relevant. Write articles that people want to read, and write the hubs entertainingly. There are even poets on Hub Pages with very high ratings. Poetry would be pretty immune from the whole Keyword and adsense thing, yet they can be hugely popular.
    
    Involve your readers in your subject. Make them want to come back and read more. Writing quality and wanting high ratings (and earnings) is a balance, but there are hubbers who succeed at this.

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    thisisoliposted 13 years ago

    Write for people, but keep your keywords in mind.

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