The SEO Trap

So, you love writing, have always wanted to put your writing out there and decided to start a blog. You write enthusiastically and publish blog posts only to feel dejected and disillusioned. Only your mom and three loyal friends read your blog. What to you do? Google ‘How to be a successful blogger’. Sounds familiar? If you have been there, done that then you will probably identify with my story.

I have been blogging since 2004. My first blog started purely as a form of self expression, of testing if I could actually write stories that people would like. I was hooked. I met a wonderful community of like minded people spread across the globe. It has been a decade and a half. I am still friends with some of them even though we have never met. EVER! After almost Over the years, my blogging frequency went up and down depending on what was happening in my life. After a decade of blogging, I moved to a self hosted, WordPress site. I was getting back into the blogging scene keenly, influencer marketing had just hit India and I was determined to make my blog a success. 

I plunged headlong into it and read hundreds of sites talking about about keyword search, Alexa ranks, white hat techniques, graphics and all the well meaning advice out there. I deleted tonnes of personal posts and started publishing listicles. I chose a colour scheme and used the same colours to create graphics. I went back 10 years and replaced images on posts. I edited posts, adding primary and secondary keywords, backlink and submitted my links on multiple directories and indexing sites. I automated sharing the posts on social media, using all the free features buffer and co-schedule had to offer and I added plugins making it easy for readers to share my posts. I created mailing lists and newsletters, monitored hourly visitors and even page heat maps. In short, I got totally sucked into the SEO Trap. 

I saw success of course. My page views were higher than ever, my posts were being shared and I was invited on lots of campaigns. In two years, I was invited to loads of events, including a sponsored trip to Goa and made enough money that I was able to buy myself an iPhone. Now remember, this was 2014-2016. Blogging was still a hobby for most, influencer marketing had not yet exploded and Instagram was still showing photos chronologically. All the extra effort was paying off but like everything good, it came with a price. I had a full time job and a school going daughter. My hobby ate into time I could have spent with her. That was not the only thing. Blogging itself had started to seem less like fun and more like work. I would write something I liked but before publishing, I put it thru a flesch reading test, keyword stuffing and other SEO practices. The resultant post was digital marketing approved but it was not my voice. The forced addition of keywords, the use of active voices, the breaking down of thoughts into smaller sentences was like someone else had taken my writing and given it a completely different avatar. I stoped enjoying writing. It began reflecting in my posts. I struggled to complete the sponsored posts, I resented having someone wanting to approve my review before it went up, disgusted when they asked me to remove the negative points about the product. I was attacked by an author for a bad review of a poorly written book. If you look at thr trickle of posts over the last two years, you can see what I mean. 

Despite all that, I kept the blog alive. I paid the steep hosting cost, the domain cost and kept the site functional. This September, the renewal came up again and for the first time, I thought about shutting it down, albeit for a minute. I could not do it. Too much of my sweat and blood had gone into creating this blog to just pull the switch one fine day. Then, I asked my self why had I become disillusioned? Was it the fact that bloggers have mushroomed in every nook and corner of the internet and it is no longer a novelty that it used to be? No, it wasn’t that. My blog had always been for myself. It was a medium of expression. A place to freely let out thoughts. The SEO Trap with all it’s well meaning advice on how a blog should and should not be had messed me up. I was being overcautious and frivolous at the same time. I was not using this platform to share my story. And so, I decided to change that. My last two posts have no images, no pleas to share or comment and no keywords. Heck, I did not even correct the spelling error in the post title. But those two pieces are my most honest pieces of writing in years. Who am I to pretend I know everything about motherhood or managing a career while bringing up children perfectly? Who am I to say what one should or should not wear to work? Who am I to dole out tips on travelling? I struggle on a day to day basis with some of these things . I have my own moments of happiness and frustrations, in equal measures. So from now on, this blog will be used to tell my story, my observations and have conversations with you all about it. I won’t preach, I won’t share tips but only tell you what I learnt. If those resonate with you, my job is done. If you reach out to me to let me know you liked them, I will be extremely grateful. This blog is meant to be read by people and not algorithms. 

I hope I have come out of The SEO Trap.