Is SEO Killing My Creativity?

SEO training

A few years ago, I signed up for an internship with a company that focused heavily on SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. There, I learned how to do the following:

• Find and insert specific keywords into my work
• Come up with titles that will rank high in a Google search
• Separate sections with subheadings
• Write paragraphs no more than four sentences long.
• Find, label, and properly credit public domain stock photos.

SEO is crucial nowadays because it’s how readers will find your work. If you’re writing about a particular topic, you want your article to show up on the first page of a Google search on that topic. This takes some strategic steps, but it also takes a toll on your writing style – specifically your creativity.

Playing the SEO game

Writing has always required a business sense. You have to play the game in order to get ahead, whether it’s publishing a book, reporting the news, or reviewing a product. Every form of writing comes with its own rules not only for writing but making sure that the piece is seen by as many people as possible. 

This is why self-published authors are always begging for reviews. The more reviews, the better the chance that readers will buy the books.

Bloggers create popup forms and social media buttons on their blog pages. If readers sign up for newsletters or follow on social media, they will be prompted to return to the site whenever an email is sent or a new update is posted.

Marketing is exhausting for a writer who wants nothing more than to produce new content without being a salesperson. But selling yourself is an inevitable part of the process no matter what your success level.

Playing the marketing game often means altering your work to make it catch readers’ attention. It could mean a bait-and-switch title, writing about a mainstream topic just to get your name out there, and in the case of blogging, focusing on keywords rather than writing in your distinct voice in your posts.

How SEO changes your writing

In conforming to SEO rules, my work sounds less like me. Before I publish a new blog post, I check my title in the Headline Analyzer to make sure it’s scoring at least 20% or higher. Sometimes this involves choosing a less creative title for my piece, just to score higher on this site.

Then, I check Yoast to see what suggestions they are making for improvement. Yoast may no longer be the most popular SEO tool these days, but they still provide the groundwork for improving SEO. Their suggestions are routinely the same:

• Choose a better focus keyword.
• Make sure keyword appear in the first paragraph.
• Add internal links.
• Break up sections over 300 words with subheadings.
• Shorten long sentences.
• Add transition words.
• Shorten a longer article description.

These suggestions are all meant to improve the search rankings of my article, but they also don’t always make sense for the piece. WordPress is frequently giving my keyword choices a medium grade. Their grading system is an emoji system. You get a red frown for a bad selection, an orange blank stare for an okay selection, and a green smiley face when you’ve done a good job.

I always shoot for that green smiley face, but sometimes it just doesn’t want to give it to me, even if the keyword that I chose is the actual topic of the piece and is included in the title, the meta description, and the first paragraph.

Some days, I can’t get out of the orange. So, when I can’t get into the green, I choose the orange-graded keyword that I think works best for the piece. But there’s always this nagging doubt that there’s a keyword I haven’t tried that will get me in the green.

Blog post intros

Another aspect of my writing that the SEO optimizer tends to sabotage is my introductions. I usually like to grab readers with an anecdote or a thought that sets up the topic without talking about it specifically.

SEO generators don’t like this. They want short, sweet, and technical intros. That’s because Google scans your first paragraph to determine what your piece is about. They actually scan the entire piece, but that first paragraph counts more than the others in determining the relevance of your piece.

But if I’m telling a story in my introduction, I can’t always work in that keyword right away. SEO practices keep me from getting creative with my intros. Sure, it forces me to be creative in working in these keywords, but it can make the piece fall flat in terms of tone and energy. This is especially true of personal essays when you’re trying to be more conversational and less formal.

As a result, readers too will start to skim if a writer takes too long to get started on a piece. Even I have been trained to lose focus, even when a longer intro is more compelling than a straightforward “this is what this piece is about.”

Internal links

I’m a major offender when it comes to adding internal links. I blog about a multitude of topics. So, it’s not often that I can link two of my articles to each other. As a result, I’m always getting dinged in Yoast for not adding internal links. I can still typically get a green smiley face in my readability analysis by altering other rules. It’s like always scoring in the 90^th percentile but never reaching 100%.

Subheadings

Subheadings are another problem for me. I’m a long-winded writer, and I like to get as detailed as possible in my analysis or break down of a subtopic. So, certain sections can get long.

Yoast doesn’t like a section to be over 300 words long. Sometimes it’s helpful in that it makes me pay more attention to a section and cut the fat. But to break up a section just because it runs a little over 300 words doesn’t always serve the piece.

Shorter sentences

As for shorter sentences? That’s a helpful one because I do tend to run on. The only thing I don’t like about this suggestion is that Yoast calculates the percentage of sentences that are 20 words or longer, and it gives you a target to hit. So, instead of worrying about which sentences will benefit the most from being shortened, I’m worried about hitting that percentage.

They also don’t like you to start more than two sentences with the same word. This can be helpful in that it forces you to get a little more creative with your vocabulary and sentence structure. Sometimes, though, you want to be repetitive for dramatic or rhythmic effect. 

Transitional words

Transitional words are another head scratcher. They want you to pump up the energy of the piece and keep readers wanting to read on, almost in a cliffhanger technique. However, transitional words can feel forced and throw off the reader tonally.

You can’t keep using the same transitional words like “also” or start every paragraph of a how-to piece with “Next, you…” Not every transitional word or phrase is going to work for every topic. Some may feel too formal, and others may feel too loose.

There are nice charts out there with suggestions for dozens of transitional words and phrases, but again, Yoast has a percentage of sentences that they want to include transitional words. So, when you’re forced to hit that mark, it can make you insert unnecessary and even inappropriate words into your piece just for the sake of hitting that percentage. 

Meta descriptions

Part of having a high-ranking article on Google is writing a one or two sentence meta description that will show up below your link in the search results. Yoast lets you know when a description runs longer than this preview allows. It will also tell you if your description is too short. Finding the right amount of words to summarize my article drives me crazy.

Again, there is a Goldilocks red, orange, and green alert system that tells you when a description is too long, too short, or just right. You also have to work in your keywords and try to come up with an all-encompassing overview of what you are going to be talking about in a very specific amount of words. It’s such a tricky balance that it takes time to perfect.

These gripes aren’t about slamming SEO as much as talking about the challenges that come with the process. I understand why SEO is necessary. It’s what gives you the highest quality and most relevant links in your searches. 

But as with anything, it’s a system that writers have found ways to beat or to ride the loop holes in order to gain exposure for their work. While there’s nothing wrong with that, creativity sometimes takes a hit in favor of more views.

As with anything, balance is crucial to writing strong pieces and getting exposure. I’m not afraid of the challenge, but I’m constantly torn between making a piece SEO friendly and making it the best writing it can be. SEO tips and optimizers, like Yoast, while it can help you get more views, it doesn’t necessarily help you improve the quality of your writing.

When you click on the top-ranked articles in your searches, you see the same information and the same methods for ensuring that these articles are the first that you click on. They tend to be the most informational, dry, and keyword-loaded pieces that you will find on the topic. It may even seem like the article was compiled by a machine rather than a human, highlighting keywords that match what you typed into your search, full of short paragraphs, simple, eye-catching charts and photos, and generic information.

They also forget to take into account the fact that the competition is fierce, especially among blogging and news websites. So, even if you do everything right, it doesn’t guarantee you a top spot in a Google search on your specific topic. That still widely depends on your reputation, following, platform, and sheer luck.

Part hard work, part talent, part luck

Most writers will tell you that there is no rhyme or reason to why their most viewed piece is their most popular. No one knows why some pieces do so much better than others. We create formulas around these success stories, but they still don’t always give us the results we need.

Sometimes you just strike oil with the right audience who passes the work around to other interested readers. Other times, you will put your heart and soul into a piece that nobody reads.

So, while I continue to plug away at the technicalities, I don’t want the quality of work to suffer. I want a portfolio of articles that I can be proud of, that entertain, and that stick with a reader.

Let’s not forget, sharing is a large part of how articles are seen. If you write a good piece, a reader is bound to pass it on to a friend. Then, that reader passes it onto a friend and so on. The better your content, the better chance you have of people genuinely appreciating and sharing that piece.

Whatever boost my learned SEO tools can give me, I’ll take. But balancing quality with search-friendly techniques is still my main goal. 

How do you balance SEO and creativity? Leave your answers in the comments!

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