Stop using 'SEO content' that reads like a robot wrote it

I keep seeing freelancers stuff keywords into paragraphs until they make zero sense. Google's latest update penalizes that hard, I lost 30% traffic on one site before rewriting everything naturally.

3 comments

3 Comments

joseph_green1317d agoTop Commenter

@sandragrant I get where youre coming from but I see it a bit different. I had a site that lost traffic too but it wasnt just the keywords causing the problem. It was writing stuff that had no real value or purpose for the reader. SEO content doesnt have to be robotic if you start with something useful to say and then add keywords naturally after. Losing traffic might mean your content was thin to begin with not just that your keywords were stuffed. Google wants helpful stuff that solves a problem or answers a question not just words on a page. I rewrote my posts to focus on what people actually needed and my traffic came back higher than before.

sandragrant17d ago

ugh same here, i had to gut half my old posts and rewrite them so they actually sound like a person talking. once i stopped forcing keywords in, my traffic actually came back.

perry.jesse17d ago

Wait, isnt the WHOLE POINT of SEO to get found by people searching for specific terms though? If I write a post about "best running shoes for flat feet" and I never actually USE those words, how the heck is Google supposed to match me to someone typing that exact phrase in? I tried the whole "write naturally" thing last year on my hiking blog and my traffic tanked for three months straight. I had this one post with zero keyword mentions but great storytelling, and it got absolutely NOTHING from search. Had to go back, plug in the exact phrases people search for, and boom back to normal. So yeah, I think the problem isnt keywords themselves, its using the WRONG ones or jamming too many into one spot.