Let me start this one a little differently.
I messed up. Like, bad. Not the kind of SEO mistake you catch early. The kind that snowballs quietly until one day your client calls and says, “Hey… traffic’s down 47% this month. What happened?”
I didn’t have a good answer. Because I didn’t know yet. And that moment? That moment when you realize your best guess broke something? It guts you. Especially if you care. (And I do. Too much sometimes.)
I Was Trying Too Hard to Be Right
That’s what caused it. I’d been obsessed with “getting it right.” Every title tag, every internal link, every heading. I stopped writing like a person. Started writing like a spreadsheet with a personality disorder.
I thought I was being smart. Strategic. But what I really was… was afraid.
Afraid to be wrong. Afraid to lose the ranking. Afraid the client would notice I wasn’t magic.
Guess what? They noticed anyway.
The Audit That Broke Me (and Fixed Everything)
So I did what you’re supposed to do: I ran a full audit. Screaming Frog. Ahrefs. Search Console. All the usual suspects.
The crawl data looked fine. Technically, it was all “clean.” But it felt… dead. Like walking into a showroom full of furniture no one ever sits on.
That’s when I realized: the content wasn’t broken because of structure. It was broken because it was empty. No voice. No soul. No actual help for the reader—just signals for a bot.
Remember When We Used to Write?
Not to rank. Not to “capture intent.” Just to say something?
Sometimes I miss that. I miss sitting down and typing something messy, then editing it with coffee breath and a mild hangover. I miss not checking the keyword density. I miss writing sentences that were too long and started with “and.”
Because back then, people read. They emailed. They commented. They remembered.
So I Started Over
I deleted 37 blog posts. Not all at once. Slowly. One by one. The ones that looked nice but said nothing. The ones that ranked for the wrong reasons. The ones that made me feel like a ghostwriter for a machine.
I told the client: “I’m going to try something weird. It might not rank at first. But it will matter.”
They were skeptical. But tired. So they said yes.
We Wrote for 1 Person, Not 10,000
The first post was titled: “What We Wish Someone Had Told Us About This Industry”.
It was raw. It had no CTA. It linked to a competitor (on purpose). It said things like “we still don’t have this figured out.”
And people responded. Not just visits—conversations. Real comments. Emails. Even a few DMs saying “this felt honest.”
What SEO Reports Can’t Show You
- A founder reading your post at 11:48PM and deciding not to quit that night.
- A college student copying your paragraph into a journal because it made them feel brave.
- A team using your blog post to open their Monday meeting because “it just hit right.”
You won’t see those in GA4. But that doesn’t mean they don’t matter. Maybe they’re the only things that do.
Yeah, We Still Optimize
We’re not wild animals. We still use Ahrefs, SEMrush, and even Screaming Frog when we’re feeling brave. But we treat tools like spices. Not the main course.
The meat is the story. The soul. The part that sounds like it came from an actual tired, flawed, hopeful person.
Small Things That Helped Bring SEO Back to Life
- Starting blog posts with a story instead of a “hook.”
- Leaving in weird sentence fragments when they felt right.
- Using “you” even when talking to a crowd.
- Writing page titles that felt like text messages.
This Is the Stuff I Wish More SEO Agencies Said
That it’s okay to not always rank. That the algorithm isn’t your god. That sometimes “success” looks like three people reading something and crying a little.
That empathy wins more than expertise. That human writing survives more updates than you think.
We’re Still Learning
I still screw it up. I still panic when a page drops 6 spots overnight. But I’m not afraid of being wrong anymore.
Because now I know what works. And what works is writing like you mean it.
If You’re Stuck, Start Here
Forget the plugin warnings. Forget the green lights. Just write:
- Something you wish someone told you last year
- A mistake you made that still haunts you
- What you believe that most people in your industry don’t
Then publish it. Let it breathe. And see what happens.
Not Optimized. But Real.
Maybe this page won’t rank. Maybe no one will ever find it except you. But maybe that’s enough.
If it helped you breathe a little easier today? If it reminded you that SEO isn’t dead, it’s just lonely sometimes?
Then it did what I needed it to do.
You can talk to us if you want. Or just read in silence. Either way, thanks for being here.
