Okay, hear me out. I was going to write something else today but realised there’s something that irks me a bit too much and I really want to share it. SEO metrics. Yes, you heard me right, SEO metrics freak me out a little bit and I believe the standards they’re setting are a bit too high. If we back out a little bit, I will tell you that in recent years, I’ve grown more and more allergic to ‘performativeness’. By that I mean, I heavily dislike when we have to do something for the sake of doing something or getting some sort of result. It’s fake and unimaginative, but you know what? It’s really hard to escape these demands and even harder to have them right in front of me without overthinking.
Take SEO as an example. Yesterday, in my effort to install everything necessary for my site to function, I also got an SEO optimiser. It’s no big deal and pretty standard, but there’s something about the SEO Score it gives me that really makes me uncomfortable. It’s also located right within eyesight from where I’m writing and frankly always distracts me as I peek to see how I’m doing now. What’s my score? Answer: never good enough. Now, I can always try to write the perfect SEO piece that fits the bill for all those search engines, but the truth is, I’m not writing for search engines — I’m writing for people. But what happens when we forget about that? What if the tragically named ‘errors’ start creeping up on us?
I’m surely not the only person raised with unrealistic expectations. The idea that I would have the perfect job, the perfect marriage by age 30 and the perfect life on a yacht after working for 40 years and saving money. These are just some of the beliefs we go into the world with, only to be dead slammed with a series of disappointments and reality checks. So I need to count the words in a sentence now? That’s so uninspired. And that the thing, we are getting more and more uninspired, and corporations are f*cking loving it. Look at AI capitalising off of a call to ‘decentralise’ creativity, giving power to those who don’t have specific talents to replace those who do.
Take the company I worked at — after rolling out AI and demanding all copywriters (such as myself) start training it, almost every copywriter on my team left the company or transitioned to another role. They didn’t even have to ask us for it, we just left. And why, you might ask? Because all around the rhetoric was simple: everyone can do what you do, you’re not special, now train the tool that will allow others to do what you do. This was similar for designers, translators and other people of the sort. The meme is true — instead of using AI to free our space to do creative work, it’s doing creative work in order to free space for us to do other stuff that are a lot less exciting than this. And AI isn’t even that good at it, but it’s another story.
Here’s the thing though, AI is based off of an algorithm as are most applications and tools, much like my SEO plugin. And much like each other, they focus on what works best in a given scenario. But while people may think AI strives for perfection, it still needs heavy human supervision. SEO on the other hand has set rules and guidelines that urge us to follow and mark them as “errors”. What if it’s just… Creative expression? Ironically, I did ask ChatGPT to write me an SEO article that hits all the spots and it had a much lower score than the one that I myself wrote without even thinking of SEO. It also had the audacity to ask me to correct it when I asked for a more accurate version, but anyway…
The idea is, there’s an unrealistic standard being set that urges us to all follow the same guidelines and sound the same. More and more I’ve been reminiscing of the olden days of the internet, when YouTube had Jenna Marbles and shows like =3, when Tumblr was all the rage and when there were no such strict standards to appear on Google. Because you know what? If we’re all following the same rules and regulations, aiming to get a perfect score on our SEO metrics, we’re slowly going to turn into AI anyways. While we’re looking for ‘perfection’, the optimal search engine article, we lose personality along the way. At least that’s how I feel about it.
But you see, a lot of people have a lot at stake for not following SEO guidelines or refusing to train AI to do their job. The risk of not doing what you’re told and thus being labeled as ‘imperfect’ and not promoted, whether at your company or on Google. That’s fair, we all would rather have others do exactly what we want them to and would probably treat them better for it. It doesn’t mean it’s not unfair, but maybe it’s just human nature. At the end of the day what my headachy brain wants to say is that we shouldn’t succumb to feeling bad about our creativity for not fitting a certain box to a t. That’s bullshit. Instead, we should embrace it. As much as we’re constantly told to follow some odd rules for perfection in our deranged society, it’s often those who don’t follow the rules that are actually successful. And the big ones, the know-it-alls, the ones with the capital and all the rules eventually will turn around and find out they did no favours to society. Or maybe they would think they did?
The point is, to be creative if we want to. If we want to build the page and rank the SEO compatibility as the highest and most redeeming value of our work, so be it. If all we want is to sell and capitalise on our products, that’s awesome, run along. But if you’re here for creativity, for starting a blog and being your truest self, maybe some of these restrictions can be a bit too daunting. I know they daunted me ages ago when I thought I should only blog in terms of ‘How to’ articles and listicles that heavily resembled BuzzFeed in order to gain traction. But you know what? Now I know better. And not only that, I’m determined to do better by bending all the rules that aren’t up to my liking. Because at the end of the day, what matters is having fun and for every person who likes to read listicles, there’s ought to be one more out there who wouldn’t mind reading my articles that have way too long sentences and no heading before each paragraph.
As I keep writing and the SEO score keeps falling, I get the unique opportunity to be reminded of my values and desire to simply be myself. While the advertising and marketing industries like to treat people like illiterate purchase monkeys, I don’t. That’s why I left. So welcome to my authenticity. Think of this blog as my creative safe space where the only thing I try to sell you is an unadulterated render of my conscience — if you’re up to it, of course.
See you soon! Love,
Alex
