I Sold My Soul to SEO

How I buried my voice beneath blog strategy — and dug it back up.

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Originally published on nowrongwords.com

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In March 2025, I started a blog. I literally rented out a corner of the Internet and launched a self-hosted blog with the intention to express myself through the medium that had conquered my heart when I was only nine years old — and to make a living through it some day. I’d been thinking about it since 2020 — five long years of gaslighting myself into thinking it impossible — and spent a whole year of learning blogging theory before actually taking the leap.

By the time I published my first blog post, few things played as important a role in my blogging journey as SEO. Search engine optimization. The holy grail of every content creator — or at least, every written content creator. Every successful blogger I followed spoke of the importance of making your blog optimized for search engines. I knew how crucial it is to utilize H2 and H3 headings. I made sure the length of my paragraphs wasn’t intimidating for the reader. I reminded myself that key is part of keywords for a reason.

13 blog posts later, it hit me: I’ve lost my voice. I look at the stuff I’ve written on my blog — and I barely recognize myself in most of it. How did this happen? How could I let it happen?

I've been relying too much on advice on the “best ways to write a blog post.” I come up with a list of keywords and key phrases, then build my article around it. I push my voice so deep into the SEO mold that I don't sound like myself anymore. When I close my eyes and try to visualize a thought-provoking piece written by me, I see anything but what I’ve actually published on my blog.

I’ve lost my way.

Every time, before I hit "Publish" in WordPress, I scroll down to the YoastSEO¹ section to see how well-optimized my article is to be discovered on Google. If there's a section or a paragraph that’s too long, if I haven't used my primary key phrase in the H2 and H3 headings, if there are not enough internal and external links, I will know. YoastSEO will make sure I know. The little circle indicating the level of optimization will be orange or — heaven forbid! — red, and then I’m at a crossroads: bend my work even further for the benefit of search engines or keep it as-is and risk staying undiscovered for all eternity?

Whichever path I choose, I still don't sound like myself. Because with almost every article I’ve written, while writing it, I tried so damn hard to follow the best SEO practices that somewhere along the way I lost... me.

And for what, exactly? It'll be months, probably years, before I'll start ranking on Google — that is, if I don't succumb to despair and abandon the dream before then.

One of the earliest pieces of advice I remember hearing on an already successful blogger’s YouTube channel was this: nobody cares about you, so make sure your content benefits the reader. And this is another powerful factor that drove my writing to become devoid of any resemblance of a soul. Essentially, I strip my art of its main asset — my authenticity — and turn it into something marketable, usable, pinnable, in hopes that my potential readers will see value in it.

Who the hell do I think my target audience is, then?

And there lies yet another problem, doesn't it? I haven't pinpointed my target audience in my head. I haven't asked myself the question: what do I see my potential readers looking for when they find my article? Another shareable how-to piece that you can skim through? That's what those H2 and H3 headings are for, after all. Or an intelligent, evocative essay written in a language that reads and feels like a dance of words bound together in beautiful, vulnerable, authentic ways?

I forgot what this blog was supposed to represent. I lost track of what I'd created it for, in the first place. Not just to monetize it one day. Not just to grow the monthly visitor list. But to express myself through writing, just like I always wanted. By stripping my articles of their raw core — my raw core — I betrayed the 15-year-old me who thought she'd rather starve doing what she loved than make a living doing something she hated. I already have a job I hate — one that lets me support myself and my cat. Writing was supposed to always feel like a gift. Not a chore.

It doesn't help that I've been consuming enormous quantities of content on “how to write well” and “how to make content that sells.” I think I may have overdosed on it without even realizing it. Every other day, I come across yet another piece highlighting the importance of proper formatting.

“Our attention spans are decreasing.”

“Don’t expect people to read through your entire post.”

“Make sure your writing is easily readable and skimmable so that people can get the main information quickly.”

Are you for real?

This approach might work for an online dish recipe or perhaps a travel itinerary, but not for essays where reading what was written is the ultimate goal. Where writing is the whole fucking point. You don't open The New Yorker and expect to skim an article and “get the main information quickly.” And you don't open a novel and expect to see H2 and H3 headers that will make it easier for you to understand the plot without having to read the whole thing.

No, you open a novel and see blocks of text everywhere. And you go ahead and read them.

The value offered to us by creative writers — novelists, essayists, poets, comedians — can’t and shouldn’t be obtained through shortcuts. Their writing is the kind that's meant to be read. Not skimmed — read.

I’ve been guilty of writing like I was assembling furniture: insert header A into paragraph B, align with keyword density. But life isn’t an IKEA manual. It’s messy. And so is writing — if you’re doing it right. I didn’t start this blog to please algorithms. I started it to feel something — and to make others feel something too.

Even with the goal of making a living with writing one day, I will never achieve it by molding my voice into something obedient and conformist. That's not me, and most importantly, this strategy will never fit the type of writing I carry in me. I'll be sure to keep the SEO knowledge in mind if I ever want to start a culinary blog, for example, but until then, my writing isn't meant to be skimmed. Period.

From now on, I write for me first. If SEO wants to tag along, riding in the passenger seat, fine. But it’s not driving.

I’m done shrinking my writing to fit other people's attention spans. I can't do anything about their attention spans, but I can sure as hell keep my writing authentic, and if it's something they can't focus on long enough to reach the end of a sentence, that's their loss. Not mine. So no more hollow posts dressed up in keywords. No more writing like I’m afraid of being forgotten by Google.

I write from the heart, for the soul.

And may I never, ever forget it again.

1. A built-in plugin to help website owners optimize their content to be discovered by search engines