The Future of SEO is Making Me More Creative and Happier
I’m a blogger. And I’m tired.
I’m exhausted from meticulously optimizing every post just to rank for a single platform, just to have that single platform take away all that effort in continuous updates.
Ranking in Google as a small publisher or personal blogger these days is hard…and a bit annoying — not impossible, but we’re definitely going through some growing pains.
We all have the playbook of new recommendations (for Google), but still feel the rug getting pulled out from under us, even though all the SEO boxes are being checked off.
So what gives? Is it because I don’t have a big trustworthy brand like Forbes? As always, the answer isn’t singular and it’s nuanced.
While these disruptions are annoying, I find myself becoming more creative and happier at the same time.
The future of SEO is focused on addition, not subtraction. That is, keep the good traditional advice, but add more creativity, personality and alternative platform optimization into the mix.
I love this.
So let’s dig into this chaos that is modern SEO, blogging and content creation. This is my take on things as a personal blogger working in content marketing for the past 5 years.
Lame SEO Advice: “just build your brand”
I fully support building your personal brand. But I sort of hate this advice for boosting your SEO performance.
“Just establish your brand authority and rank for brand keywords!”
Do people forget how difficult that is and how long that takes? Like ah yes, of course, I’ll just become a household name or become viral enough for people to start searching up my name and brand specifically.
Eventually, that’s a goal — sure — but this advice largely feels unhelpful and overwhelming if you’re a small creator.
Besides, establishing your brand is more of a side effect from just showing up and putting out good content.
So where do we start with this future SEO conundrum? Let’s start with old vs new SEO.
Old SEO Still Works
SEO isn’t changing as much as the platforms and the way people search online is. And a lot of the traditional SEO advice still optimizes you for a lot of those changes.
AI overviews, ChatGPT search and more will reward content that’s optimized for them to find you. Search Engine Land wrote an interesting post about this.
So don’t abandon all SEO best practices. Instead, start getting more creative and personal with your content.
Explore more:
➤ SEO 101 for Blogging
New SEO = Growing Pains
Blogging has changed. But we’ve been here before. There have been plenty of algorithm updates, industry changes and new content formats before.
And each time, alarms were sounded that blogging is dead or that SEO doesn’t work anymore.
So part of the future of SEO is simply being aware of this pattern and accepting that we’re just going through more growing pains.
Evolution doesn’t always look pretty.
Just take a look at the Google results right now, they pretty much suck these days and AI offers zero novelty or authenticity. And when most content is being made with the hopes of going viral or selling something rather than being honest or creative, that’s a problem.
So, perhaps a change (growing pains) is needed. Perhaps, things need to break down before they’re rebuilt into something else…something better.
I think — I hope — that’s what’s happening here. These growing pains are disrupting the status quo. But we may come back stronger yet to walk through the new doors that are swinging opening.
I find myself caring less about only SEO these days. Instead, I’m shifting more focus to the content itself, new opportunities and creativity.
Explore more:
➤ The future of blogging
The Future of SEO (creativity, personality + diversification)
I’m done trying to date Google by overly optimizing my ideas just to fit into some ranking box that isn’t even that reliable anymore — or at least, comes with lots of volatility.
I lost half my traffic in March 2024. Then it came back stronger over the summer. Now, in December 2024, I’ve lost over 60% of my traffic again.
Sure, things will likely settle, but this volatility has got me feeling a bit angry and very annoyed. So, let’s shift perspective and embrace a new way.
New SEO is Punk
The changes in SEO are a good thing. It’s disruptive and forcing creativity in a new way — and that’s punk. This supports my thesis for how to succeed as a modern content creator.
Part of me feels like personal blogging is making a combat in this sense — originality and personality are what’s working across all content formats. Google has been telling us the importance of firsthand experience for a while in its E-E-A-T guidelines.
So I’ll continue do the standard SEO stuff if it’s natural and makes sense (like keyword research, infusing firsthand experience and having good UX), but I’m more interested in creating for you — creating for me.
Creating with a goal of authenticity and newness — being punk about the whole thing.
This makes me happier and more creative.
Idea First, SEO Second
I’m writing this post because I simply want to share my thoughts, and hopefully inspire you to boost your own power as a creator — your own content creativity and authenticity.
IMO, not everything needs to be a viral post, funneled perfectly to push your ideal audience avatar down some digital funnel to some conversion.
Let’s be artists.
When everyone has the same playbook teaching the same strategies to rank on the same platforms for the same trending content ideas, everything starts to look, well, the same. I mean, what if every musician or artist only stuck to the templates or played it safe?
Laaaaame.
While creativity can definitely be boosted by imposing limitations — this (SEO) box needs to break a bit. Because too much optimization puts a serious dent on genuine content and idea-sharing.
And so, I’m evolving and embracing the disruption.
I think we’re ready to read better content with more authentic, exciting ideas. Why do you think people skim articles so much? Partly, because they know it’s all fluff presented in a predictable format, and they just want to quickly get the main ideas. So they skip the boring words and skim.
I’m all for optimizing my posts. But I don’t care anymore if it’s checking all the traditional SEO boxes if it’s at the cost of the idea, the art of content creation.
So let’s push the boundaries and become more creative. This is the new era of creatorship.
New SEO is More Creative / More Interesting
SEO writing can get pretty structured, predictable and boring. For example:
H1 Title (better make it click-worthy)
H2 Header (what is [keyword])
H3 Header (examples of [keyword])
H3 Header (benefits of [keyword])
H2 Header (how to do [keyword])
H2 Header (conclusion)
This is fine — and some posts may inevitably end up looking like this. Plus, headings are great for organizing and UX. But I’m not doing it for any SEO purpose anymore. I’m using these tools creatively.
Aesthetics with creative intention is the goal.
Also, I’m not boxing myself into a corner by only writing on keywords that have good search volume and low competition. My goal is to cover interesting topics that actually matter most to me, my brand and my projects.
Non-SEO writing is more creative and way more interesting. And this is pretty freaking authentic.
New SEO is More Authentic
It’s hard to be totally authentic and raw when you’re put into a box of “this is how to write and structure your posts for SEO.”
Luckily, new SEO is breaking patterns and disrupting.
I can be more authentic now. I can be myself — and that’s liberating.
So thank you Google for taking my traffic and challenging me to find myself.
Writing and keyword selection that’s based on authenticity is a great SEO strategy for the future.
New SEO is More Helpful
I’m less concerned with ranking and more concerned with making content that’s actually helpful and representative of me. I’m interested in sharing my unique ideas, even if they have no search volume.
I’m interested in helping. I want to write good stuff, that’s real.
A human wrote this, from a state of mind with a set of experience and ideas and beliefs. All of that will change. But for now, that’s who I am. Welcome to a little piece of my mind at this point in time.
With less focus on SEO, I feel a weight lifted and a permission slip to test, be more creative and infuse authenticity. I think that’s more helpful for readers and my niche. And I’m stoked.
New SEO is To-the-Point
Sometimes Often, I end up adding extra sections and FAQs just to boost my chances of ranking for more keywords and creating a more competitive article.
Non-SEO writing is to-the-point. By stripping away the BS, there’s less fluff. I can write what I need to get out (and what you need to read), and not much more.
And that’s a wrap. No SEO conclusion today.
Later ✌️
