Why “Just Write a Blog” Isn’t an SEO Strategy Anymore

For anyone wondering, this was 100% written by a human. ChatGPT only gets involved to help with some grammar - and usually told "don't touch anything else".

One of the earliest SEO tasks (right or wrong) was to get a client to blog. That’s right, whether it was an attorney, plumber, or accountant, we wanted them to open up a doc and start writing. Sometimes we would give them topics, and other times we let them write about anything that inspired them. We ended up with some really well-written, authority-driven articles. We also ended up with baking tips from your neighborhood carpenter.

And after a while, these blogs stopped coming. When they stopped coming, we would help ghostwrite articles. Once the submitted articles stopped getting approved, the blog section of the website would sit dormant and gain cobwebs.

This was the early days of blogging and generating new content for a website. It still happens to this day (with some firms), but it’s fair to say that it should be left in the past.

Clients blogging about their latest vacation or why they love a specific holiday is not necessarily the best way to win online.

Agencies pretending to be clients and writing informational pieces is also not the best way to win online.

Business owners and professionals writing their own thought pieces is also not the best way to win online.

Why, you may ask? Let’s break that down.

Why Blogging Became the Default SEO Tactic

It’s easy to see why blogging was used as an easy win for most SEO agencies and marketing companies. For years, websites would be developed and launched, and there wouldn’t be any adjustments for years. If you didn’t change hours or make some staff changes, there wasn’t much of a reason to log in to the backend and make updates.

When people found out that ranking on Google was a big deal and helped your business significantly, owners started to ask, “How can I get to number one on Google?” Marketing companies researched what actually made a difference and developed game plans to help these business owners.

One thing they realized was that websites with new, fresh content often had a leg up in the rankings. There were a few reasons why this happened.

• The web crawlers would come back to your website more frequently to see if you had new content, thus making it easier to get indexed for changes on the site.
• More content meant more chances to rank for different keywords and terms. It also helped with potential backlinks, which improved overall ranking.

Adding content to a website was pretty cost-effective, so that became a must-do for most marketing agencies. It didn’t matter who or what you were posting—just post something. That was step one. Unfortunately, some marketing agencies stopped there without building upon that strategy.

Blogs Written by Clients Who Don’t Understand What Belongs on a Website

The most common issue with early blogs is that business owners (and the general public) heard the word blog and immediately thought it was a diary. The word blog is a truncated version of weblog, and the earliest forms looked like LiveJournal or Blogger. These consisted mostly of teens and young adults telling everyone about their day and/or experiences. So when an old man in a suit from the ad agency says “write a blog” to a business owner, they had every reason to believe they were going to document their life.

Truth be told, it actually worked a bit in the early days. If you were an early adopter, putting anything on your website helped move you toward the top. Some of those traditional ad agencies stopped there and remember that early success. This is why we still have some local companies blogging about their Super Bowl plans or hiking vacations. Disclaimer: there are reasons why this could work today, but not under the same premise.

In most cases, this does not work and could possibly cause damage to your site. The internet has gotten tremendously bigger. About 250,000 new pages are created each day. Google and other search engines do not want to scan all of these pages. That’s a lot of time, energy, and money. Creating a 250-word blog about your favorite Christmas present is probably not going to move the needle—or get found by a crawler.

If the business owner enjoyed blogging and sharing updates, there are plenty of places we can make this work—but not under the blog section of their website.

Blogs Written by Clients Who Don’t Understand Storytelling or Formatting

Clients writing content for their website is not 100% frowned upon. In fact, it’s a tactic that still works to this day if we find relevant and helpful information. Even in a world with AI, this is the content that will still help move the needle and get you found. Experts explaining their thoughts on their field is absolutely helpful and necessary to make sure information can be found online. But here’s the problem…

There is a way you should write for the web—and it’s not what most professionals are used to.

We don’t tend to worry about technicality here on the internet. We break paragraphs up when we feel like it (mostly when they get way too long). We add headings and subheadings—not willy-nilly—but we place them where we need them, regardless of whether it breaks up the content perfectly. We also love bulleted lists, blockquotes, and other stylized elements to break up walls of text.

After you’ve convinced your professional to write an article, they usually hand over something that people online just might not want to read. It might be overly technical (most of the time we should be writing for a high school or lower reading level) or lack storytelling.

The person in charge of getting this content to show up online then has to figure out where they can move items, add headlines, and possibly rewrite the content—which often causes back-and-forth issues.

It’s better than nothing, but we do want people to actually read it, right?

Blogs Written by Agencies That Don’t Understand the Industry

This is a tough one—because we fall into that realm. Yes, we as an advertising agency and content creators do not know more about your industry than the professionals working in that industry. Granted, we are really good at creating content that looks like we know everything, but you won’t see us giving real-life examples or scenarios without the strong support of individuals in the company. Without that, most of the content looks and sounds the same as everyone else’s.

Agencies get the technical part right. They know where to put the headlines and exactly how many words the blog needs to be. They use plenty of backlinks and images that help tell the story. They probably even ran that blog through Yoast to make sure you get a green light and have the highest probability of ranking. But they can never truly be the business owner or professional they are writing for.

The best agencies work with clients, interview them, and gather real-life stories to help make blogs authentic. They talk to people in the company to find out what customers are asking, what problems the company is solving, and what makes them different. They use this information to work directly with the company to create content that is accurate and helpful.

But that also takes time, energy, and money—so blogging gets a little more expensive, and professionals might be open to talking to other agencies that can do it for less.

Why All Three Fail for the Same Reason

The traditional way of blogging does not work at scale. The internet is crowded, and you need to be more deliberate with your approach—and honestly—better than your competition. Posting a quick blog that you wrote in ChatGPT is not the answer. The information you are putting on the internet already exists, and you are not providing any additional value.

All three of these methods fail because they are shortcuts. It’s probably easier for a business owner to write about something they know. It’s easier for an agency if they let the business owner write the blog. It’s easier for the business owner if the agency does all of the work. But these tactics are always going to be watered down.

The best blogs and articles online are a combination of the professional and the online specialist. We need the authority and real-life examples from the professional—this is what people want to read. But we also need the specialist to help make it digestible and discoverable.

One without the other will always leave the blog sitting on a website—without an audience.