Been too, too long...
But this lil' ol' blog is still here. Just like the ongoing work as an SEO copywriter, if you are looking for it. Clients are still there, but the effect of SEO copywriting is perhaps a little more strange than it was in the past - a bit more uncertain. I don't think this has anything to do with the crafting of solid SEO copywriting, more that Google has shifted gears a ton in the past year, so what they are doing is kind of trumping what anyone does in a page.

Hear that correctly now, 'cause I am not saying SEO copywriting is any less valuable to SEO than it ever was, or ever will be. Google hates SEOs though, so the extra descriptor on the act of writing something may see some editing. Who knows. Schlemeezle, schlemazzle.

Organic results are disappearing though, intentionally if you are paying attention, and sites are getting penalized more than they ever did before.The combination leaves fewer sites dominating the shrinking available organic space, and with these shifts come wider steps away from the minute, independent nature that drove the web's information to where it is. Big business took over, so to see it in any lesser way is to be naiive and to launch yourself toward #epicfail.

I am proud to be an SEO, especially as it gets harder to do. Got more for me to consider with each effort? Good - bring it on...I'll accept that challenge, as I always have.
But Google does not like SEOs and never has...despite the smiles and promises, no matter what they tell or told you. The very nature of SEO work is something beyond Google's control, so Google allows less and less of it to matter.
Unfortunately, it is taking with it a lot of what made the web and Google a fun place to be for so many years: the promise of relevant depth and variety. Independent publishers are having a much harder time surviving as Google takes small measure after small measure to restrict any Google-is-not-in-the-middle-of-it activity or information from being available.
They are a business, and can do and display what they want - but we all suffer, because they have such a dominant blanket over sorting and displaying the world's information, and they are scrubbing and tilting it toward their own agenda, not everyones. They have alternatives, we don't - and yet their decisions will affect just about everyone, whether or not they are aware of it.
And that is really just a shame, because it could have been better.

I am not as despondent as this sounds - far from it, in fact. I still love the gig, still sliding down the dinosaur at night with a big smile...even bigger than it has been in years past for sure, too. I just can't help but be rather trepidatious at the idea of things getting better in regards to how queries are answered with relevant, and diverse results in the world's biggest search engine.

Google may hate SEOs, but I don't hate them back...I simply don't trust them at all because they have a very solid track record of serving themselves while saying it is otherwise. The past year has seen this in the most dramatic, and disappointing changes I have ever seen in the results displays -increasingly less space, filled with more and more Google properties every month. And more and more of a distance from what I used them for to begin with - they simply fail to grasp I am not shopping every time I am online, actually the opposite is very true for me. That disconnect has me moving away from a search engine whose results used to be on-point and fun to explore - now they have become a chore of endless ads and incorrect answers to be sorted and sidestepped. God forbid I accidentally click on the wrong thing in there.
In using a blanket and hammer when penalizing optimized sites, Google is now pretty dramatically suffocating its (our) information...because so many site histories had a skeleton or two in a closet that was actually already painted over.
Discounting these over-zealous efforts is the logical move, but penalizing them has made it a different world - and those who can't figure it out fast enough are scrambling to Google to pay for traffic they used to get for free, and this is the point, isn't it?

Like I said before, this has nothing much to do with any specific kind or direction of SEO copywriting, but more a little look at what may be in store as efforts continue to diminish the value of an SEO because the "o" means optimizing organic, and without organic, there may be dawning a brand new way to look at what we do...because as they go, so too goes a really huge and unforgiving part of the trade.

So I use this as a call to action: if there are going to be less spots that are harder to get, the true value of SEO copywriting is really just beginning to get reshaped and redefined by the market demands and rewards, again, as it has before. Always. I am not going to hang up my SEO roots, not now nor ever. I am very proud of what I do, and I don't take it lightly. Google doesn't have to like it - they never have.
As my fave basher Nick Lowe would say, "And So It Goes." :)

Back to work...