Are You Being Authentic Or Are You Playing The Game?
Regular readers have heard me mention it before, but if you’re not one of them, this blog is slowly dying. My traffic numbers peaked in late 2020 and have been steadily declining since. Perhaps it’s warranted and the quality of my writing or posts has declined. I don’t know, you tell me, I have thick skin.
One of the first posts I wrote on this blog is titled “Starving Cows, Generosity, And Having Enough“. Of my over 500 posts it’s one that I’m still extremely proud of, one of my best.
The post is about having enough in life, and what that means. I approached it through a story, one that was hugely impactful in my life.
But when it comes to blog posts and getting traffic, I didn’t play the game.
The Game
In the blogging world if you want big traffic you generally have to play the game. That means changing your writing to satisfy search algorithms.
If I had played the game my post about enough would have started with a sentence saying “What is enough?”. One of the main rules of the SEO game is that your keyword should be in the first sentence.
Besides putting it in the title of the post, I only used the world “enough” once in my entire post, and it was at the very end.
Yoast SEO is software that helps bloggers play the game, and their software alerted me of various issues with my post that they claim are less than optimal. Here’s what Yoast says about my post.
“Your keyphrase or its synonyms do not appear in the first paragraph. Make sure the topic is clear immediately.” Hey Yoast, I don’t want to write a Wikipedia post about the word “enough”, I want to tell a story. Stories need to be engaging and leave room for suspense and interpretation.
“The focus keyphrase was found 1 time. That’s less than the recommended minimum of 5 times for a text of this length.” So I’m supposed to keyword stuff the word “enough” in my text as many times as I can, that’ll satisfy the robots! Maybe halfway through my story I can insert “SEO-break, this post is about enough”.
You get the point. Playing the game in the blogging world means not writing in your own unique style, it means conforming to algorithmic rules to maximize pageviews.
That’s inauthentic. I prefer to be authentic and true to myself, and to forego playing the game.
It Takes All Kinds
I started this blog in my late 40’s, having achieved financial independence a few years earlier. I’ve been to over 40 countries and done a lot of stuff in life. As a result I very often gravitate towards telling a story from my life when trying to discuss a topic related to personal finance.
I think stories are more meaningful to many people, and it’s the kind of writing I enjoy the most. Sure some folks just want to read a more straightforward post about discipline, being cheap, forgiving oneself, or having enough, that’s okay too. There’s plenty of those posts out there.
My goal with this blog is to be engaging in a different way, not necessarily more engaging because that’s in the eye of the beholder – many readers surely think my stories are crap. Thats okay too.
The bottom line is I’m being authentic to me. I’m doing it the way I want, not the way the google search algorithm wants.
Your Career
When it comes to your job and career, are you doing it the way you want? Or do you have to do things the way your boss or company wants? That question is kind of a set up. We all know there are very few people who work for someone else and who have the pleasure of doing things completely the way they want.
Maybe you’ve had that fortunate situation at times in your career, I sure did. But it never lasted. Inevitably every great project turned into useless paperwork and meetings, or some other affront to my intelligence.
So most of us are forced to write to the algorithm in our jobs, to be inauthentic.
When you can free yourself from that and find something rewarding to do that makes money and that you 100% do the way you want, it’s heaven. You can be truly authentic, true to yourself.
I found that thing with my graphic arts business. I do the designs I want, and only those. Unlike others I don’t chase pop culture trends to get more sales or jump on the latest viral celebrity meme.
Perhaps some designers who do those things are being authentic and that’s the stuff they’re truly interested in. I doubt that’s the case for most though. Just as some bloggers might truly enjoy writing according to what artificial intelligence algorithms tell them to do. They might really like keyword stuffing and playing the SEO game to see how high they can score in google rankings.
But I suspect they’re not being fully authentic to themselves, and they would enjoy blogging more if they just threw that stuff out and wrote the way they wanted as if there were no google.
Be Authentic, Be You
Look, I get it. Most people start blogs to try to make money, as a side hustle. And they quickly find out how hard it can be to get traffic. So they research how to do that and next thing you know they’ve completely changed how they write.
I’m not gonna play high and mighty and pretend I’ve been authentic in all aspects of my life all the time. But for the almost 5 years of this blog I have been authentic in my posts and writing. You won’t find any keyword-stuffed listicles to get SEO traffic. You will find me making fun of listicles.
I did purposely try a click-baity title for the first time recently, with failed results. I guess I suck at being inauthentic.
Authenticity hasn’t gotten me far on the blogging front but I do feel proud for sticking to what I want to do and how I want to write. I don’t need to make lots of money on this blog, I’m financially independent thanks.
There are plenty of others in the personal finance space who are also very authentic with their blogs and I don’t want to start listing folks for fear of forgetting a friend. You know who you are. You’re the ones writing in your true voice, and not keyword-stuffing or endlessly researching how to manipulate your title to rank higher in search. Some of these others bloggers will possibly comment on this post because we support each other.
So if you feel your job is holding you back from being truly authentic or doing your work the way you want, well that’s just another reason to double down on reaching financial independence.
It gives you the freedom to be truly authentic, and to throw out the game.
Hi Dave! Thanks for another great article. One thing I have always appreciated about your blog is that your voice is a more authentic voice than many other blogs out there and it isn’t stuffed with ads in the middle of the writing about crap that no one wants to see (also inauthentic!). Audience size doesn’t matter if your aim is to have great discussions & build community vs. building a blog for max monetization. One less thing to worry about!
To your point about jobs/careers, I think that is so true. I have a job that I truly love 50% of the time, but I’ve accepted that the other 50% is pretty meaningless crap that I have to do if I choose to stay in my job. I’m not sure if it’s a function of getting older or getting closer to FI, but I find myself responding more & more authentically to things at work. It’s turned out to be a much better way to work.
When I was told that they were going to bring us back to the office, I told them I wasn’t doing that, no matter what that had to look like. It wasn’t a threat so much as sticking with what makes me happiest, which is not working in the office. There have been a couple of other recent things that have come up where I’ve said ‘no- I’m not doing that’. It doesn’t even seem to raise eyebrows, each time it’s been met with ‘oh, ok’. (Somehow, I still have a job!) And it’s better because I’m doing less of the things I don’t want to do and more of the things I do want to do. I’m very respectful about it, but it feels a lot better to be authentic in my responses and so far, it’s worked surprisingly well.
Thanks again for another thoughtful article from a one-of-a-kind voice.
Andrea thanks so much for being a longtime reader and I’m really happy for you that things are working out as you try to be more authentic at your job. I love – just say “uh no I’m not gonna do that” Haha, they probably don’t even know what to do with a response like that. Keep it up, it’s working!
Sorry to jump in here, but I completely relate to what you’ve said about your job. For me, it’s my old age. I’m doing the same — saying no to things at work that I would never have dreamed of saying no to years ago. And I’m receiving the same response. Ok. Ok?! These are the times when I appreciate my age. 🙂
It truly is sad that SEO exists. The end result is that most articles out there are cookie cutter posts that do not really add to the blogosphere.
I too tried to break that trend and shied away from the most traffic generating methods such as the click bait titles and listicles you mention. Whenever I see a blog post that says the top 5…. I know they sold out to the Google machine.
Of course you as you know I ended my blog almost a year ago as I felt it was also undergoing a slow death from not jumping up to the top of Google search algorithms because I didn’t play the game. Glad you see sticking to your guns.
You were definitely one of the authentic FI bloggers Doc, especially in the honest stories you told about being scammed. You saw what I’m talking about, it just doesn’t bring in the huge traffic without the SEO games. Thanks for stopping by dude!
hell, i came this close to shuttering my little blog last week. that would be a shame because of the few but valuable connections i have made through reading and writing personal stories that were somewhat personal finance related. yours is certainly one i look forward to reading and interacting.
here’s an interesting conundrum: i really want to write a large series of short posts about stock investing. it almost feels like it needs to be a separate site and i have the time to do that. then i could take down the annoying ads on the main site and just go back to writing crackpot stories and go back to “freddy smidlap lets off some steam.” we shall see where it all goes.
Maybe try splitting it, and if it sucks you could merge them back together again?
I like reading the “letting of some steam” posts, and I’m interested in your take on stock investing. For whatever reason, my gut says I’d be more apt to read either if they were split up in their own site. Think you have to be in completely different moods for those two different topics.
Though I’m just a random dude on the internet, so who knows what most people would like.
Glad you didn’t close shop dude, I’ve thought about it many times myself. You have an audience, I say you should just do those stock posts that you wanna do right on your blog. If you try to start over it’ll be really hard. Blogs are less popular overall as compared to when we started, so gaining new folks on a new site has to be really hard without listicles and stupid formulaic stuff.
Hi Dave!
I appreciate your authenticity too! I seriously laughed out loud at your listicle post. I hate how click bait-y they are and usually refuse to click on those sort of posts out of principle.
“Listiclitis” is a real thing Julie, so so many are ill. And I don’t give them any clicks either 🙂
Hi Dave. It’s because of your authentic voice that I follow your blog. Believe me, it is very obvious to the reader when the blogger is kow-towing to the google algorithm gods and I refuse to waste my one short life reading that crap. Perhaps you need to shift your perspective a bit – rather than focusing on the quantity of readers you should focus on the quality of the readers.
I’ve already made that shift for the most part Veronica, and it’s quality readers like you and Julie and Freddy and others who have commented here that keep me going. I appreciate you!
It is what it is. The blog was great for you to get your message across. My wife and I enjoyed your blogs over the years and still do. Life goes in cycles. If you stick it out and keep blogging, maybe your blog readership will go up again. Question, Do you want to stick it out or move on to the next endeavor? As you say, be authentic.
That is why my wife and I have many interest(sports, hobbies, reading, etc.). You never know when an injury or age might force you to retire from a sport you like to do. If so, there are other sports that will allow you to play. Same with hobbies, sometimes you lose interest in a hobby, but there are so many other hobbies that you can do. Always learning and trying new things.
From your posts over the years, you will have no problem going to the next endeavor if you ever decided to just pack it in on the blog. I will miss the style and thoughts from your posts though.
To answer you question for a while I thought “no”, but then a compromise of just posting less seemed the best decision. Similar to me going part time at my job, there’s a theme here 🙂 And I agree with you on sports, that’s why I do “all the things”, variety is the spice of life – thanks for stopping by and the kind words!
It’s interesting that a lot of your commenters are bloggers themselves – myself included. I think that’s a good sign of the quality of your writing.
As ChatGPT, et al. create more and more fluffy content my hope is that smart, insightful, and personal blog posts will gain even more loyalty. Traffic may have to come from word of mouth rather than search engines, but that’s just fine.
Have you ever read/listened to Seth Godin talk about “the smallest viable audience” concept? The magic happens when we’re really clear about who we are serving and just focus on speaking to them. If you give your smallest viable audience something they can’t get anywhere else – i.e. your style of authenticity – you’ll always be relevant.
Thanks Matt, and yes I’ve heard Godin mention that. There’s that other guy that wrote the book “1000 true fans” which talks about a similar concept. Meaning you don’t need a huge audience, just a loyal one. Thanks for stopping by!
Keep being you my man, I’m here for the good content and personal writing experiences in the subject matter. Bob also mentioned on his newest Tawcan post the other day that he is dropping SEO targeted content from his blog as a goal.
I haven’t seen Bob’s last post but I’ll check it out. And thank you for being a loyal reader and friend!
I come to this blog again and again becuase of the voice of the author. I’m glad you’ve resisted the temptation to play to the SEO monster. And thanks for linking that earlier post, I had not read that one previoulsy.
Thanks so much for the kind words my friend, I appreciate your readership!
Keep at it! I don’t think SEO matters anymore. Google is so bias. They won’t put small sites up first anyway. I dabbled with SEO in the beginning and it was just too artificial. I’d rather share my voice and my stories. If I rigidly follow best practices, I doubt I’d last this long.
You are another of the authentic bloggers Joe and since you started so early you were able to get pretty big, but you are also now shrinking because you won’t play those games. You write in an authentic voice and it’s 100% crystal clear to your readers. Thanks for being a blog buddy all these years!
Keep going, but also know that I’m so authentic I don’t blog. 😛
Just joking around of course (but not about keep going!) as I love reading this site and have been keeping tabs since, shoot, I’m not sure, but it’s been likely since around 2019 or 2018.
Ha, love it! That is the ultimate authenticity. Thanks for being a longtime reader, I really appreciate it!
It’s your writing skills Dave, they’ve been declining 😉
This post embodies exactly how I’ve felt since I started blogging after publishing my book in 2020. Writing about things that you are passionate about or authentic topics to you don’t always align with SEO and the algorithm gods. In fact, they rarely do.
I found myself using Keyword Planners and changing the way I write just to get another word in, but I think if it’s not your style, your readers will notice. Ever notice how some posts are polluted with tons of affiliate links and seems like they’ve been checking words off their list? Not as enjoyable.
I’m thankful you, me, and other write about our experiences and topics important to us. The message must be authentic to pay it forward!
Yep it’s always crystal clear when I’m on a blog and I see the little word games a tricks to cater to SEO. I rarely come back. It’s like when those slimy politicians go on TV and just robotically keep repeating the same talking points. Not much difference.
First off, to quote Ian Faith, manager of the legendary band, Spinal Tap, it’s not that Accidental Fire’s “popularity is waning, it’s that it appeal has become more selective.” 😆. Your site rocks, Dave and it’s your authenticity, verve and originality that hooked me nearly 5 years ago and keeps bribing me back.
F the script, F the game and, most certainly, F SEO and its Yost horse. Just be you, as you always have been we cool kids will continue to read.
Aw man leave it to you to get a Spinal Tap reference in – good stuff! You and your music references are as authentic as it gets, I love it!
I second the spinal tap quote! You keep saying your blog is dying; I wonder if it’s just declining for a bit, but will plateau once you get back to people who are actually interested in what your putting out instead of being driven here by some algorithm.
Random thought-I know you don’t need the money, but have you thought about putting together a short E-book on how to approach 14ers as a flatlander? Maybe a guide on how to acclimate, where to stay, and what 14ers are the most bang for your buck/simpler logistically for those out of state. Sure, you can find a lot of good info on 14ers.com, but it’d be nice to have all of that in one spot. I’d pay 5-10 bucks for that. With your photos and graphical design skills, I bet it would be sweet.
Hmmm, the thought crossed my mind once but thousands of folks have climbed the 14ers and the only unique angle I have is that I did it from across the country by flying in every time. I do have techniques to acclimatize that have worked for me and I suppose that could make a short book, but it would be pretty short. The fact that you’d be interested is a good data point though, and at least keeps it on my radar. I’d also have to check the 14ers forums to see if anyone has already done that. But thanks for the interest and thanks for reading!
From one “Authentic” to another, “You Do You!”. It’s the only way to live life, especially after achieving FI and realizing one of it’s true jous is no longer have to play those silly games. You’re one of the great writers out here these days, Dave. Take pride in that, regardless of what the traffic numbers or Google say. I love your stuff!
Thanks so much dude for the support and being a reader all these years, a seal of approval from a big writer like you has surely helped me. Glad you’re out there and still blogging!
Well at least your blog is only slowly dying…mine died overnight when I wrote a post welcoming the end of the first lockdown a couple of years ago
I displeased The Gods of The Google Algorithm and their vengeance was swift and terrible. According to WordPress stats, my page views went from 10,000 per day to under 1,000 per day.
The lesson I took from this was that when you have an email list, you can keep reaching your people…and you’re harder to kill / silence / cancel
Wow, big tech censorship is real as we’ve seen with Twitter recently. This doesn’t surprise me that much, and who knows, I might have also written something that the overlords at Google didn’t like. I have an email list but it’s pretty modest sized, better than nothing
It seems like blogging in general is getting harder, and in part that’s probably because it’s harder to get seen. The major traffic sources (Google, Pinterest) seem to favor super low quality stuff — at least when I search for something. Sure the results usually have the keywords, and the first bunch are similar. But they’re often boring and not necessarily accurate.
It is SUPER discouraging to try and just get crickets. Basically I agree with you!
But I have seen people saying recently that they miss blogs, so I’m taking that as a good sign.
And if my articles help even a few people, it’s worth continuing IMO.
“Super low quality stuff” is an understatement, haha. I agree with you, the comments and support on this post alone give me a boost and make it feel worthwhile… for now, haha. Thanks for stopping by Jackie!
Amen Dave! This post is fantastic and a true illustration of why I come back time after time. I wouldn’t want to read keyword stuffed drivel that satisfies the AI Bots, so keep being authentic, it’s much more interesting!
Thanks so much Jim, I appreciate you!
Do you want “quality” readers who loyally read every post and occasionally offer constructive comments or casual reader clicks and snippy comments? Personally, your blog is part of a small set of bloggers I spend my precious time reading. I read them because you share unique personal stories that resonate with me since we share similar situations and I learn useful insights from you that I can apply to my own life. I rarely search for articles, finding and reading blogs based on referrals and references from a short list of bloggers I respect. Some of my best new blogger finds are commenters from other bloggers. There may not be many like me but those that are certainly appreciate your work.
You make a good point Phillip and I don’t think I’d want a huge amount of readers who are mindlessly clicking one of my posts because some algorithm served it to them. In those cases they probably skim 2 sentences and close it, but hey it counts as a pageview. Thanks for the comment!
Authenticity is a word that has been overused too many times in the wrong way, you can just enter it in your search machine and find tons of blogposts (read: shitposts) about it. Many playing the SEO game. It’s the same with music nowadays, I tend to avoid today’s pop music but from time to time I get it spoonfed through the radio at work. It just feels so bland, from time to time something gets through, but I prefer niche genres (like Synthwave) and some works from the 80’s/90’s (Grunge, Hard/Alternative Rock, some Metal and whatever). Something that’s not all pretty girls, humping like field rats in mating season and the like. Some deeper meaning or moving piece of art. I feel like technology might’ve made the entry barrier too low, from time to time (maybe I should just use this myself from my own purposes… hmm…).
On the other side, an ex-colleague of mine started his own business. He was a Purchaser for large industrial machines (for chocolate etc.), projects, raw material and that kind of stuff. The business is in SEO, he found some ways to crack the Google algorithm. I must say, not my cup of tea. Not interested in creating polished turds. I’m good with data, but all the tracking-people-across-the-internet BS all sounds too unethical to me. I prefer making production/logistic processes more efficient with data and the like. No doubts about whether it’s ethical or not, it’s just boxes and goods m8.
Ugh, don’t get me started on the watering down and homogenization of music. Auto-tune and now AI are killing music, but there is still good stuff out there, you just have to search for it. Down with the polished turds!!
This is a serious question… I think that almost all bloggers turn to SEO principles in one way or another to increase traffic. The trouble is that many worthwhile publications (for example, like yours) do not appear in search results (especially on topics of finance, investment, etc.), but “garbage” that is optimized for SEO does appear. It’s sad, it’s true… But we must understand that search algorithms are not perfect)
I realize Google has to use automated methods for search, but for a company that supposedly has so many smart folks working for it they are doing a really shitty job as witnessed by the state of the quality results for so many things. They’re good at giving us the height of the Eiffel Tower quicky, that’s great. They’re not good at all at serving up quality engaging content about nuanced subjects. Thanks for the comment!
Blogs, like all writing really, have a life cycle. There is only so much insight inside a single person based on their own experience and thoughts. Is there any blog out there that still feels fresh after 5 years? Most great fiction authors have only a few great works. If they write more, they usually are writing the same story over and over. If a writer wants to keep going he has undergo a transformation. Or start writing about the the insights and transformations of other people. One example I admire is Gary Larson. He worked on Calvin and Hobbes for 10 years. Then when he was out of ideas he just walked away, leaving a body of work that holds up almost 40 years later, and without repeating himself or selling out to Hollywood and the merchandise machine. Or Steve Martin, who walked away from a huge stand-up career to become a really great actor.
You make a great point and its something to consider. There are blogs that are still great and fresh after 5 years, but those blogs are almost always about a topic or industry that keeps changing. So you can be fresh when you’re writing about major changes in a thing. With money and financial independence, there’s not much major change. Sure the markets make big moves but the bottom line is the winning strategy is the same – have a plan, invest and ignore all that noise. And Steve Martin is a kick-ass banjo player now 🙂
I love your blog, so I hope you will continue. As for SEO, when I first learned about it, I was disgusted. Lists and that painful first sentence and what about key phrase in headings! That one is the hardest for me. But then I kind of came around and saw it as, well, a game, ha. I even enjoyed it after some time. Problem is, I write about walking in mud and folding cloth napkins and how watching laundry spin in a machine mesmerizes me
— all useless nonsense. So ranking is kind of absurd. I’m happy with ten views a day if I get that. 🙂
Ha, I love walking in mud! Thanks for your kind words and yes the keyword in the headings thing is something I rarely do, I’d rather go for more clever or pithy headings.
Your message is so refreshing! Many thanks for staying true to yourself. I was cleaning up my favorites bar on Safari and decided to look at yours again because it’d been awhile and I wondered if it was still active. So glad I checked in with you. Please keep sharing your stories. Stories are the glue of humanity. We pass them down through the generations, they move us to live, act, remember and honor. I give my 13 year old random assignments to read and write about. Today she’ll be reading this one. Take and give good care.
Thanks for checking back in Annie and the kind words. Stories are glue indeed, I love that analogy!