On Sunday, I spent less time searching for Easter eggs and more time searching for myself on the internet.  To put that into context, I was checking to see how well my SEO was working for me on www.agoodwriteup.com.

Using WordPress as my website platform, I have become well and truly obsessed with following their SEO guidance/audit for everything I write.  I am finding that I will write something that I am brilliantly happy with, and of course represents linguistic perfection to my own mind, but I’ve ridiculously become more and more bothered about what Google now thinks of what I’ve written.

This is a massive shame for any online writer or blogger, because Google will never laugh at your witticisms and share them with its mates, Google will never resonate with your thoughts and feelings and decide to follow your progress, and most importantly, Google will never buy into your product or service.  Yet, here I am, altering my own writing to fit Google’s expectations, in the hope that I will one day rank more highly and frequently than any other copywriter in the universe.

Much as I enjoy geeking out at this little SEO game I play every time I update a page or post an article, and much as I get a sick satisfaction from watching the WordPress SEO traffic light turn from amber to green, I feel that it’s steering me away from what I really want to write.

So, I’ll play Google’s game for a while, but I will in future stop and remind myself that, if people like my writing and like my style, then somehow – they’ll find me.