Some Stunning Examples of Terrible SEO Copywriting
Published on August 2, 2017
Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to get your business noticed online; creating personal, branded content helps you stand out in a crowded field, improving your name recognition and brand loyalty while also literally making it easier to find your business on search engines like Google or Bing.
But not all content is created equally, and plenty of the search engine optimized (SEO) content out there is actually doing more harm than good.
Whether written out of laziness or a cynical desire to game the search engines, these three examples of bad SEO content will make you run, screaming, for your nearest copywriter:
1.) The Backlink Bandit
This search result for toilet repair highlights one of the worst elements of bad SEO: It’s unintelligible! Sure, those may all technically be English words, but the way in which they’re mashed together is about as far as you can get from proper grammar.
And the real issue isn’t even really that the grammar isn’t perfect; certainly, there can be substantive, informative writing that comes with a split infinitive or a dangling participle. Instead, the problem is that this word mush is utterly useless, on top of being impossible to read. Even if you can parse the gibberish, the only thing you might learn is that… um… sometimes you need to call a plumber?
Our best professional guess is that this source post is an example of content created by a machine or an algorithm, designed to funnel backlinks to another site rather than actually create any real value for a reader. In addition to the wild and wonky copy itself, one big tip-off that this is essentially spam is that the Wordpress blog that hosts this content… literally has no other posts to its name. We have to imagine that this is the product of a content farm, designed to push out content and create backlinks to bolster the credibility (and search rankings) of some other site. This is blackhat SEO 101, and, as we’ve discussed before, it doesn’t work.
2.) The Content Spinner
Look familiar? Doesn’t that random, garbled phrasing look a lot like the random, garbled phrasing above, with a few minor tweaks?
This content was taken from a completely different Wordpress site, albeit one with a very similar URL and posting history (i.e., one solitary post, published in the month of May). Not only does the existence of this lookalike content reinforce our belief that our first example is auto-generated, but these two pieces work in tandem to highlight one of the craziest blackhat SEO tactics out there: “content spinning.”
This post is a perfect example! Content spinning (also called “article spinning”) is the industry term for content that essentially plagiarizes another source, switching out a few words or sentences here and there to theoretically throw Google’s crawlers off the scent.
Rather than using a human writer, however (which would at least allow for a more sophisticated level of plagiarism, we guess), much of the content in this category is just systematically restructured and churned out by machines – hence why that prose reads as anything but natural. Ready-made content like this is nothing but virtual noise; it’s unhelpful clutter that gives all online content a bad name.
3.) The Keyword Stuffer
This Geek favorite was brought to our attention by Thrillist editor and Twitter star Matt Patches. In addition to bringing the truly magnificent phrase “hoping against odds” into our lives, this snippet highlights one of our core beliefs here – that you should always write for humans first, and machines second.
This sample was created with the reverse in mind, and it shows. Clearly, this was written for the sake of stuffing as many keywords into a piece of content as possible; we call this “keyword stuffing,” and, at this point, it is a tactic that will actually do your brand more harm than good. For one thing, it reflects very poorly on your name and reputation for your content to be confusing and artificial-sounding. For another, there is every reason to believe that attempting to game the system could now actually damage your ranking results, making your content harder to find in the first place. It’s a lose-lose!
Ready to get started with real, quality content that creates value for users and leads for your brand? Our team of content creation experts knows what it takes to find and reach audiences online today. Drop us a line to get the conversation started!
