Using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools the Damascus Dispatch (DamDis.com) Webmaster got a perfect 100% SEO score today. Despite this monumental effort to satisfy the SEO algorithm, the site got no new traffic. In fact, the DamDis.com article with the 100% SEO score garnered the lowest number of readers in the sites 50-day history. Let’s take a look at what all of this means.
You may be wondering by now, what is SEO, why is it important, and what makes up the SEO score? SEO is a practice of arranging website content is a way that causes search engines to promote the site to the top of the list of search results. Webmasters, bloggers, and content creators seek high SEO scores in order to draw readers and potential clients to their site. Some of the components considered in the SEO score are: title length, key phrase, meta description, slug, images, sentence length, article length, and hyperlinks. There are also ratios to consider, like the number of long sentences, and how frequently the key phrase appears.
Take-aways in getting a 100% SEO score
What did I learn by creating the DamDis.com article with a 100% SEO score? First, I learned that it’s difficult having the key phrase synchronized with title and meta description, while at the same time ensuring appearance in the introductory paragraph. I prefer using different words to describe something. This keeps things interesting and prompts the reader evaluate things in different ways. Another thing I struggle with is writing short concise sentences (fewer than 21 words). The SEO optimizer suggests that no more than 25% of sentences be longer than 20 words. I’m usually at around 32-38%. I find that short sentences are less thought provoking, just like using the same words over and over again. Finally, I learned that having a great SEO score doesn’t necessarily make for a good article. But most importantly, a great SEO score doesn’t drag readers to your site in droves.
Conclusion
I think it’s foolish to focus on satisfying an algorithm rather than developing good content. I also think that satisfying the algorithm will eventually result in a less intelligent reader audience.
P.S. This is the DamDis.com 100% SEO article.
12/24/2022 update: This post is not actually the worst, it is 42nd of 50 posts.