There’s a little thing in the CMS of this blog that grades me after I’ve written each post, telling me how well each one does on an SEO level; it grades things out of 100, and the color of the number is a sign of how well I’ve done — if it’s green, then I’ve done a good job and it’s more than 80 out of 100; if it’s orange, then it’s somewhere less than 80. I’m sure the colors keep changing the lower you get, but I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten less than 60-something.
SEO is very purposefully not something I think about in this space. I think about it enough for work, the same way I have to think about the potential reach of any given story and making sure they’re as commercial and popular as possible. It’s part of being an editor on the internet these days, and from a certain angle, it’s fascinating and frustrating in its own right. You can get lost in it, and I have, more than once; that said, this site isn’t any of that. It’s me just writing and putting up silly images and being self-indulgent with no purpose beyond putting a signal out there without imagining who if anyone is reading.
All of which makes the number of emails I get from the company hosting this site all the more amusing, and somewhat confusing: I get a number of emails about how I can increase the reach of the site, how to make it more commercially viable, and how to improve the SEO functionality of it. (I also get a lot of emails about the fact that I’ve apparently overstepped in terms of image capability, which… I should probably research, really.) The idea of making this intentionally internet-liminal space commercial not only feels like it’s missing the point, but also oddly disturbing: this is my hole it was made for me as the meme has it. I don’t want it to be commercial!
Once upon a time, in a different internet, there was probably a thought somewhere about this being good personal branding, back when we all thought about things like personal branding. But now…? It almost feels like the very opposite of that: one of the few places on the internet where I don’t have to think about a brand at all. For better or for worse. All of which is to say: the SEO on this post will be under 80, and I’m almost hoping before I save that it could somehow be even lower.