Not long ago, standard SEO advice was to include a specific keyword at least once every 100 words in your website articles to make them rank better on Google.

This led to a practice called keyword stuffing — the result of Google’s early algorithm favoring pages that repeated the main keyword multiple times. People discovered that the more often they added the keyword, the higher their articles could rank.

The outcome? Millions of unreadable, low-quality articles cluttered the web. Google eventually adjusted its algorithm and started penalizing sites that overused keywords. What human readers hated soon became what Google’s algorithm hated, too.

Around the same time, headlines like these flooded the internet: “12 Things You Didn’t Know About Your Cat (Number 7 Will Shock You)”. They worked for a while, attracting clicks and views. But once readers realized that Buzzfeed-like listicles were mostly fluff designed to generate traffic rather than offer real value, engagement plummeted.

I can’t prove that Google adapted its algorithm in this case as well—but I certainly adapted. Whenever I see an article with a typical clickbait list headline, I skip it. I even avoid returning to that website altogether.

The blogs I continue to read are usually one-person sites. The authors behind them feel real and authentic. They write about their lives, work, and hobbies as if they were talking to a friend. In short: they write for humans, not machines.

And that’s the best long-term strategy. Think about it:

Google (and other search engines) are ultimately trying to connect readers with writers. Its algorithm aims to understand what humans want to read—and over time, it’s getting better at imitating human interests.

On top of that, social media has become a major driver of website traffic. And on social media, it’s humans—not algorithms—who share links to your blog.

Another trend is that the traditional era of SEO is coming to an end. Now, everything is shifting toward optimizing content for AI. But what are tools like ChatGPT trying to do? They’re designed to think and respond like humans. So, in the end, writing for humans also means writing for AI.

Finally, you don’t just want traffic, clicks, leads, or sales—you want an audience. And that audience is made up of humans. So why not write directly for them instead of trying to game algorithms and machines? After all, Google, Twitter, and ChatGPT exist to bring human eyes to your work. And you want these humans to follow you (and even buy your products and services).

What’s the point of generating massive traffic with an SEO-optimized article if it’s so poorly written that no real human actually wants to read it? You’re not going to gain a following like this and you’re not going to earn the trust that is needed to sell books or other products.

In the end, writing for humans will always be the best approach.

Short answer: As long as they need to be — and not a single word longer.

Long answer:
It seems that blog posts between 2,000 and 4,000 words tend to rank best on Google. So if you’re writing primarily for search engines, that’s a good target range. And it’s the reason the pro-bloggers write primarily posts of that length.

Of course, sometimes the topic naturally determines how long your article should be. If you’re writing an opinion piece titled “Is Die Hard a Christmas movie” you could end it in a single sentence:

Yes, and Yippee-Ki-Ya, motherfucker.

But if your article is titled “How to Write a Book,” even 4,000 words might not be enough.

My approach is to write for readers first, myself second, and search engines last. That means I focus on giving the reader exactly what the title promises — as clearly and concisely as possible. Adding unnecessary words or paragraphs just to please Google is counterproductive. So I keep things short and simple.

Take Derek Sivers, for example. I like his blog because he follows the same philosophy. Some of his posts are shorter than 300 words, yet they still deliver great ideas.

For the real-time biography blogging niche I’ve defined for my writing on this site, my goal is to give you a quick look into my work and progress that usually contains one idea at a time. Hence, short posts are totally fine, and even better than 1,000 words of rambling.

On the first day of every month, I publish a longer post titled “Progress Report.” It’s already grown to about 1,000 words per post — and naturally, it’ll become longer over time as my Author in Progress project develops.

However, posts like the one you’re reading right now usually range from 300 to 500 words. And I believe that’s enough to deliver what the title promises.

You tell me if I’m wrong.

First impressions matter. Everyone likes to claim they care about what’s inside — about who a person truly is. But the truth is, we don’t have enough time to get to know everyone deeply. So we all make quick judgments. Within a few seconds, we decide whether someone is worth investing more of our time.

What’s true in real life applies even more online.

When I stumble upon a new YouTube channel, I scan the thumbnails and check the most popular videos. It’s shallow, sure — but if those don’t catch my attention, I move on. On Twitter, I make that decision even faster. And when it comes to blogs, it’s no different.

If a website greets me with pop-ups, sign-up forms, and flashy, blinking sidebars trying to sell me something I never asked for, I immediately lose interest. The writing might be amazing, but once the ads hit me in the face, I’m gone.

To me, a blog is like a personal business card. It represents who you are and gives complete strangers their first impression of you. And I don’t want that impression to be that of a salesman desperate to make a quick buck.

Years ago, I used to read a website called Danger & Play by Mike Cernovich. Around 2016, Cernovich stopped publishing, but before that, I visited his site almost every day. When he finally released a book, I bought it without hesitation. Then I bought the follow-up, and even a collection of his best blog posts. When he launched a podcast, I listened. When he tried YouTube, I subscribed.

At no point did he ever have to sell me anything. I’d been reading his blog for years, and when he released a printed book, I felt like I owed him my support. It wasn’t the relationship between a salesman and a customer — it was more like helping a friend out who’d helped me for years.

That’s the kind of relationship every personal blogger should strive for. You don’t want readers to see you as a salesman looking for easy money. You want to be a friend — someone genuinely trying to help. And when your readers feel that you’ve truly helped them, they’ll naturally want to give something back.

No ads required. No hard selling.

Just a simple announcement:

Hey, my next book is out. If you’re interested, here’s a link.

And after that announcement is out of the way, get right back to doing what matters most: writing something that helps or at least entertains your reader.

Besides running my own blog, I also love discovering and reading great ones. But lately, it’s been getting harder and harder to find truly good blogs out there. So I thought I’d give my readers a chance to promote their own work here. That way, I’ll find new and interesting things to read, and you’ll get the chance to reach new readers by hijacking my site.

This invitation is open to anyone who creates content online — bloggers, vloggers, podcasters, authors — everyone’s welcome.

Yet, here’s what I’m most interested in:

• Authors who write about writing and how to promote their work
• Bloggers who share stories about their everyday lives
• Travel, fitness, the broad topic of self-improvement, and making money online
• Vloggers are welcome too
• Motorbike riding, sailing, flying planes, surfing
• Philosophy and exchange of ideas (the more controversial the ideas are, the more I’m interested)
• …

As I said, basically everything is welcome. The only thing I don’t want is corporatism — if your goal is simply to sell a product, please don’t bother. I’m looking for real people creating real content.

If that sounds like you, feel free to say hello in the comments, tell me and my readers what your content is about, and drop a link to your main platform.

I think this term is the best way to describe what I’m doing here.

A decade ago, blogging was a much bigger thing. But even before social media took over, I was only really interested in the kind of blogs I now call real-time biography blogs.

I remember one guy in particular who wrote about losing weight and getting fit from his personal perspective. At some point, he realized that his true passion wasn’t fitness—or even writing. It was baking. I kid you not: the guy went from blogging about weight loss to baking his own croissants. Later, he announced that baking had taken up so much of his life that he no longer had time to write. A few weeks after that, his site disappeared.

The strange part is, I was super in to it. Reading his posts became a daily highlight for me. I checked his multiple times a day for new posts, re-read old entries just for fun, and even picked up solid workout advice that I used in my own routine.

Baking isn’t really my thing. I don’t like croissants. But I still read his posts about his newfound baking passion. They were fun. They were exciting. Every update felt like catching up with a friend.

His website originally had one of those generic marketing-style names—I’ve forgotten exactly what it was. But it had nothing to do with croissants or baking in general. It simply happened. His blog evolved. In real time. Just like life does.

Those are the kinds of blogs I find the most interesting. You see the same thing on YouTube with vlogs: people just recording their lives as they unfold. And if it’s done honestly and openly, the story can develop in directions nobody could predict.

That’s what I want to create here—and with my online persona in general.

My ultimate goal is to become a “real” author, which for me means making a living by writing and selling my stories. How I’ll get there is still unclear. I might even take some strange detours while figuring it out. Who knows—maybe I’ll end up writing about baking croissants one day. I doubt it, but that’s the nature of real-time biography blogging: nobody knows where it’s going. Not even the blogger.