This is related to writing content and SEO, it's seems the new challenge on writing for people (not algorithms) who are becoming increasingly dumb. Websites needed to adapt to new technologies so responsive (adaptive) websites were created for that exact reasons, captchas were created to filter bots, robots filing your forms or web-form-attacks, now it seems we need captchas for people, to filter the quality or specific characteristics of our audience.

- This is part I - describing how from creating content and I also moved to filtering visitors, making a bit difficult the experience of contacting me, making it difficult to make questions, making it difficult to engage. Sounds contradicting, it's not. This is more of an intro, given that many are already aware of this you can jump to the next post where the core of the topic is.


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We might loose traffic, or we might be getting more traffic but the wrong one. It's no secret: people in general are becoming increasingly dumb.

The content some of my websites worked really well in general writing, from the general to the specifics, introducing people to a well defined concept. At times I wrote pieces going straight to the specifics, I experienced diff results for that, it worked, and I understand it was due to diff public and also diff situations. I was creating content adapted to a general public and also offering very specific articles in those websites.

At some point the rules changed, the traffic, the comments and questions for readers. I no longer had to work on good content (the kind you find on good books, sort of speaking) and noticed I had to put effort on a writing style that would be difficult to misinterpret things. Suddenly I wasn't writing content for reading only, I was creating content to avoid confusions. Confusions? I couldn't even understand why people were getting confused. Something as simple as a message to filter buyers on some website stating "please don't ask, we don't sell X services" didn't work, that's when I couldn't deny something else was going on. Suddenly I found myself trying to emulate the mind of someone who had poor reading skills.

After some experiments I decided to just ignore such changes, I refused to adapt the writing and style for dumb people. Did this affect my traffic? a bit. Did this affect my position on search engine results? yes. And I noticed competitors climbing positions but their content was pure garbage. I made some tests and shared some content with diff people, they were very attracted to the pictures yet many of them weren't reading the content, on the other hand my website had good pictures and good content, but the density was different. The general difference is competitors were posting articles based on the "10 best places to..." and that's all. I had a difficult moment, but despite the metrics (likes on the articles) they were not really buying anything.

Those websites did something different than what I was doing: I don't post the messages sent by readers, they do. The messages were kind of similar. Some article (of the competitor) could be talking about some concert on December, and this was posted on the title, intro and content, yet people were asking on the comments "what's the date? when?" if that's not being stupid, then I don't know what it is. So I refused to change my content to new writing styles, you can do that to increase your positions regardless of the algos on search engines making no sense, but you shouldn't sell to dumb people.

"You shouldn't sell to dumb people", wait, isn't all money... green?, yes and no. Creating content and sells for that kind of people means trouble. If they have a hard time buying hard disks when the sign says "hard disks US$1 each" and still ask for the price, imagine when one hard disk fails what kind of user experience and customer service they expect? it's like talking to monkeys. So in many areas this is not good business.

- End of part I -

You might agree or disagree, you might see it or not, perhaps you get the idea that I'm just expanding an essay, I'm not. Perhaps you are part of the problem and expect the best 10 tips for money making websites.