I got some feedback today from my place of work that my writing is “too SEO” oriented.
All I can say is, CRAP … Looks like I picked up some bad habits from the old days of search engine optimization that have affected my writing.
My writing is filled with keywords and I can’t help it. The sentences are short and the content is impersonal. This is the way I have written for “others” for as long as I can remember.
Here’s the crux of my problem – I have a partition in my brain. On one side, there’s my personal writing. On the other, I have my “writing for others” stored. Client writing, by default, takes on a robotic tone because none of them have ever wanted me to make my writing too personal.
The problem is that at work, we have clients whom we write for in a ghostwriting capacity which means that it has to take on a more “blog oriented” tone – much as I am writing right now.
Apparently, I need to write like this at my place of work but it is hard to jump over to the “personal side” of my writing brain so that my writing better pleases my employer. Fortunately, I am used to getting critiqued. As a writer, it happens all the time. I can adapt, it’s cool.
But the question remains – how am I going to make that jump? For now, my strategy is to pretend that the blog I am writing for is mine and see if that helps the situation anyway.
Also, I am starting to write fiction and poetry again. Through that process, I bet my writing will open up a little.
I am all for writers taking on clients, writing SEO content, and writing for the content mills. However, don’t let that affect your overall writing style to the point where you’re having a hard time turning it off like I am!