This post has no SEO value.

It was not created with a list of keywords in mind or according to a template, it does not provide answers to any of the questions in Google’s little boxes, it’s guaranteed snippet-free, and it doesn’t correspond to any algorithm I’m aware of.

It's also the wrong length (too short or too long, depending on who you listen to), it’s missing a table and bullet points, and if a paragraph gets going and exceeds six lines, it’s just going to happen, and though tongues will wag and cluck, all the forces of the internet will be unable to stop it.

Why? Because that’s the way good writing works.

Obviously writers want to be read, but that’s a secondary goal for most writers I know. Most really good writers just want to write good stuff, and if the readers come, they come.

The inherent danger in that way of thinking is that you might become totally rigid and uncompromising – and poor.

Or, as Chuck Klosterman put it in one of the greatest musical essays ever, a critical analysis of the Edgar Winter Group’s “Frankenstein” as performed on the BBC2 show The Old Grey Whistle Test, “The most authentic musical performance any band could manufacture would require them to play in an empty studio and never allow anyone else to hear what they’ve created, which isn’t that different than arguing that the only way to produce a totally uncompromised novel is to bury it in your backyard on the same day you finish writing it. Which might actually be true, but that’s a hard way to pay the rent.”

A reasonable compromise might be to give to Google what is Google’s, and give to art what rightfully belongs to art.

There’s a danger in that, too. By giving to Google what is Google’s, you’re acknowledging that SEO is actually a thing, a game that has to be played, an idol that deserves its own shrine, a dragon that has to be chased.

And I’m not sure that’s the case.

Google didn’t create SEO, after all. Outside entities looked at search engines and decided there was a game to be played, and started playing it, and charging others for their skills as game-players.

But what if the game wasn’t a game at all, but just a futile attempt to catch up with where Google was yesterday?

“This post also lacks one of those quote boxes people put in blog posts just to break up the ... oh, wait.”

All SEO is retrospective; it attempts to optimize for where Google was, not where it is. And certainly not where it’s going.

Even with near-real-time content-management systems, SEO-optimized content is sub-optimal the second it’s published. It’s the old Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle at work.

A colleague calls it “chasing the machine.” He says you can’t chase the machine, but in the end he chases the machine, just like everyone else.

I don’t know. I think chasing the machine is absolutely the wrong metaphor, not to mention the wrong strategy.

Based on the evidence, it sure seems like Google wants to reward good, honest, well-crafted content, not keyword-stuffed, algorithmed artificial constructions that bear as much resemblance to good writing as Disney's animatronic creations resemble Abraham Lincoln or Winnie-the-Pooh, and as soon as Google figures out how to distill poetry and style to their binary souls good writing will be rewarded, and the piece at the top of the search rankings will be the best of its type extant in the digital universe.

If that’s truly the case – and I believe to my soul it is – then the key is not to create the content that best fits in the box but the content that is the best, crafted to the highest standards without thought to search rankings.

Because when it comes to content and content-based search, the internet really should be a Field of Dreams. If you build it well, they should come. And readability scores should only be reserved for those things that are unreadable to start with.

To that end: This post has no SEO value (and a high readability score), but you’re reading it.

Why?

Maybe you were intrigued by the title. Maybe you’re an SEO skeptic. Maybe you wanted to see what obscure rock-‘n’-roll song I would link to. (Answer: “Martian Boogie,” by my old buddy Cub Koda and Brownsville Station.)

Or perhaps you anticipated something more might be here than you might find in a search for a related topic.

I hope that’s been the case. Such acts of derring-do ought to be rewarded.

But should you care about SEO? Of course you should. It's one of many measures that go into a 360-degree view of customer experience, the way we define it here. And studying changes in certain keywords over time can be very enlightening.

It's not the be-all and end-all, though.

In the end, it’s not always about SEO; it fact, it might only be about SEO a fraction of the time, when you’re writing in very concrete terms about very concrete things that other people write about the very same way.

The rest of the time good writing should prevail.

Here’s to good writing and great writers. And to that day when Google cracks the code and recognizes the same.