What is Happening to Web Content?

I began my education in the field of SEO many years ago and found the web to be a great source of educational material.  I would normally spend 1-2 hours a day reading articles on search engine optimization, search engine marketing and social media marketing.  There were several writers that would be considered “influencers” in the field that I followed regularly.  As my education continued I became much more selective of who I would follow and read and occasionally came across a new writer that provided a new slant on a subject.  My goal has always been to learn something new every day to expand my knowledge base and I found that I was able to apply much of what I learned to my job as an SEO.

A few years back I began to notice a disturbing pattern among many writers in the web content they were publishing.  As I searched through the list of new articles each day I constantly came across articles that looked very familiar.  Not that they were copies of old articles but a constant rehashing of an old topic with nothing really new added to what everyone in the SEO field already knew.  There has even been a new term created for this type of activity.  The articles such as this always start out with a statement indicating that this is some new and revolutionary idea but they never seem to pan out.  Many time I never finished reading and after a paragraph of two I moved on to another article.

The reason I find this so irritating is that regardless of the fact that I have been working in SEO for a number of years, I still like to find an interesting article on some aspect of the business that I am lacking in knowledge.  I know that my education in this field is never ending and there are many out there much smarter than me.  As our field is constantly in flux, it is important to keep up with what is happening, the current focus of search engines, changes in social media platforms and advice from the influencers in the business.  Maybe my irritation stems from the fact that I am getting a bit smarter in my search for quality articles and in the past read articles that I would bypass today; or is it that web content is actually getting dumber?  I don’t want to think that everyone is simply deluged with low quality articles that have been written many times before.  I would like to think that I am just getting smarter and more selective.

If you have found this problem when searching the web for new and exciting articles on the SEO field I would like to hear your thoughts on whether we are smarter or the web is dumber!