Invert Longform Writing SEO Advice to Atomic Essays

We’ve been conditioned by broad-stroke SEO advice to only publish 3,000-word articles.

I’ve fallen victim to this mentality and the result is months without publishing. Turning this idea on its head is interesting. What if micro, daily publishing builds a better habit?

German mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi said “invert, always invert” as a way to solve difficult problems. 

One thought that came to my mind was the idea of iterative writing instead of long form all-in-one writing.

Instead of waiting for inspiration, caffeine and an open 4-hour time block to all align at once, invert it.

Instead of sitting down and writing the perfect article all in one go, build it piece by piece. 

One way to do it is to set up folders in Notion for topics, and saving content along with a few sentences of thoughts.

I spend an unhealthy 25-50% of my day reading and saving information, so at least this is an improvement.

A second way is to have an idea for an article in mind and publishing the smallest version of it, and then iteratively improving it over time – I think this is even better.

It’s like shipping 1.0 of a software program and improving it with each release.

A third way is to ship complete 250-word atomic essays that can stand on their own as is and don’t need to be iterated on to make sense.

Thankfully I came across Ship 30 for 30, which counters the isolation of writing. 

-Written on a ship headed to Catalina.