I’m rethinking blogging – Marie Haynes

Hello! 👋

This started with a short post about why I’m moving my newsletter back to my blog and eventually turned into a full-length article with my thoughts on the value of blogging today.

In the 14 years I have been writing my newsletter, it has undergone many changes. I want to share my thoughts on why producing blog content is valuable again, but for very different reasons than before!

In recent years the newsletter has lived in my community, The search bar.

You can read Older episodes of the newsletter can be found here.

You can find the new newsletter here in the “Newsletter” category of my blog. The first episode of this new season will be released tomorrow.

I removed the newsletter from my blog for several reasons. The main reason was that Google just didn’t like it. There was really no reason to index it in search. I think this was because for a while the newsletter simply summarized the content on the web and had no significant original value on its own. I mean, it had value for people to get it in their inbox, but it wasn’t the kind of thing that people would rather land on through search than read the articles it summarized.

However, I think my new blog posts have original value. Especially when we think about how search changes when it becomes an agent.

Does it make sense to have a blog today?

Yes, but for different reasons than before. I believe agents will make blogging exciting again.

This week three of my clients asked me to brainstorm with them about the effectiveness of their blog. Is it still worth blogging in the age of search?

For many years, a blog served multiple purposes:

1. Having an in-depth knowledge base on a topic shows your current authority. I do believe that is true today. But I also think that at many companies you already have that authority. If you’re known for buying green widgets, writing more blog content about green widgets probably won’t increase your topic authority. If you’re brand new to your field, blog content can help you gain exposure, but only if you can write blog posts that add new information to the body of knowledge in your field – not an easy task.
2. A blog can attract links. That’s true again today, but most blog content I see today isn’t something people link to unless it’s new, helpful information, like a study.
3. A blog can attract customers, leads and newsletter subscribers. I have researched this for my clients. I worked with Claude and later Antigravity to dig into GA4 and see if the people landing on the blog resulted in conversions or something meaningful for the company. For all three customers, the answer was essentially no. We invested a lot of time and money producing content that didn’t make any significant difference to the company. In one case, we found that a certain type of blog content actually resulted in some sales. For most, however, the blog content represented an information need that was now well covered by AI Overviews or AI Mode.

Nowadays, almost every type of informational topic is covered quite well by AI Overviews. The incentive to blog is significantly lower. Some of my clients have suggested that appearing in the AIOs may have brand value. I think you’re right. I also think in some cases people click through from the AIOs. But not nearly as many as before.

However, I think there is another reason to blog. This revelation changed my thinking and made me realize that the content I’m creating for my newsletter today should really be stored in a place that Google can easily crawl and present to searchers – on my website, not there my community. (My community runs on Mighty Networks, which is great for a community but has significant limitations when it comes to SEO.)

Your blog will be valuable if it is useful to agents

When search becomes agentic, our primary purpose will not be to provide information to the world, but to provide it Functionality for agents – Remember that these agents help real people achieve things.

I just got access to Gemini in Chrome and find it very useful. I open the sidebar all day and ask Gemini to do something with the information I can get from websites. I can only imagine how much more useful this will be if two things happen:

1. Gemini can perform actions and use tools.
2. Websites have WebMCP (a simple tool that gives AI agents the ability to leverage your website’s functionality).

Both come.

I think there are three reasons to blog today. The first option is that you are a reliable source that people actually turn to to learn about your topic. For example, people still read Search Engine Roundtable, SEL or SEJ to learn what’s happening in search engine optimization. Next, your blog is important if you can provide original data such as a new study or findings that are currently unknown to the world. But most importantly, Your blog is important if you can provide people with information that enables them to achieve things.

Some examples of helpful blogging

Let me share some examples of the type of content that helps people achieve things.

1. Tutorials. Let’s say you figured out how to do something cool by connecting the Ahrefs or SEMrush MCP to Claude or Antigravity. If you create a tutorial, I can tell my agent (Gemini in Chrome in most cases, but could also be Claude, etc.) “Take the information in this article and reproduce the process for me.”
2. Templates and processes. I could publish a blog post about how I approach analyzing a traffic drop. You could then ask your agent to adapt my process to your situation.
3. inspiration. A blog post about how you decorated your living room, or new art you created, or a craft project you did could serve as inspiration for my agent to help me create something similar.
4. Really original ideas. I hope you’re reading this: a blog post that will help you think about a topic in a different way. Readers can then ask their agents to help them brainstorm ways to incorporate these ideas into their workflows.
5. Share your experiences in a way that helps people make decisions. I think first-hand, high-quality reviews of products, restaurants, etc. will be even more valuable as people place a lot of value on people’s experiences. Your original blog post could be used by agents to help people make purchasing decisions.

I think that new opportunities will also arise to use the content of websites. We are entering a new era where we will see all kinds of creativity!

The point I want to make is that blog content is valuable when it truly helps people not only learn something, but also achieve something or do things differently.

With that in mind, I’m excited to introduce you to my new newsletter style in my next blog post (coming out tomorrow). Instead of just curating the news for you, I thought hard about how I could write from experience. I asked Gemini to take a look at my client calls and Search Bar meetings from the last two weeks and highlight the actionable things we discussed. If I discussed it in a client meeting, others would want to know! I’ve written about this and concluded with some ideas on how to use your agents to get things done along with my blog post.

Speaking of which, here’s an idea for you. You can now open Gemini in the Chrome sidebar (you should see an “Ask Gemini” button in the top right corner of Chrome) and ask: “Based on Marie’s blog post and what you know about me, what are 10 ideas for topics I could blog about?“You could also try opening your blog in a different tab in the Gemini conversation so that Gemini can gain more insights.

I hope you enjoy the new newsletter! Stay tuned here tomorrow or better yet, sign up below and I’ll email it to you.

Mary

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