Search Traffic is Dying. Here's How to Keep Your Content Alive.

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This week I've been banging on to anyone who will listen about the "death of search" and what it means for content creators. Did you see that HubSpot traffic graph doing its best impression of a skier who's accidentally found themselves on the "certain death" black run? It's the kind of thing that keeps creators up at night.

If you missed our recent podcast episode with Matthew (Colin’s co-host on PodCraft), we had a fascinating chat about whether content sites will even exist in five years. The short answer is yes, they will - but not the way most people are building them now. With search traffic declining and AI answering more questions directly, the middle ground of content is rapidly disappearing.

But don't worry, I've been obsessing over this topic so you don't have to. Let's dig in.

💡 Steal This Tactic: The "Barbell Strategy" for Content That Will Survive the Death of Search

If you've been watching content trends lately, you might have noticed that middle-of-the-road content is dying. Fast. It's being squeezed out by AI on one side and by unique human expertise on the other.

But rather than panicking, what if we could use this shift to our advantage? That's where the "barbell strategy" comes in – focusing on creating content at either extreme of the value spectrum while avoiding the soon-to-be-obsolete middle.

What is the Barbell Strategy?

The barbell strategy involves focusing your content creation efforts at two extremes:

On one end: Super-structured, data-rich, comprehensive utility content designed to be maximally useful for both humans and AI.

On the other end: Deeply personal, experience-based content that only you can create – the messy, emotional, human stuff that AI simply cannot replicate.

The middle ground – generic, somewhat helpful content that doesn't excel at either extreme – is where traffic is declining most rapidly.

How to Implement the Barbell Strategy

For Utility Content (The Left Side of the Barbell):

1. Go deep on structure and organization: Create content that's meticulously organized with clear headings, bullet points, and a logical flow. This makes it easier for both humans and AI to extract value.

2. Pack it with verifiable data: Include statistics, research findings, and concrete examples that add real substance to your content.

3. Think like a database, not just an article: Create content that serves as a comprehensive resource - something that AI might want to quote when answering questions.

4. Focus on specificity: Rather than general guides, create highly specific resources that solve particular problems in exhaustive detail.

For Human Content (The Right Side of the Barbell):

1. Share real experiences: Document your own journey, complete with failures, insights, and the messy reality that AI can't access.

2. Include your unique perspective: Don't just report facts – interpret them through your unique lens and experience.

3. Tell stories that only you can tell: Your personal anecdotes are impossible for AI to generate authentically.

4. Build genuine connections: Use your content to foster community and create emotional resonance with your audience.

How to Decide Which Side of the Barbell Is Right for You

Ask yourself these questions:

1. What unique expertise or experiences do I have that others don't?

2. Where can I provide extraordinary utility through structure and depth?

3. What content can I create that would be impossible for AI to replicate?

The key is to commit fully to one extreme or the other for each piece of content – don't try to straddle the middle. Your content should either be the most comprehensively useful resource on a topic, or it should be so uniquely personal that no AI could ever recreate it.

Remember, middle-ground content is what's dying. The extremes are where the future opportunities lie.

👉 Read the full article here, or listen to the episode

❓ Creator Question: "I have a small but loyal audience. With all these platform changes, should I focus on growing wider distribution or deepening connection with my existing followers?"

This question couldn't be more timely, given all the platform chaos we're witnessing.

The reflexive response when everything feels unstable is to spread yourself across more platforms. Get on YouTube! Start a TikTok! Do all the things! It makes intuitive sense to diversify, right?

But I actually think that might be completely backward.

A small but loyal audience is gold in today's attention-deficit economy. Do you know how bloody difficult it is to build genuine loyalty now? Everyone's got seventeen tabs open and the attention span of a caffeinated squirrel. If you've got people who actually care about what you create, that's really not something to take for granted.

Here's why I'd double down on deepening those connections:

First, these people already know and trust you. They're infinitely more likely to buy your stuff, sign up for your course, or join your community than some rando who just stumbled across your content.

Second, loyal fans become your marketing team. I've seen tiny podcasts explode because 200 diehard fans wouldn't shut up about them to their friends. Word of mouth is still the most powerful marketing in existence, and it only happens when people feel personally invested.

Third, deeply engaged followers give you brutally honest feedback that helps you create better stuff. My most valuable product insights have never come from analytics, but from messages that start with "Love your work, but..."

That said, don't completely ignore growth. But be strategic about it:

1. Ask your existing audience where they hang out online and focus your expansion efforts on just 1-2 of those platforms. Your people likely cluster in specific digital neighbourhoods.

2. Build on land you own – email list, private community, or membership site – where some corporate algorithm change can't obliterate your audience overnight.

3. Turn your audience into allies. Create specific invitations and incentives for them to bring friends into your world. Not generic "please share" requests, but structured referral programs or challenges.

This reminds me of Kevin Kelly's "1,000 True Fans" essay. He argued that a creator only needs about 1,000 people who care deeply enough to support their work financially. That thesis feels more relevant now than when he wrote it in 2008.

The creators who are winning right now aren't necessarily the ones with the widest distribution – they're the ones with direct, resilient audience relationships.

So my advice? Go deep before you go wide. In a world of infinite content but finite attention, the creators who build genuine connections will be the last ones standing.

🖋️ Tool Review: Highland 2 - The Distraction-Free Writing App That Might Just Cure Your Writer's Block

Disclaimer: it’s only available on MacOS.

Ever find yourself opening a blank document, only to spend the next hour tweaking fonts, playing with formatting, and obsessing over headline styles without actually writing a single paragraph? Yeah, me too.

That's why I was excited to discover Highland 2, a writing app that strips away everything but the words themselves, creating a truly distraction-free writing experience.

What is it?: Highland 2 is a minimalist writing app originally designed for screenwriters, but now embraced by all kinds of content creators who want to focus purely on their writing without distractions.

How it works: Highland uses Markdown (a simple formatting language) for basic styling like headers and bold text, but - and this is the key part - it doesn't actually show you the formatted text while you're writing. Everything stays clean, flat, and simple, with just slight color changes indicating formatting.

In full-screen mode, there's literally nothing on your screen but your words - no toolbars, no font options, no blinking notifications. Just you and your thoughts.

Key features I love:

1. Typewriter mode - This keeps the paragraph you're currently writing centered on the screen, scrolling up as you type. It's incredibly effective for maintaining focus.

2. Built-in Pomodoro timer - A small icon in the corner lets you start writing sprints, giving you structured time to focus without having to switch to another app.

3. Markdown-based - Everything saves directly as markdown files, which means you can open them in any text editor or paste them directly into tools like Notion without weird formatting issues.

4. Complete portability - Since it saves standard markdown files, you're never locked into a proprietary format.

What it's missing: If you need collaborative features like comments from others, this isn't your tool. It's deliberately designed for solo writing sessions.

Price: Free! (There's a paid version with more features, but the free version is perfectly functional for most needs, it’s the one I use)

Who it's perfect for:

• Writers who get distracted by bells and whistles

• Anyone who obsessively edits while they write (stop this!)

• People who want to separate the writing and editing processes

• Content creators who use multiple platforms and need clean, portable text

Who should look elsewhere:

• Collaborative teams needing real-time editing

• Writers who rely heavily on visual formatting while writing

• Anyone who needs complex tables or other advanced layouts

After trying what feels like every writing app under the sun, I've found Highland 2 to be my perfect writing companion for first drafts. It helps me get into flow state faster and stay there longer, simply by removing all the shiny distractions that usually tempt me away from actually writing.

Once I'm done, I can paste my beautifully structured markdown text directly into Notion, Google Docs, or wherever I need it for collaboration and finalization. It's simple, it's elegant, and it actually helps me write more.

👉 Give it a whirl yourself here, or listen to me prattle on about it on episode 19 of Creator Craft.

Until next week,

Jacob

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