SEO in 2026 feels broken. So I’m trying something else

I’m not an SEO expert.

Just a developer trying to get at least some users to the things I build.

And lately it feels… strange.

What I’m seeing

I published several posts on Dev.to.

Some were original — 20–80 views

Some slightly adapted — maybe 100–300

But overall, nothing really moves.

At the same time:

• Google traffic → almost zero
• My own site → barely indexed
• Social → small spikes, then nothing

Feels like you start from zero every time.

The weird part

When I write a normal article — nobody reads it.

When I build a simple tool page for one very specific use case —

it has more chance to be indexed and actually used.

Not huge numbers. But different behavior.

This doesn’t look like classic SEO anymore.

Feels more like:

content that ranks → vs → answers that get extracted

The moment it clicked

I asked ChatGPT:

"regex for email validation"

It returned:

• working regex
• explanation
• edge cases

Everything in one place.

No need to open anything else.

So why would someone click search results?

What I’m trying now

Instead of writing more content, I started building tools.

Small ones. Very simple.

• JSON formatter
• Regex tester
• Base64 encoder
• SSL checker
• IP lookup

Right now I’m building towards ~100 tools.

Early signals

Still early, but I see:

• tool pages get indexed faster
• people actually stay on them
• some long-tail queries appear
• structured parts sometimes show up in AI answers

Again, small numbers.

But not the same pattern as blog posts.

How I structure a page now

I stopped thinking in terms of:

tool + some SEO text

Now each page looks more like a small answer system:

• clear title for one exact problem
• working tool
• short intro
• 2–3 useful sections
• examples
• FAQ
• glossary
• related tools
• links to nearby tools

Data structure behind it

Instead of writing everything manually, I model pages like this:

{
  slug: "json-formatter",
  title: "JSON Formatter",
  searchIntents: [
    "format json online",
    "pretty print json",
    "json beautifier"
  ],
  useCases: [
    {
      title: "Debugging API responses",
      description: "Make JSON readable"
    }
  ],
  glossary: [
    {
      term: "JSON",
      definition: "Structured data format"
    }
  ],
  relatedSlugs: ["json-validator"],
  clusterSlugs: ["json-validator", "json-diff"]
}

Shared layout

All pages use same structure:

<ToolPage>
  <ToolHeader />
  <ToolUI />
  <HowToUse />
  <UseCases />
  <Examples />
  <FAQ />
  <Glossary />
  <RelatedTools />
  <ClusterTools />
</ToolPage>

Only the tool itself is different.

Everything else is predictable.

What I think is changing

Not sure yet, but looks like:
Content is no longer the main unit.
Structured answers are.

Blog posts are easy to summarize.

Tool pages with clear structure are harder to replace.

Not sure where this goes

Honestly, I don’t have a conclusion.

Just testing.

I’ll keep building tools, structuring pages, and see what happens.
If something works — will share numbers.

If not — also useful result.

Curious about others

Are you seeing any traffic from AI tools?

Or still mostly Google?