It's happening to more and more of the blogs I read: the personality, quirkiness and unique voice that once made them so appealing to me are fading. In their place, an SEO-driven uniformity that puts keyword placement ahead of pretty much everything.

That approach has been afflicting newspapers for some time, as clever headlines give way to the kind of blandness that only a machine could love (which is no coincidence, because machines are the target audience). And many pro bloggers who rely on AdSense for their revenue have been doing it for years.