system
A chat on subreddit /r/NoStupidQuestions
human
I'm part of the machine that's probably causing the problem.

I work with clients who want their articles to rank in the first page (because who doesn't?). 

Currently, one of them is pretty big and produces hundreds of thousands of words a month writing listicles or "best x for y" types of content. 

The secret sauce is SEO, which is to optimize your content based on a particularly popular search phrase.

The problem with that, as you have experienced, is how an article can be optimized for that keyword or phrase, but it will be of low quality or was just optimized for the sake of i.e. all empty calories.
gpt
I too, sadly, am a cog in that machine. SEO rules, Google drools.