Everywhere you look, advice on SEO marketing and increasing site traffic are all “blah blah blah” about the all-powerful content. How to improve your content. How to create engaging content. How what you thought was good content at one time is now no longer acceptable because of reasons. (And, on a related note, how to spiff up existing content.)

At the frontline of content creation stands blogging. Blogs started out as the business equivalent of a “Dear Readers,” but let’s be honest: most blog posts these days have almost nothing to do with actual writing anymore. They’re all about cross-marketing and the multimedia experience, or how many images to include and at what resolution and which designer can hook you up with a really swell infographic.

I’m kinda partial to writing, being a writer myself and all, so these trends make me a wee bit grouchy.

Or they did, until I really started thinking about what defines the modern blog.

Create a custom blog post with this handy infographic.

• The modern blog begins with a catchy headline to spark attention.
• The modern blog features some kind of graphic related to the content, something that pretties up the writing so it’s not just boring words. Man, plain words are the WORST.
• The modern blog includes some kind of quippy quote that’s imminently shareable, usually already equipped with a convenient “Tweet This!” link for the Twitter impaired.

And while these qualifications may seem like they’re leaving language behind… they’re really not.

Just like the proverbial iceberg that’s always used in examples like this, language might seem to comprise only a small part of content creation at first glance, but writing is actually the enormous, submerged foundational mass from which high-quality content gains the solid footing it needs to launch right out of the water and smack into your audience’s face. But like, in a good way.

From that perspective, now look at that list again:

• Catchy headline? Demands a clever wordsmith armed with titling know-how and the ability to craft a killer first impression with words alone.
• Images and graphics? Emphasize the pictures that are painted by the evocative language used in the post. Dull writing equals zero interesting infographics.
• Quippy quote? Requires an innate editing instinct to know exactly how to distill the gist of your blog post into a 140-character version that still summarizes everything yet leaves enough room for intrigue that people will actually click over to read the full pieceThere’s nothing wrong with including some visual interest along with your blog post—heck, we do it ourselves! At the same time, though, don’t forget this: without an underlying foundation of strong, well-written content, all the gimmicky attention-grabbers in the world won’t help you connect with your audience.

Maarit Miller is a writing junkie who will always love the Oxford comma.