The content is algorithm first, not human first. I too refrain from consuming articles written for computers.
"Want to check my roasted platypus recipe? Check out this 1000 words tell on why I love roasting platypuses"
Of course paired with an auto play video of unrelated content.
F%(*ing insufferable madness
My understanding is that it's Google PageRank's "fault".
Because every one of these websites has a google tracker embedded in it, google knows how long you spend on a website. If you load a page then don't interact with it or leave quickly, it assumes you didn't find what you were looking for. The longer you're fumbling around looking for the valuable part of the page (the recipe) the higher the site ranks amongst recipe sites for PageRank, the more hits they'll get in the future.
So - Slowing the current reader down will produce bonus readers later.
Nobody googles titles like 'what I learnt'
The blog post shares every single insight I learnt reviewing landing pages and running my business without any SEO implemented at all.
Did I miss the data that backs up your assertions that the improvements were effective?