What matters?
Defining literature, Wordsworth remarked it “is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”. So true throughout all these three hundred years. For a good work of art you can’t dictate – do this or that, can use these words, don’t use them blabla… A sweet post is born when you are really moved by the topic – the incident really touched you – there started a cloud of feelings, views, likes, dislikes, thoughts and they fight reacting. You pour down on to a post makes a worthy, sweet engaging and entertaining.
That was about creating posts – so sweet!
Search engines, their crawlers, bots and the rest are all from a different world. You’ll hear big voices suggesting, dictating and prohibiting. Find the words that are searched – use these words on your title – repeat them in post here, there and there too! Write for machines, for those bots, crawlers and those engines. That’s too long – limit that in 250 words. Write something that isn’t a bit readable for any human spirit and submit it everywhere! Comment on these types of blogs, posts, no…no don’t speak there, don’t leave your link! Oh My GOD! No room for human voice here!
OMG is it that complicated?
Why is it so complicated? Essentially it’s because the difference in language, the computers and we use. The world is changing though – computers started to understand natural language. You might find it interesting to go through Brian R Gaines’ paper ‘From ergonomics to the fifth generation: 30 years of human-computer interaction studies’ (must pay $42 to download). We can expect this ‘too techie’ part will diminish gradually but till then there is no escape!
There comes SEO – an art of mingling human jolly and machine dryness. Balance things up and mould your post so that it is most visible and readable to search engines without reducing the human charm and favor. That is what Search Engine Optimization is.
Is SEO too techie and really complicated? Yes and No. Some ‘SEO Experts’ plug in loud speakers and broadcast extra classical Mantras leaving you wondered and spirits down. Let them. Its their business. They earn that way. As a blogger, you don’t be that concerned. Go on learning SEO tasks incrementally and implement in your posts. A few days and more you’ll gain confidence and start dancing hip-hop! I remember Ileane’s post ‘Ever Consider Blogging Without SEO’. She has very nicely discussed the topic and gave some valuable resources.
Just a few days ago Cebu Tech Blogger informed about the release of Google Starter SEO Guide. If you go through this guide, its not hard to realize that crawlers too are growing more capable and search engines started to emphasis human usability more.
Today in this post I wish to share a two ideas to implement SEO to your blog. They are not few, I guess, you can always visit SEO MMO Tips blog for more tips. Lets begin these two tips without much delay:
#1 Write as Wordsworth said and SEO on second reading
That is what I prefer. I can’t research, gather keywords and write based on them. Its the opposite way for me. I prefer writing first. When complete do some research on the topic, make some small modifications here and there to make sure the post is optimized for search engines, and then upload. Some useful tools for research are:
- Wordtracker SEO Blogger (Download)
- Google Keyword Research Tool
- Google Insight for Search
and there are lot more paid services too which I don’t wish to talk now.
#2 Rethink and rewrite the titles
I’m scared if Big John will murder another kitten for suggesting this tips because he has already warned “Do not write about any of these subjects or I will kill a kitten”. I implore, let that little creature breath more!
Its a recent incident. I wrote a post titled “Do Ads Improve Your PageRank”. The post published and submitted to BlogEngage and other networks as well. The post began with a famous quote of Steuart Henderson Britt:
“Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does.”
The post was performing very usual and got just a few votes. When I opened the post second time I thought “Are you too winking at a girl in dark?” would be a better title, why not? The title of post is changed and tweeted a couple of times. Result is pretty impressive. The post got ‘Published’ status on BlogEngage soon.
This was an example to show the effect of catchy title, but you need to try to insert your main keyword inside the title.
You wish to speak out?
How are you mingling the two different worlds? I shared two tips to SEO your blog post, would you add one more in this list? Suggest only one tips please!
See you soon guys. Happy Blogging!
I believe if I write with passion about my niche; it will flow and with a few keywords in the article I usually get my articles ranked. I tend to write for my readers and the rest happens. Because I am in a small niche maybe it is easier in one way as less competition but then I have to work harder with less traffic. You covered the topic well. Congrats on the guest post Suresh.
Patricia Perth Australia
Thank you Patricia. You nicely summarized the post. As you go blogging and start to collect a few of those SEO gems, you’ll find it more comfortable to access the targets.
At the same moment, please, let me express my gratitude to Ileane as she let me speak out with the readers of her blog!
thank you buddy …thankx alot for clearing my doubts about the SEO…………..but what are the techniques to publish my blogs and website!!??????
I am really doubtful in SEO effects. Recently I haven’t done any keyword researches for my blog posts and just think about what people will search. The result is amazing, now more than 65% of my visits come from Google. Now I suppose that spending more time on content and making everything natural are the best ways to perform SEO. 🙂
That is great Tek3D. You have already internalized SEO and now when you compose something it is already optimized (?)
Recent trends on search engine behavior is gradual shift from more techie stuff to more usable and content oriented. If you write what is more searched, that is already optimized!
Thanks for sharing your experience.
Combining the needs of SEO and clients is a juggling act, and you’ve summed it up quite well. I always try and add the SEO requirements as I go along.
Thank you Andy for the time comment.
Hi Suresh,
I’m always interested in SEO and the way you approach is like mine. First I write with a vague idea about keywords and if the post worth, I research for the best keywords with the tools mentioned. I like also Seobook and Seoquake.
At least you target only SEO articles, there should be a balance in write for humans and a touch for machines.
One question, how you evaluate the effectiveness of “long tail keywords” that have very few searches per month or do not appear mentioned in the tools mentioned, but can be worthy of putting in the articles?
Thanks for sharing this interesting post!
Cheers,
Gera
First of all, please let me admit that I’m not ‘the seo expert’ but an enthusiast to share whatever I read and learned over these years in blogging and running sites.
Those long tail keywords that have very few searches per month and do not appear on research tools might not be of immediate benefit. It depends how you analyze the particular keyword. If it has potential a few times later why not to implement?
Another aspect, for blogs that are very specific or too technical topics, you won’t find the keywords present in search research because there are very few but concerned people searching and using information presented. Thus, just because the search volume is small, you can’t ignore those keyword.
I hope my response answered your query. Feel free to discuss further.
If only I could write like Woodsworth! Actually, I try to do exactly what you suggest. I write out my posts first without any seo considerations and add seo on my editing.
Glad to know we share the way we live! Thanks Richard for commenting.
Although I care about SEO, but since it is stated differently in every sites, until i don’t know which one i should trust.
Since then, i am more concentrated on my blog’s content to be better, and applied the basic SEO.
The rest, i leave it naturally.
Thanks for this great guest post Suresh! Glad to meet you here 😀
That is the safe approach Kimi. Trying to implement everything without much knowledge can sometimes prove devastating. At the same time, generating great content without knowing anything about SEO too won’t give you any fruits.
Thank you Kimi for sharing your views and thanks Ileane for this opportunity 😀
Hi Suresh,
You make a lot of really great points. What’s nice is if done right, SEO will pull in a consistent amount of traffic for each post that is published. Social sites are great for an initial spike of traffic, but after a while the article will slowly fall off along with the amount of people it points to your site. SEO holds out much better over time.
I agree Brian. Social Networking and SEO serves two different purposes, former for gaining immediate attention whereas the later one for consistent long term value. It is SEO that proves a post evergreen!
Great Post Suresh,
When I first started my blog, I was only getting traffic from other blogs that I participated on by commenting and sharing views and ideas. I wasn’t getting anything from Search Engines, but over time when My blog started to get some traffic, I started ranking a bit higher in Google Search Engine.
My blog is still not that popular but at least now it shows up on Googles first page when you search, and the majority of my traffic now comes from search engines. I think SEO is very important and we should try every possible way to maximize it.
My favorite part about the article is “Google Insight for Search” that site is awesome, I had so much fun playing around with different topics to see how each behaved over time.
Thanks for sharing man. 🙂
This is definitely a fine balance to be reached and your part about titles is right on as I recently got caught on a title at WeBlogBetter called Better Bloggers Do It In A Fur Coat!
I agree Caleb. Thanks for the time and comment. Title really plays great role to have immediate attention.
That’s so sweet, Sayed! You should try to balance the traffic as much as you can. The almost equal amount of traffic from (1) search engine (2) referring sites and (3) direct traffic is most favourable – though it is very hard to equalize always. But by looking at the numbers, you can always find on which area you should put more efforts on.
Hi Suresh!I would like to compare SEO with Science rather than literature.According to me the complicacy of SEO lies in the fact that it depends on Search Engines and search engines change their algorithm on a regular basis.Besides the fact that SEO is an ever running process makes it even more complicated.
Oh! ya, Patrick – you caught the right word Science / Literature. Writing post is art and SEO is a science indeed. Well now a fine blending of these two would achieve expected outcome!
Seo is always the talk of the town, it
s pretty much easy,,write good content and link to high relevant sites,,and the search engine will reward you..Period..
“TrafficColeman “Signing Off”
and just as important is getting links back from those high relevant sites 😉
That’s the firsts half you very nicely portrayed – now the next face of the coin is to get back links from those high relevant sites. Simply putting SEO is to make your posts more visible to search engines and get benefits of.
It’s no surprise that after all these years, SEO is still the dominating industry of them all!
I think for most bloggers, having a versatile vocabulary and a minimal understanding of the technical setup of your blog is enough to gain SEO benefits. Write well, using words real humans use, use attractive titles for readers – yet make sure your title tags and site construction are made for machines and you will be just fine. Those of us in the business of SEO worry about the geekier side of things, yet we still need to blend the science with the artistic side of design and content or it is of no use.
Thank you Pittsburgh SEO (Should I call with that name? :D) for the comment and your experienced view on the topic. The more juice is squeezed my mingling these two aspects.
Hi Suresh,
You write really well. The analogy to classics and furthermore, to content in it’s expression. So yes, there is two opposite worlds we’re trying to write to online. Sometimes it doesn’t work out because there’s more feelings than technical keyword insertions.
On the other hand, it’s like trying to piece together a masterpiece that includes the title, keywords, tags, etc. I have been learning to lessen down the technicalities as that can run dry in your voice, however, whitepaper writing as I call it is something I tend to keep at.
It allows me to convey to readers everything I do without so much as miss a point. So even though these aren’t seen highly as a conversational piece, it’s necessary at times. Mix and match and you’ll see what it is your audience will what.
You’ll find that you can’t please everyone all that time and that’s OK. 🙂
On those days, it’s the search engines.
Thanks for the great read!
Cheers!
Thu
Thank you Nguyen. Its very true you can’t please everyone all the time and we never should put readers at background.
Many webmasters focus too much on getting their home page up in the rankings, but as for bloggers getting your post pages up in the rankings is key! Bloggers who post reviews about products and associate an affiliate link in the post and target low competition headlines can cash in on their posts!
That’s why I love Keyword Winner! It targets Google Insights which tells you the overall search percentage per month, Google Competition and Google Trends to see how popular the keyword searches are over a period of time.
A very good point you’ve reminded. We are not doing any great with homepage like websites. They are the post pages that should do business, and I guess, this is the reason why we need to stick to long tail keywords.
Great post I must say.. Simple but yet interesting and engaging.. Keep up the good work!
I think that 80% of online SEO is down to getting the page titles to match the terms you want that page to be found with.
There really is no reason why SEO should change what you actually want to say on the page itself.
SEO is not really that complicated. It’s basically all about creating a good website and building links to it.
Then there’s some techincal stuff as well. But that is not necessary to rank well. So, just create a good website and the SEO will come.
I agree with you.SEO is very complicated.
hey…i like the post ..thanks for sharing it…I just want to know what is the difference between SEO and SMO (Social Media Optimization)??? which of these are easy to do as online business???
I need to learn a lot about setting up a blog and SEO. Good SEO is not easy for beginners. So that’s why I’m on your website. I will come back often to learn from your expertise. Thanks.
The search engines are getting smarter with the content and in order to remain in business, they have to. Extraction of the readability level is not very difficult nowadays, neither is the grammar and vocabulary checks. I wonder, if Search engines are not already using these tools.
Your approach to create content first and then optimize it is very good and should be followed. This way the main emphasis remains on the content rather than the optimization. I always prefer the content over optimization.
Great post and intresting to read the comments to!
Hi Suresh! First of all, I’d like to thank you for sharing all the links. I have visited some of them and I must say that they are pretty valuable resources. In my opinion about SEO, well it’s hit or miss really. And often times, it’s tedious to work in a system like that. I actually do prefer your style. Write first, then modify anything for SEO. This way, what you write is pure and uninfluenced by SEO. A lot of good writers I know compromise content for SEO and it didn’t turn out very well for them in the long run.
Since the Google panda update, i guess the most important matter now is your content. Google now favors sites that update fresh and unique content frequently. SEO is no doubt a tedious work however it will give you positive result as long as you do it right.