SEO Debates
If you follow many of The Debates About SEO you might find yourself confused. In the SEO world, keyword research is imperative, yet often it causes many bloggers to go overboard which can lead to what's called “keyword stuffing”. If you are confused by this jargon, don't be. My goal for this post is to assure you, that you absolutely do not need to use SEO in every circumstance.
I don't want to get off on the wrong foot by trying to convince you that learning search engine optimization is a waste of time. Knowledge is power and as a blogger, the more power you have the better. Learn all the SEO jargon you can, and give yourself a taste of it one chunk at a time whenever your schedule permits. Yet personally, after blogging for more than one year I find SEO to be the most boring, monotonous, and tedious aspects of the entire blogosphere. (Btw, searching for royalty free images is boring too, especially when you can't find the one you really want).
SEO Resources
At the very least, I'll share with you some resources that I consider to be the most interesting and compelling writers on the topic. Rest assured, each of these bloggers have such a smooth and easy-going writing style, that they will hold your interest and give you the most bang for your SEO buck:
WeBlogBetter – four of the best female bloggers on the planet: Kiesha, Tia, Evelyn and Jean joined by one fine young man Wayne. Right now Kiesha is holding a cash prize contest slash birthday party called the WeBlogBetter's Birthday Celebration Cash Giveaway!! and I'm proud to be one of the sponsors.
DiTesco – he's the expert, but like I said he'll keep you interested, and he gets right to the point!
Gail from Grow Map – if you have an online business, do yourself a favor and go to her site right now. Trust me.
Alex Whalley – is the man when it comes to generating traffic, and he's just plain old smart.
Mavis Nong is the Attraction Marketing diva
UPDATE: I also need to include Karl and Kelly Foxley – this dynamic duo has a very well respected internet marketing and search engine optimisation blog that is worth exploring. You can also find out about getting a Free SEO report too.
More Blogging Resources
Two awesome ladies you should check out for tips about blogging and guest blogging are Kristi Hines of Kikolani and Ann Smarty. And I can't neglect to mention these two additional resources that cover everything under the sun that's related to blogging resources: Justin from DragonBlogger and Hesham of Famous Bloggers.
I also have to give shout outs to my fellow BloggerLuv family member Mitch, because he inspired this post and to my friend Suresh who just started his SEOMMO Tips blog a few weeks days ago.
Just Blog!
Now that's taken care of. Let's talk about my experience with writing blog posts and getting organic traffic (didn't mean to slip that one in there – but “organic” means “traffic from search engines“).
One of the first blog posts I ever wrote was about my favorite college physics Professor Walter Lewin. I was very new to blogging and I wanted to share and express myself. Next, I wrote a post I thought would be funny called Do Twitter Backgrounds Attract Followers? A few month later I became a little more internet savvy. I began using Google Chrome and finding all of these fantastic extensions for chrome, in particular Readability. These three posts continue to bring organic traffic (there's that word again) to Ms. Ileane Speaks everyday and I haven't written a post on that blog in almost two months. I didn't use any search strategies, or research any keywords, or read up on black-hat, or…well, you know what I mean (or at least you will after you visit a few of the links I just gave you).
In conclusion, if you want to blog without SEO, or you don't understand it, or if it simply bores the heck out of you, take a deep breath (or go do some yoga) and just blog!
