Courtesy Tadeusz Szewczyk of onReact.com by way of GoogleBlogoscoped, ProBlogger tipped me off to Tadeusz post titled 10 Steps to Success on the ’Net Without SEO:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as we know and detest it is obsolete in this day and age. When some while ago Philipp asked me to write an article “How do I optimize websites” I couldn’t do it: The way SEO works in Germany on Google.de can not really work for international websites in English. Moreover nowadays you do not need conventional SEO tactics to have success on the Net or in Google. In order to make a site succeed in these times you have to forget everything you know about on page optimization and link building first. Via 10 Steps to Success on the ’Net Without SEO
Is spent a lot of my time from 1998-2005 optimizing my (what was then) web site – it was very time consuming and hard work. I was writing daily anyways but when I converted my website to a WordPress blog my life got a whole lot simpler. I stopped optimizing and just wrote my heart out – it worked.
Tadeusz Top 10 List
Make sure you check out 10 Steps to Success on the ’Net Without SEO because the details and his reasons for each of the ten points are included. Here they are:
- Discover your niche
- Use WordPress
- Create a killer CSS design and submit it to CSS galleries
- Allow trackbacks, use dofollow
- Socialize, write comments and link other blogs
- Include social media on your site, use social media yourself
- Write your own content, say something new, express yourself
- Compile what you know or what others said and publish it
- Contribute to your favorite online publications
- Add new content at least every second day
The only point I take issue with is # 3 because I have a love/hate relationship with themes. There is not doubt that Tadeusz is 100% right in stating that creating a killer WordPress theme will help your Page Rank with all those inbound links from your design – I am not a designer. Argh! I love WordPress but there are so many badly designed and broken (CSS & HTML) themes I want to puke on them (mine included).
That said, if you hunt around, you can find a few themes that are compliant and cross browser compatible, but I digress.
I like playing around with CSS, perhaps I should team up with a programmer familiar with WordPress and see if we can collaborate on a theme and we would both win.
Hmmm… any takers?
Disclaimer
In many respects Tadeusz points are common sense, kind of boring, and hard work but is worth the effort because then you can forget about SEO and just do what we bloggers do best – read, write and relate!
Greg Balanko-Dickson is author of two business books, third generation entrepreneur and The Remote Control CEO.
Lorelle on WordPress 
23 Comments
Why is using WordPress a requirement? I mean, is there something special SEO-wise about using WordPress as a cms instead of any of the other ones?
No offense, but I think I’d rather gouge out my eyes with a pen than use WordPress. I’ve spent more time helping people rescue mangled templates out of that blogging engine that ever doing anything productive with it.
On the contrary, I have found WordPress to be HUGE boost for my site. Having tried other CMS/blog-type software, my hits, pagerank, alexa scores, etc. actually surged big time within a month of switching to WP. I don’t know why, but WP took my site to a whole new level. No complaints from me.
mdm-adph: You are not alone in the issue of struggles with WordPress Themes, but consider the source. These are NOT generated by WordPress, so why blame WordPress. Blame those who do not take the care they need to when they release their WordPress Themes to the public.
WordPress is in the business of helping bloggers blog. Independent web designers create WordPress Themes for the public to use. Yes, they need to learn to do it better and stop the gimmicks and bad design practices, but not all WordPress Themes are bad.
And not all who tweak WordPress Themes know the implications of those tweaks. 😀
But this topic isn’t about web design but about how blogs are so SEO-friendly without the tweaking and games people play with their blogs.
Brilliant find, Greg. I sure wish I’d found it first. 😀
Great points Lorelle, blogs are search engine friendly which really is the point.
As always these are guidelines and not promises.
I am one of those guilty critters who tweaks a theme and then gets angry that I do not know what I did wrong cause Lord knows that decoding the error messages from http://validator.w3.org requires a degree in rocket science.
Lorelle, I was going back and forth on whether to write about it or not – let it sit overnight and decide to go for it because it was a message I felt needed to get out there. 😉 Sorry I beat you to it. Well sort of. 😀
When I started this naive project of two months of guest blogging, I didn’t know I’d have to compete for finding brilliant content for my readers with my own guest bloggers!
SIGH!
It’s the price you pay for good content. 😀
Thanks for the link love and for the post. People spend so much time messing around with SEO, when they could be concentrating on creating unique content.
I agree with the idea that we could just leave the SEO business to blog engines like our much-beloved WordPress and it’s for the best (and much easier) for blogger to worry about good content instead.
By the way I’m excited with the theme collaboration idea, Lorelle. How do I contribute to this? I’d say know one or two things about coding browsers-compatible and standard compliant WP themes 🙂
Hafiz, what theme collaboration idea? Oh, Tadeusz Szewczyk’s suggestion. Go talk to him.
Oh, wow! My mistake. I’m so sorry 🙂
Hello, can somebody tell my where i can find a better position searching toll than this: http://www.cleverstat.com/google-monitor-query.htm – have somebody a better tool. this is not so professional. please give feedback. bye and greetings from europe
Aye, use dofollow for blog comments & say bye-bye to seo power of all outgoing links on your blog…
I’m going crazy with the SEO stuff, I can’t get my supplemental to disappear – even after reading and implementing 100 ideas. Sigh. back to writing for me…. I do like the idea of a Lorellle WordPress theme though..:)
MichelleVan: You have two choices with supplemental content.
1. Leave it. If you are using a WordPress blog, it’s natural that there will be “duplicate content” within the blog system. That’s normal and you are not penalized. Quit fussing over it.
2. Go through your WordPress Theme and change all references (except on the single post template file) from
the_content()tothe_excerpt()and it’s done. It’s that easy. You will, though, no longer have full posts visible on your blog’s front page, if you change that one, but excerpts will be on all the rest of the multi-post page views.I’d go with option 2 if this REALLY bothers you, but there is no evidence that WordPress blogs being penalized for something it does naturally. Search engines expect natural duplication within a blog.
It’s scrapers and sploggers who duplicate your content or duplicate content across multiple posts in their ad-filled blogs that Google is after, not your category or tag page views.
Lorelle, I’ve got the excerpt on my archives already. I’m happy. Thank you for helping me to sleep tonight.
I hate it every time I read a “create unique content” as the answer as an alternative to SEO. Writing unique content is not as simple as it seems. Even if you find a niche, how many thousands of other people are also blogging about that niche? What if your content is just ordinary or slightly better than medicore but not excellent? You have to find a way to create get an edge or buzz. Enter SEO and other forms of line promotion and advertising whether free or paid.
The reality is that in order to compete for the internet megaphone you need to do more than “just write content”. Think of all the wannabe screenwriters, music artists, authors, short story writers, etc. Only a few are actually “discovered”. The rest play a constant game of promotion – some sweat equity, some paid equity – in the hope that they get noticed.
No, Tom, that’s old thinking. You do not have to compete, grasp, and grab to get attention on the web. It’s not about getting the attention of everyone. The key is getting the attention of those who want and need what you have to offer.
Playing the “game”, as you call it, takes away from the creation energy and puts it into the grasping game for attention. The real treasures on the web understand that content counts, not the games.
As for the issue of “unique content”, this doesn’t mean come up with a subject that no one is covering. It means say it “your way”. Make it have “your words”, “your ideas”, and “your perspective”.
There is rarely such a thing as a new idea, just old ideas presented in a new light. The “unique content” is a stab at defining any content that isn’t copy and paste, part of the echo chamber effect, where everyone blogs the same thing on the same pop subjects.
Honestly, I have done no promotion, no grasping for attention, no site submissions, nothing on this blog. I write on a very narrow topic, on content this is covered elsewhere, probably better. But it’s my voice and writing style that people seem to like. Go figure. I just do my thing and people are noticing. And I often wonder why.
In my many years of doing this, I’ve found that those who work the hardest at SEO and attention-getting techniques, burn out the fastest, get the least long-term return on their investment, and keep repeating the same mistakes because they aren’t learning from their lessons before repeating them.
Unique content isn’t hard. Just do your own writing and don’t copy others. No different than it was in school. Don’t plagiarize.
Lorelle, Permalink
Don’t forget Lorelle, you were one of the few (very, very very few) who would take other new WP.com users seriously, i.e., with respect.
mpb: Thank you. That’s a very nice thing to say. I’ve always thought WordPress.com had great potential, and it still does. It’s a great stepping stone for new bloggers, letting them experiment and learn how to blog before investing too much time, money, and energy into something they won’t like in six months.
And the plethora of fabulous bloggers – I am always so impressed with WordPress.com bloggers. They are definitely a few notches up from “other” free blog offerings. From the beginning, we’ve had serious folks blogging on serious subjects, bringing fresh perspectives and new ideas to the blogosphere. It’s been exciting to be a small part of it.
Can you tell I feel like a mother hen to WordPress.com? 😉 I’m really proud of all it’s accomplished in the past two years. Very proud.
Say No to SEO equals say NO to rankings. There are two different SEO ways: Spamming, and Natural SEO.
I prefer the second one. However, I just found one totally black hat SEO done by site (finerdesign.com) which ranks 4-th in Google for ‘web design’. Spamming (black hat in genera;) still works. Natural SEO works as well.
I would say it differently; Do SEO if you know what SEO is. Optimisation includes strategic goals, their approach, plans, analysis, checking your competitors, and so on. Doesn’t it?
Thanks for the tips. I am just started to embark this blogging journey.
I have noticed that people are crazy trying to optimise their website. This is good but SEO, which I think only 1 portion of it. We should try various methods to increase our web traffic as well.
Patrick
Tom – if your content is mediocre, or only slightly better than other stuff available on the net, then surely you shouldn’t be promoting it, you should be burying it.
If it ain’t that good, then give up.
If you do not strive to have the best writing, then what is the point? If you’re happy with mediocrity, then I’d suggest doing something else – what are YOU good at? Think about that, and you’ll carve your own niche.
Great stuff I too agree that content is king. Seo will take you but so far when you find content that moves you there is a good chance that it will move your readers.
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