Realistically optimize your blog – Honest SEO advice
I often read articles and blog posts dishing out bad SEO advice and misinformation in regards to the definition of search engine optimization (and really “optimization” in general).
Lets get the fact absolutely straight… Always optimize your blog. Obsess over it, don’t think you don’t need it! I’ve noticed too many authors detail how they pay little attention to SEO but still follow basic optimization methods, including SEO plugins and still have success. The fact is competitors could easily steal your articles or posts keywords and search engine results If you don’t pay attention to SEO. They can even rank for more relevant terms which your blog posts left out.
Be the first
Everyone says be unique, that’s true… be unique, but being the first or one of the first is even better. That means being unique is a subset of being the original.
Some say don’t worry about being the first, be the best. Part of that’s true, be the best. But why would you produce anything that wasn’t the best in the first place… Always produce the best content. I see where authors are coming from with this statement, but it’s really only necessary for businesses (ie Myspace, Digg: Get the connection?) not blog posts, be the best (that’s given) and be the first.
Writing original articles and posts, and then submitting them to Bing, Google, and other search engine’s indexes immediately after publishing them is one of the easiest ways reach the top of SERPs for said keyword content.
Use original images, use your own images, and use fill out all the details properly (width, height, alt, etc.).
Update but never change
Update your articles and posts but never change a large majority of content and structure. Changing a large majority of content can result in a loss of ranking in SERPs. Google discusses similar issues a lot, here’s what they have to say: “If you’ve experienced a change in ranking which you suspect may be more than a simple algorithm change, there are other things you may want to investigate as possible causes, such as a major change to your site’s content, content management system, or server architecture. For example, a site may not rank well if your server stops serving pages to Googlebot, or if you’ve changed the URLs for a large portion of your site’s pages.”
Add content to any location in a present post but don’t rearrange the structure of the content too often.
Add more pictures, fix image details, but never remove an image, even by replacing one with the same URL.
Page Rank DOES matter
Page rank is important. Dismiss anyone whom states otherwise, they are misinforming you. The higher your page rank, the better rank in search results your website will have, which leads to a lot more organic traffic (you do want organic traffic right?). Page rank is Google’s way of voting for your website, without a page rank, you’ll have much less opportunity. My take on all the authors whom dismiss page rank is that their websites have never acquired a proper page rank before, therefore they do not know much about the gems certain to unveil from achieving a successful page rank.
People Rank vs. Page Rank
There are many concerns about people rank and page rank. Most authors say “people rank is far more important than page rank” and some say “Today, it’s not page rank that matters, it’s people rank. “… Which is only partly true, you want as many people as possible to socially promote your material (people rank)… This way you can develop a page rank for your webpage and rank better in Google results. Without people rank you can’t as easily achieve a successful page rank. Without a successful page rank you will not acquire as much organic traffic as you could be… In the blogosphere page rank is a valuable tool for success and people rank is only a subset of page rank, as unique content is a subset of being original. There’s no competition for the two, page rank is what people rank wants to be when it grows up.
Conclusion
This concludes my short SEO rant. Please take these methods serious and try to avoid bad SEO advice in the future. If you happen to see articles conflicting with any advice given here, fill them in, let them know the truth, give their readers a change to be successful instead of hurting themselves with bad SEO advice.
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