Do not worry about SEO, just concentrate on your blog readers

I often get search engine optimization questions from bloggers. SEO isn’t an information problem.

There are hundreds of books on SEO, and there are even more blogs, subscription and training sites, some charging hundreds of dollars. For an average blogger it is just too much information.

Bloggers often spend large amounts of time and effort with different search engine optimization techniques, and I just do not think it is worth it.

For me personally, focusing too much on search engines doesn’t make a successful blog.

Blog SEO made simple

SEO for blogs can be a quite simple process. There are some simple concepts that you can learn that will make you an above average blogger in terms of search engines optimization.

The hardest part of success with blogging and search engines is finding the motivation to stick to what you know and do it consistently over a period of time. It is only after several months of consistent work that you will start seeing the results.

I will now take a look at what I consider the most important things you have to focus on to be successful, rank in search engines and start getting traffic from search.

The initial SEO setup for your blog

• Include keywords in your domain name.
• Make sure your blog is set with pretty permalinks to include your article headline keywords.
• Make sure to have a blog sitemap and to add it to Google Webmaster Tools.

Write useful blog articles for your readers

• Write new blog articles regularly.
• Write articles for your readers. Write to grab their attention, write to impress them. Forget the search engines.
• Grab the attention of readers by including keywords when writing blog article headlines.

Promote your blog to potential readers and other bloggers

• Actively promote your blog. Don’t be passive, no one will know about your blog if you don’t tell them about it.
• Don’t wait for other sites to link to you. Go to them, offer them an interesting article in exchange for a link back to your blog. This will not only help you get direct traffic but also help you get more authority with Google.

Beware of the Google PageRank of the site that you are offering articles to. The higher the PR, the better. I focus on PR5+ sites as those are above my current pagerank. Use this tool to check PR rankings of the different sites.

Blog search engine optimization conclusion

Forget the META tags, forget the keyword density, forget article tags, forget submitting your blog to directories… it is simply not worth it.

You are much better off writing regular quality articles, promoting your blog via social media and via guest posts on other sites / blogs, and interacting with your current and potential readers.

This way your traffic, your subscribers and links to your blog will grow and increase organically.

Google will definitely notice that and will start ranking you for relevant keywords and start sending you traffic.

Image by Yodel Anecdotal