Should Bloggers Worry About SEO?

Lately there seems to be a trend of bloggers worrying unnecessarily about SEO. It is not helped by rumours of Google penalties or dodgy out of date blog and forum “advice” (some of which is downright counter-productive). So should you worry about Search Engine Optimisation?

As with any industry where there is a competitive advantage to keeping your true tactics to yourself there is a lot of misinformation in the search engine world. Of course there is. On top of that there are the people who learn just a little bit then try to gain reputation by spouting off. Or worse learn a little bit, but not enough, then criticise the practice as a sham. Add to this the many people who associate SEO with spam (or even worse), it’s going to be tough finding the truth amongst the lies.


The problem is for many websites the key source of traffic is search and without it they might not even turn a profit. Google referred traffic can be like oxygen to these sites, cut it off and you are not going to last very long.

My answer of course is to grow your site or blog in such a way that the search traffic is nice but you don’t depend on it. I’m of course talking about Killer Flagship Content. Create a magnet that draws visitors like iron filings. Powerfully attractive AND sticky.

If you do create valuable content Google will notice, they are getting better at recognising the difference between worthwhile and not so worthwhile sites. Check out Threadwatch on MSSA, Google’s Most Common Penalty.

We can all benefit from some search engine love though. If you provide a great answer to a search engine users question very often you will be rewarded, either with a subscription or with an ad click. Enough of those and you can start making a bundle.

The good news is decent blog software is developed to be search engine friendly, requiring few tweaks. If you are using a recent version of Wordpress or Drupal then I would say you don’t need to worry about SEO, put your energy into consistently creating valuable content instead.

OK, that’s the main question answered. What about if you want to gain more traffic from the search engines than you currently do? With all the rubbish written about the subject where can you find real information without all the BS? There are reliable sources of SEO information, thankfully.

The very best source of SEO facts, and also the provider of the single best SEO tutorial, is Aaron Wall. Full disclosure, those are aff links and Aaron is a friend of mine. Many so-called SEO experts you meet in forums are just trying to rehash Aarons information. Better to get the good stuff from the source.

*Read more about this tips on http://www.chrisg.com/should-i-worry-about-seo/

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