More thoughts on SEO and blogging.

Jun 17, 2011

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I’ve been following the blogcamp feed on twitter this morning, attended an SEO webinar via tots100 last week maybe. Some time anyway, and just now I saw a tweet that made me want to blog about it all…

The tweet was from Josie, and she said:

SEO makes me want to eat my own ears but, dammit, it seems to be important. #blogcamp

I’d just like to pause for a moment and ask a question. I’m guessing a lot of you read Josie’s rather wonderful and challenging blog. How many of you found it via a keyword search? How many of you have found *any* blogs you read regularly via a keyword search? What would you even search for?

Don’t get me wrong. SEO *is* important. Or it is on review posts, or competitions – I get a lot of hits on various book reviews from searches, and probably will get more now that I’ve started to actually use some SEO techniques on them, like the title tags and meta descriptions you’ve probably heard about in seminars or tutorials. But when it comes to real blogs about real ppl, I find them via recommendations. Links on twitter. Discussions with friends. By following someone on twitter and then clicking through from their bio to find out more about them on their page.

I used to try to optimise this blog for home education searches. Particularly when we were campaigning against government invasion into our lives. I advised ppl how to make blogs more search engine friendly, how to use keywords in link text so that blogs they thought were important would be more likely to show up in searches. I’m guessing most ppl won’t be wanting to do that particularly, as that is handing traffic to other ppl, and that’s a shame. When it comes right down to it, the blogs we read day in and day out aren’t the ones we find in search engines. They are the ones where we find the real ppl too, and it would be lovely if we handed out those recommendations more regularly.

Am I wrong?

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Comments

8 responses to “More thoughts on SEO and blogging.”

PippaD @ A Mothers Ramblings
17 June 2011
Yes and no to you being wrong. No your not wrong the majority of blogs that I read have been from people I have comment hopped to, or links on other people’s blogs etc BUT I have also found blogs that I love because of search engines. For example I was looking for something the other week (I can’t even remember what it was now!), the first link on the search page was a blog. I clicked had my question answered and then spent the next half hour or so reading through other posts on the site. I fell in love with the style of writing and so followed the blog and tried to find the writer on Twitter (they weren’t there).
With SEO on my blog, I do it automatically. I have learnt a bit about it to help my “professional” web projects and it is just 2nd nature now that I do it for my personal blog (you know A Mothers Ramblings) it’s nothing more than a few key words here and there but it works for me!
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1. Jax
  17 June 2011
  Be interested to hear more about that blog then! Can’t think as I’ve ever followed a blog I’ve found on google – though I do know ppl find Merry that way for home education.
  Reply
Kirsty
17 June 2011
I think it depends on the purpose of your blog whether SEO is important to you. I don’t really use it on my main blog as the posts I write are mostly personal musings and I don’t want a wide audience to find them. But I’ve also started a food blog with the specific intention of making money through adverts and sponsored posts, so SEO is a crucial part of that.
You’re right about the way I search for blogs – I look at people’s blog rolls, read interesting things on Twitter and follow blogs that way – the personal stories and creative work that I like reading on blogs aren’t the sort of thing you can Google for.
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1. Jax
  17 June 2011
  I just get a little afraid that ppl can get swept up in the what you must do to blog, and we all lose track of the bits we actually enjoy both writing and reading…
  Reply
Emma @ MummyMummyMum
17 June 2011
I have often wondered why SEO is important for blogging, as I am not really interested in the amount of page views I get at all. I would rather have 1 person read and leave a comment than 20 people just passing after finding me from a google search.
The Tots100 10 at 10 on a friday is nice for finding blogs as are the #ff’s on twitter and retweets of good posts. I would never google hoping to find a blog.
Reply
1. Jax
  17 June 2011
  I think it is because there’s two strands for blogging atm, reviews/ competitions and life. If you want to get things to review or hold competitions for, you’ve got to be getting the traffic to make it worthwhile, and search engine traffic can be specific to that topic. I don’t find though that ppl who come via search engines tend to hang around, though that may be because my blog’s not *sticky* enough.
  Reply
Merry
17 June 2011
I tend to SEO fairly automatically now – comes from the shop job I think – but masses of my hits are for random things; knitting, hama bead patterns, fimo models, how to do cello grade 1, how to make kindle covers. I do pick up readers from those, or occasional commenters and I suppose I tend to think of my blog as a rather random resource as well as a family blog.
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Michelle Twin Mum
18 June 2011
You have got me thinking Jax. Until very recently I knew nothing about SEO and I just found that by being really transparent with any review I wrote actually put the keywords in there without trying.
My review of Peppa Pig World is read by dozens and dozens of people every day, without a thought from me on SEO.
and yes, all blogs I read are from recommendations and blog rolls, twitter links etc, never via a keyword search.
Mich x
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