Let me preface this post by saying… I don’t know the answer… and if you are a social media professional or consultant.. you are at fault.
I have been debating with myself lately (you should try it) about the concept of blogging for search and how it could be affecting the . From a marketing standpoint it is brilliant to use a blog for search. I will be the first to say that my company, Brandswag, uses our corporate blog for organic search. The blog you are reading now is used for some organic search goals, as well as my own personal branding in the city of Indianapolis.
What am I struggling with?
If you are constantly focused on keyword rich writing and blogging for search is that taking away from building knowledge and innovation in your industry? Is it taking away from you actually writing your thoughts.. feelings.. and ideas?
Sometimes I get stuck.
We blog for many reasons. Maybe you want to learn and co-create interesting articles and discussions. Maybe you want to build your company brand in order to drive more revenue. Maybe… you just want to talk to other people with the same interest.
Blogging and the world of social media has created a spinning mass of information that is being consumed by hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis. Are we missing out on writing from the heart and helping industries/people become better?
Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know the answer.
If you are focusing so intently on the right keywords and such doesn’t that take you away from being truly innovative and thought provoking in your writing?
Maybe we are all at fault.
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Thanks for an enlightening article.
At the risk of sounding really dumb I must admit that I was unaware of the concept of blogging with SEO keywords.
On reflection, I don’t think I will try, I have enough trouble producing content as it is….
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I agree with David Alexander: both in my “ignorance” and in my intent to say whatever occurs to me! In this way, I’ll “sleep better at night” and my “personal brand” remains intact: SINCERITY!
I think there is a difference between some business blogs/business professionals and other people writing blogs for content.
What about the people wanting to become “experts” but are still writing mindless crap because they want a good search ranking. Balance and Sincerity!
I don’t think this is anything inherently wrong with writing content that is geared towards search engines as long as that content still follows this rule-
Blogs should add to the conversation and not the noise.
Noise is low value content that is essentially bogging up Google’s results. Like it or not Google is a pretty poor search engine about 10-30% of the time and shows results that are completely worthless to your search. We have done some interesting tests that show you can do simple things to get listed on page one of Google with little effort. Many sites/companies exploit this and the outcome is poor search results, or “noise”.
I like a good signal to noise ratio. Google’s s/n ratio is surprisingly bad. That is why they are vulnerable to peer to peer search via sites like Twitter and Facebook.
I don’t think it really matters. Innovative thought doesn’t correlate to quality of total volume. My site, for example, get’s about 1/4 of it’s traffic from organic searches, but the bounce rate is under 2%. The people who use SEO intelligently will be rewarded. Those who use it for search have their egos stoked and nothing else comes from it. Innovative writing will still exist regardless of how many people abuse SEO.
Interesting discussion topic. We have actually held two webinars recently titled: “Blogs: Your #1 Search Marketing Tool” that combined had over 2000 attendees from the fortune 100 to one person SMBs…clearly a hot topic of broad interest.
Let me share a couple of quotes from people other than me:
“Think about what people are going to type…and talk about that”
Matt Cutts: Google
“Think about the words that people use to find you.” “Then, as a revolutionary new internet marketing strategy, actually write those words in your copy.” Ian Lurie: Author, Conversation Marketing
The entire concept that you would do anything but write so that your content is found by the largest audience possible is completely foreign to me.
By studying search engine data as it relates to your expertise, you identify what is important to your audience. More importantly, by using their language you get significantly more engagement. Like Matt Cutts says…use their language and increase your audience.
Keep in mind as well that Crap is Crap. If your blog post is nothing but keyword stuffing, it’s not going to drive search traffic and it’s going to have high bounce rates. This is not an either/or strategy.
Chris makes excellent points. While I’m not going to get into a long-haired discussion about the theory behind keywords, as will echo Chris.
People start their search from intuition. In other words, how they frame a problem in their mind will affect which words they use to search for a solution.
It’s a concept deeply rooted in cognitive linguistics. I don’t know if Chris has read theories in linguistics, but he parrots one by Lakoff almost word for word: “by using their [your audience's] language you get significantly more engagement.”
In PR we have this sub-discipline called message development, which is grounded in the same concept of engagement.
With practice, I think you can find the balance point. The way I do it, is write the article, without regard for key words. If I am writing about a particular topic, one or two relevant key words are bound to fall in.
Next I re-read the article, looking for grammar and spelling errors, which in my case occur often. And at the same time I review the phrasing, and look for 1 – 2 places I can substitute a key word or phrase to improve SEO. I won’t key word stuff, that is just annoying, but usually I can insert a key phrase, improve the flow of the article, and score a few SEO points at the same time.
[...] alone in this thought. One of my favorite local bloggers, Kyle Lacy, wrote a blog post entitled Is Blogging For Search Ruining Innovative Thought which touches on this subject. There really is no right or wrong answer, but consider some of my [...]
Forget the 21st century world of blogging, linkjacking, search-engine optimization and keywords. This is a struggle shared with Sophocles and Virgil: shall we write for ourselves or temper our words for the glory of an audience?
My advice: do what you want, but pick before you start writing. On my personal blog (Turning Left Against Traffic), I write for my own amusement and accept that many readers will wander away. On our corporate blog (The Methodology Blog), we write in compelling, yet plain English to draw readers and win business. In both cases, the market—not the writer—decides whether the words have merit.
In the meantime, the technology is hilariously immature. Google doesn’t understand anything about what it is reading, it merely matches keyword searches against keywords in pages (with a hefty dose of algorithm to filter out the fakers). You can get traffic through keyword stuffing and only draw in customers with a grade school reading level. You can also make a lot of money selling commodity junk via email spam. The question is not what works, but who you want to be.
All writing, from quill pens to twittering, can range from banal to articulate. Eventually, you will be judged by your audience. You just have to decide who you want your audience to be.
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