I receive a lot of questions from bloggers who are always concerned about every little nitty gritty detail about their blog when it comes to search engine optimization. The thing is, most of these questions are already answered out there in blogs across the Internet.
So, why is SEO so hard to understand?
Answer: Because the blog author was penalized for over stuffing or linking to sites that Google found to be of dubious nature.
SEO for Article Writing
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not that hard to understand. You write naturally, uniquely, and thoroughly on the topic you want. Of course, you can optimize for keywords, but make sure it flows naturally with the rest of the article and not forced.
Truthfully, if you are knowledgeable about a topic, it will come easily when writing. You will not even have too look to your competition for blog inspiration. One of the most competitive niche in blogging are on blogs about blogging or blog tips. Much of the information is rehashed over and over from blog to blog without uniqueness, meaning that many of the bloggers are scraping article ideas (at the very least) and not giving an ounce of new information other than a slightly different way of wording, not much different from the concept article rewriting.
Content is extremely important, but you should not be worrying about being penalized by the search engines unless you are or have participated in trying to optimize or over-optimize your site with black hat methods.
SEO for Your Blog Design
A lot of the themes out there do keep search engines in mind, but some do need tweaking. The thing is, once that theme is in your hands and you are adding articles, imagines, and other things, your theme will not be as fast as it was out of the box. Even taking a general framework and revamping it will alter load time.
For those who use plugins, that also contributes to load time. Your web hosting also contributes to it as well.
The biggest part of design is to brand yourself uniquely and organizing your site in a way that people understand. Remember, the search engines algorithms are designed to try to crawl and decipher, and organize content as close to human as it can.
Design can be in how you place advertisements, your call to action, your navigation for your site, and much more. You have to make it easier for people first because if they can get around your site, then the search engines are most likely going to produce similar results.
SEO When It Comes To Social Networking and Your Blog
Google is social search friendly. This means that if people are sharing your articles, your authority will bring you above your blog niche competition. Syndicating your articles out on the social network sites and social bookmark sites are very important.
Before, the search engines relied a lot on your content, but after some time, companies like Google finally realized that it was a combination of the quality of content and the engagement on a site that mattered. The whole Content is King and Visitors are Queen concept was a big breakthrough and forced bloggers to realize that just because you build a site, does not mean that people will come. You have to engage with others and encourage them to syndicate your content.
Stop Over Complicating SEO for Your Blog
Stop thinking and fearing… just write what you know and are passionate about. If you worry about SEO, your blog starts losing that blog voice that your readers have come to love you for.
Hey Nile,
When an idea pops into my head, I just go with it. When the post is complete I will then start to think about what keyword could be targeted. I don’t even think about Google, the less we are dependant on it as a traffic source the better.
One of the best articles I’ve read on SEO. You are right about one thing. Everybody wants to make it so darn complicated. Your explanation to keep it simple is great. Of course if we are knowledgeable about a subject, those keywords are going to organically show up, right?
Good work, Nile. I especially like the fact that because your article is about SEO and blogging, you are able to use them as your SEO and use them a lot. I have to admit that I have gotten a little more cautious and a little less going with the flow in trying to get my clients on p1 of SERP.
I agree that content is totally king. And that is really great. These times you can focus and do something sensible.
Not all content can be considered KING b ut if you would say,
Great Content, then we could say it’s a king!
Seo sometimes scares me, just because i hear alot of people commenting regarding the punishments…. that kind of makes me think… am i doing anything wrong? When i am writing i normally don’t think about anything else other then write what i want to write… but still… it makes me kind of wonder…
Excellent Advice. This website is a great resource for people who are trying to figure out the ropes.
Would you rather have new traffic from SEO or from referral websites?
Interesting & Impressive tips for seo.
I am also in seo from many months, but still some corners left i got something new & clam way to work.
Thanks
Thanks for the post Nile, it was very helpful for me
Great post. It seems that almost every site that I have read has put a ton of pressure on us readers. They say that everything must be perfect and that we must do things exactly like this. I have gotten a few of my ranked highly on google and I am just learning what i’m doing. I’ve learned more about why they were ranked so high and now I’m build on it. Its not rocket science tho.
Yes! content is king, but also good commenting is King.
One need to get backlinks before your content will get indexed fast or it will basically take 6 month before your site get indexed faster then 1 week/article in your site!!!!!!!!
Your site can get indexed in even a day or two these days. Search Engines are no longer that slow, especially if you set your site up to ping other sites to alert them that you have new content. I always say that the visitors are Queen… not King… Why the Queen…. well, because we all know that she is the one that does all the moving and shaking behind the scenes.
Great article, new articles are truly no longer unique, but this post seriously is unique.
And I like the part where you said Content is King and Visitors are Queen.
+1
Yep I totally agree with content is king
at some point i started to write for seo, and it did no good
I’ve started again to write good content for my readers, and they do the seo for me, by sharing my best posts…
Excellent blog.Thanks for sharing it.
Nice stuff, Nile. If you spent ages fretting over what is good SEO practice instead of writing your blog you’d never get anything written! So much SEO advice is out of date on the web anyway so write, use feedburner or similar and if your content is good… they will come or is that too simplistic do you think?
I think it’s definitely true to focus on writing original, unique content. It is always good to hear new points about SEO, because even still it can be confusing. Thanks for the post
Hello Nile, you wrote a very informative article about over SEO. This happens with many new bloggers that they try to over optimize their website . So this article will really help them.
Hi Nile, thanks for this awesome post. Because I also want to stop over complicating SEO for my blog.
Thanks again for my help.
As much as possible I would like to try to seo my post but I am now knowledgeable enough about it. Good thing I was able to read your post. Thanks for the tip I will try not to over seo my posts.
I 100% agree with you! It is so important to produce unique content, worrying about SEO can affect the response that you might get as it no longer becomes a personal blog which is what attracts people in the first place! Thank you for sharing this!!
Great post. Thanks
I think it’s time that people start writing good quality content finally and google will reward them for it. It’s about time. I believe the panda update was a good thing.
Cheers
Hi Nile,
Yes – Targeting and focus is always two of the most important aspects of Digital Marketing and SEO – and Personally should be done with a great deal of care and accuracy. But yes – There are too many people who over analyse data and information, and this too can be harmful for your Digital Marketing and or SEO.
I totally agree that content is king!
When I write completely unique I noticed that I also need less links to my website to get higher positions. It’s just a pitty that others are just copy pasting my content !
I rarely focus on keywords when writing a blog post. I just put the ideas that come into my head first on the paper and then later I can think what the keywords could be.
“Content is King and Visitors are Queen”
this is great quote nile.. i have read your article and i’m absolutely agree with you.
So many people made SEO become complicated task..however SEO strategy only consist of on page SEO and off page SEO.
the hardest thing is not the SEO strategy but our willingness to study about this strategy consistently day by day. For many bloggers, just remembered that SEO is learned by process. So don’t make it complicated and enjoy the process to learn SEO..
Thanks Nile for great article
This is my site how possible search optmiz in myu site your r a genius in seo
Design matters much and I always strive to have an unique design for my blog. Sometimes I perform some random experiments to know the right spots for Opt-in forms, advertisements etc on the blog. Apart from design I need to focus on remaining things also.
Thanks
Bharat
Informative post in here. While I can’t blame others for fearing of decline in readers, SEO this days is really a must for bloggers only to the point that it will never be on the top of your priority as a writer. I believe in what you’ve said it is really necessary to have passion as the center of blogging. Hats off to this one.
Absolutely right Niles, while I agree with you that content is totally king. And that is really great. These times you can focus and do something sensible for sure
Very good explanation indeed! Great blog for people who have seo worries all over their minds!
Nice Post!!! Keep it up….. 🙂
I didn’t know that much about off SEO when I started my blog one year ago. But slowly I’m learning and I’m seeing a slight increase of traffic these days.
Thanks for the post
It’s all about deriving a unique style of blogging and delivery of content. A tone of authority over the subject could retain your readers and improves subscriber base.
Awesome answer. It seems that almost every site that I embrace discover has locate a ton connectedly cause on us readers. They discuss that entireness must be conclusive and that we must do objects accurately determine.
I am totally agree with Nile.
Blaming on search engine is totally wrong.Now a days only quality content websites or blogs are on front page of search engine. Doing an over back linking always affect rank of your website. Nice sharing. Very helpful article for SEO Beginner
Nile, There are many comments here about content. I think if you write for a niche, you can create better, unique content that is made for them. That’s how you can differentiate your blog. There are too many bloggers targeting the entire universe. Being effective to me means going smaller. Just my opinion. Suzanne
I’m learning seo, thanks for the information…
I too have felt the punishments and thus wisely make use of seo’s. thanks for writing article on stopping over complicating articles. great post.
The key point, which I think you hint at here Nile, is that ‘SEO’ as we have known it is well on the way to becoming an irrelevance.
Google is getting better all the time and starting to incorporate social signals. Indeed I wonder whether the average small business should even bother trying to master what we think of as SEO at all now; their time and resources would probably be better served elsewhere.
I am 100% in agreement that content is king though I do put some thought into my post titles not so much for keyword density but for how would someone search for this? It has helped me pick up a lot of quality long tail serch terms easily. 🙂
Google says post quality is important , and SEO will be taken care by itself, if you need to drive traffice then SEO is a crucial component
Hi Nile I get what your saying just write good content enjoy it and don’t get hung up on seo. I must admit I have lately. I started a blog as a bit of fun really. I now though want it to succeed. I wasn’t worried about rankings and stuff before. But lately I have got fixated on it. Problem is then the enjoyment goes out of it.
Great advice thanks lee
This is more important now more then ever. After the two last Google updates, they pretty much said it is much better just to have your site naturally contain the keywords. Keyword stuffing is no longer the way to go, and diversify your anchor texts on incoming links, and you’ll be good.
Nowadays SEO become complicated task.I have gotten a few of my ranked highly on google and I am just learning what i’m doing.Thanks for your sharing!
“content is a king and visitors are queen.” yes if content is good it will automatically gains the visitors and also we need some more seo Technics also, other wise people didn’t find content.
I love this no nonsense approach to SEO. On my blog now I have great rankings for one or two keywords – they are not the ones that I planned to rank for when I started, but who cares – if that is what people want then that is what I will give them x
seo is a nice thing to do if you know how to do it and are getting visitors beacuse of that otherwise you will just hate yourself.
yes now website content is most important to get high ranking in google, if you have really nice and unique content on your websites pages then little quality work can give you better ranking position in google.
Truthfully, if you are knowledgeable about a topic, it will come easily when writing. You will not even have too look to your competition for blog inspiration.
I think I will have better results after reading
was so concerned with keywords it effected my ability to write.
ty
SW
what your write is all true..keep make unique content, keep comment and backlnk… you can also using social media for backlink your website you must wait 6 month to look increasing of your site…
I’ve found my posts do better at SEO when I just write what it is about instead of over complicating the process. Thanks for your insights, content is king.
Hi, Nile. Thank you for the section about design. I’ve thought a lot about reorganizing certain categories, for example, to make things easier for readers on certain sites of mine. I know design is such a big topic, but in my mind the obstacles are cost and know how. What do you suggest for budget conscious bloggers who want to strike a balance?
yes. over optimize SEO can get you google penalty.
If I visit a website looking for certain information, and all I find is a keyword stuffed mess of a text, I leave immediately and will never return. Even if the content is good, as soon as an overuse of seo interferes with the reading experience, I will leave. Just write naturally, and don’t let search engine optimization get in the way – if it sounds forced, readers will leave. Just my 2 cents.
Nile,
You are so right. I know many people who get stymied and don’t begin to write because they worry about using the right keywords, doing keyword research, maximizing SEO. If they just begin writing and read others’ blogs, especially some of yours and Kimberly Castleberry’s, then they have nothing to fear. The worst that can happen is that blog doesn’t get much traffic and you can always do something about that to increase the traffic.
Thanks for a great blog.
Warmly,
Dr. Erica
Nile!
very nice and helpful tip’s and subject in your post that will help me in feature so Thank you so much for shearing us.
Yes, I agree that content is king, actually I have also tried to ‘borrow’ some articles and kind of spin them… It sometimes looks like google can see thriugh that. It’s better to learn about a subject very well and finally try to find your own point of view about and write that.
But for most sites you’ll really have to do some backlinking if you want to find any readers…
Great article. What are your thoughts on Link Building? Everything I read about SEO’ing my blog is about going out and guest blogging and getting back links. What was your strategy for back links and getting people to link back to your blog?
Hi Nile since leaving a comment a while a go I have been trying to. Do what you are saying here and keeping things simple. I was definatly making things to complicated for myself and started pulling my hair out trying to get things right. By going back to basics and building on things slowly the enjoyment factor has really come back.
So for great advice thanks lee
thanks for sharing such a wonderful post, sometime we get carried away by all the hype around SEO and we write post as if search engines are going to read that. I mean we completely ignore our real readers.
It is important to focus on human than machines.
I agree a lot of people do make it more complicated than it needs to be. It’s very easy to set up your blog properly. The only thing you do need to keep on top of is spam, something I get far too much of.
I am Very thank full the owner of this blog. Because of this blog is very informative for me. And I ask u some thing You make more this type blog where we can get more knowledge
What does this link mean? i mean i m going to create an online store but still waiting for the right choice and guidelines
Great post. I say do SEO as if search engines didn’t exist… for your audience and the people who read your site, not a web spider!
I think SEO is being complicated because people are too focused on the algorithms. I have Yoast on my blog. I do my research, optimize my posts while maintaining quality and let Yoast guide me. My bounce rate is lowering and I’m getting comments. So it’s not complicated, it just required that dreaded four-letter word: WORK!
Hey brooo i love ur post nd i think it really helps blog also 🙂 i really love ur blog mate!
I believe SEO is over-hyped. I just do forum-posting and blog commenting for SEO. It seems to be working fine. People spend more time in reading SEO articles then actually doing SEO.
Your site is a like a godsend. I have just recently changed from Google sites to WordPress, paid someone to do it all. Basically they set it up, took money, said they would do SEO and disappeared. Now I am trying to learn how to do it all myself as I am new to WordPress. I will be following all you have to say closely. Thank you
Hi Nile.
Thanks for this answers and i learn a lot from this post.I like the word “content is the king and visitors are queens”.A unique content will take more visitors.
There are a lot of bloggers, writers and webmasters who just do blogging to cover their keywords rather than to express their views or experience. I think bloggers themselves make their blogs complicated and then they complain that Google creating hurdles in our search engine appearance. In this scenario your points are very helpful to fix these kinds of issues.
I were totally fed up by doing seo my my blog site but i got my solutions .thanks for your articles……..
Finally, somebody said what I have been thinking for ages! Do not obsess aboiut your blog or website, just spend your time and put your effeort into creating content that people might want and the traffic will come to you given a little routine SEO.
Hello!! I agree that content is totally king. And that is really great. These times you can focus and do something sensible. Thanks for this answers and i learn a lot from this post.I like the word “content is the king and visitors are queens”.A unique Funny Video content will take more visitors.Thanks a lot.
Hello,
One of the informative articles I have read on SEO.Your explanation is simple and great.Thanks for the post and I believe content is the king and visitors are the queen.
Thank you Shan! I appreciate that you read my article and enjoy my quote. 🙂
Hi Nile
I am glad that I came back across this post when I read it the first time back in September. I wasn’t really using social media as a tool to aid my blog marketing at all . It is only when you start you realise how big a part social media is and how important.
So for pointing me in the right direction thanks lee
Thanks for the information, and a special thanks for owner of this blog..information is informative and its help me lot many times
Its a tough task to understand the SEO completely. It needs research. One can understand SEO by reading others blogs too.
Hi, your content is very informative for me. And best SEO makes your website very popular and increase your page rank also.
One of my friend told me that best SEO is not to do any SEO and write naturally and do not make things complicated. I was unable to understand him at that time. But thanks to this post now I have a better Idea about SEO for my Blog.
Complication always leads you to dead end from where you cant get your site,blog onto good position on search engine…. be real make search engine realize that you are offering some thing new and unique
Your explanation is simple and very informative. I really don’t understand why people make SEO too complicated.
Nile,
Love the overarching message of this blog post! which is more or less, just focus on writing a good, informative blog post and you’ll get good SEO on it. Add a few H2 and H3 tags with relevant keywords in them. Add a few relevant internal and external links and you should be good to go!
I am also glad you mentioned themes and plugins. You definitely need a rock solid theme link Genesis or Thesis 2.1 (coming out very soon!) unless Nile is building your site and uses her own theme!
And cool your jets when it comes to using plugins. The more you use, the more you are asking for potential problems every time WordPress updates and the slower your site is probably gonna load!
Thanks for sharing!
~ Jupiter Jim
it’s complicated,but not so difficult to understand we won’t have to worry about it,your content is great although S.E.O help in making our site in high level.
SEO is an important thing for a successful blog but we should never forget that posts are for readers not only for search engines. This is art that how we mix seo techniques with our post subject.
If you use wordpress, there are some plugins that you can use for SEO
Nice article I think this article read any user or people gain perfect knowledge for SEO
Optimizing template is also very important and should also improve load time.
Informative articles for all blogger. I am very impressed at your post and realize that it must be helpful for me. Hope more bloggers will read this article!
Keeping seo simple is the only option now as most techniques have now been wiped out by google. Which is probably a good thing as it helps us all get on a more even playing field. Lee
Hi Nile. This post puts my mind at ease. I love to write, but I keep running across articles telling me to start with keywords and building my posts around them. That’s kind of gone across the grain, so I’m glad I can be me! Thanks so much for all the great information on your blog.
All the best,
Leslie
The way I see it, good SEO is all about offering a service to your visitors. If your blog posts are informative and written because you feel that your selected topics are what your readers would like to read, then you’re already fulfilling the first criteria when it comes to SEO-friendly content.
When I first started I think I was always looking to deeply in to seo lately I have just been keeping things simple. So I couldn’t agree with you more
Lee
Good article Nile…Once again you’ve explained the greatest things on SEO. SEO is a part of blogging and Content is the king. SEO is totally depends on a good or relevant content on the blog.
Above mentioned points are indicates that it really need to.
Thanks for sharing this info.
It is very helpful article on the SEO. As SEO is very important to rank on Google or other search engines it is very important to follow both the on page and off page SEO strategies.
Decent article Nile…Once again you’ve spelled out the greatest things on WEBSITE POSITIONING. SEO is a element of blogging and Content is definitely the king. SEO is totally depends on an effective or relevant content in the blog.
Aforementioned points are indicates who’s should really.
Appreciate sharing this tips.
hello nile
I have gotten a few of my ranked highly on google and I am just learning what i’m doing. I’ve learned more about why they were ranked so high and now I’m build on it. Its not rocket science tho.will share it with my friens too
great article about seo article is king, I am also write a article in high quality.If the article is good quality and you use best keywords then thats types article every reader want to read
Yes I agree…Over optimizing the posts and blog might penalize it. Google is smart and theyknow the tricks people have been using to get good rankings on search engines so they update their algos and we have to suffer because of this. So we should try to keep it at minimum. There should be a proper strategy for SEO
Thanks Nile!
I had heard that adding too many plugins slowed your sites loading time, but I had no idea that
your host could be a contributing factor as well!
That’s what’s so amazing about learning how to properly market online, there’s always something new to learn!
Thanks so much sharing this!