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Stop Drowning in the SEO

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Drowning iN SEO

I still remember the excitement I had when I decided that I was going to start a career writing. I’d always loved writing since I was a kid. Of course I was more attracted to the poetic/emotional genre of writing, than the dry drivel that is found on blogs.  But I knew that I was a naturally gifted writer and felt that it should be an easy transition.

Of course like every responsible adult, I began looking into writing for money online just to see what I was getting into. I was still very excited even though I hadn’t done any writing yet or made any money. I knew it was only a matter of time. I decided that article writing and blogging would be my introduction into the world of writing for money online.

I promptly made a blog

It was a cute little thing talking about iPods. I promptly failed. The blog was built on the free Blogger platform, but I’d sent at lot of time working on the post and I was really disappointed that I’d only made a couple of pennies in my first stint at blogging.

That first failure helped me to drift back down to reality. I realized that there was still a lot that I didn’t know about blogging, and I was going to make sure that for my next attempt I was going to know exactly what I was doing. So the research began again.

I would have never imagined that there were so many blogs dedicated to teaching others how to make money online. I was shocked that there were so many experts and rules and tips and tricks. I learn the importance of the search engines; I learned the curse of SEO. I came to the sad conclusion that blogging isn’t about the love of writing. I saw blogging for what it really was: manipulating the search engines to bring enough traffic so that people can click on ads.

Audience and robots!

For all the benefits that search engines were bringing to the web, they brought just as many negatives. Blogger were no longer writing for an audience, but writing for robots. Their readers where no longer people to them, but numbers and was conveniently renamed traffic. The coveted number one spot on Google almost caused them to sell their soul.

Now, I didn’t hate the search engines. I’m not that old fashion. But I did hate what they were doing to honest writers like me. I found I was spending all my free time trying to look up those hard to find SEO miracle tips that will carry me all the way to the top of Google. I found instead of creating creative titles that will draw readers in, I’d just through a few words around my keywords.

There were so many “SEO experts” all with their own set of tips and advice. There was so many bloggers saying to do one thing, while others said to do another. I tried to adsorbed as much as I can, but that is humanly impossible. There were many nights when I’d find myself up at 3 am reading what some guy I’ve never heard of say about SEO.

I was drowning

As a writer, I felt filthy. As an entrepreneur, I felt overwhelmed. As just a young teenager, I felt close to giving up. I wondered if there was a place in the blogging world for people who actually loved writing.

It had been a year since my failed iPod blog.  A whole year pasted without me doing anything of any real significance. A whole year passed and the only thing that changed was that I knew a lot of clever terms like “anchor text” and “meta tag.” I realized that if I were going to have any success that I would have to stop wasting all my time on SEO and actually write. Imagine that.

I finally understood what relationship I would have with SEO in the future. SEO is not a tool to build blogs. SEO is a tool to market a blog. You can’t imagine the freedom I felt when I realized that I can blog how I want without worrying about the thousands of different SEO tricks.

I was inspired again

I found that excitement. My next blog wasn’t a failure. My next blog ranked up to Page Rank five within a couple of months. My next blog completed owned a niche in the search engines. What is the moral of this story? Don’t waste all your time SEOing. You will never be able to learn all there is about SEO. SEO is important and does have it’s place, but write first and let all that stuff come later.

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Filed Under: SEO

About

Jara Johnson is a college student by day and a dynamic blogger by night. Despite his youth, he has years of experience writing, blogging, and coaching. Visit his Writing for Money blog.

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{ 37 Responses }

  1. Terjemk says:
    Thanks for sharing. I do totally relate:) As a newbie wannabe writer/blogger i constantly find myself swimming in a pool of expert tips not knowing wich lane to go down first. But I´ll keep on swimming after reading this. Keep up the good work!
  2. Darren Scott Monroe says:
    "As a writer, I felt filthy. As an entrepreneur, I felt overwhelmed. As just a young teenager, I felt close to giving up. I wondered if there was a place in the blogging world for people who actually loved writing." I think too many people put too much into it. Seems like the more I write from the heart instead of SEO I actually get more of the benefits of SEO LOL
  3. Sheila Atwood says:
    Jara, "SEO is not a tool to build blogs. SEO is a tool to market a blog." Love this! It is possible to write a great blog and use the simple basic SEO tools to promote it. I think there has been much ado about some thing that has had much mystery put on it. I mean how else would you sell SEO services if you didn't make it seem harder than it really is. Glad you are back in the saddle again.
  4. Usama says:
    As i said before great SEO and high quality content is a gold mine. Both are equally important. Thanks.
  5. Usama says:
    As i said before great SEO and high quality content is a gold mine. Thanks.
  6. MKR says:
    Most of my hits and ad clicks come from meaningful comments on blogs and forums. SEO tends to be an afterthought, and it's always focused on improving things for the reader. I've actually found that when I do a little keyword research after I write a post and change a word here and there, the post is clearer. But if I had worried about SEO from the start, I probably wouldn't have written the post.
  7. Tek3D says:
    I still think SEO is very important, if you don't have organic traffic from search engines, your website is worth nothing. I start to learn SEO recently and I hope I could improve my site's ranking in search results.
  8. Hieu Martin says:
    SEO is my fav. i alway do best SEO for my blog. not just traffic, it bring to me brand
  9. David says:
    The important thing is to make sure that your blog is set up correctly to begin with - if you're using a WordPress blog then you should choose a great theme like Thesis and that should largely do that job for you. Apart from that, all I do is select a fairly long-tail, relevant and user-friendly keyword phrase and use it in my blog post title, and somewhere else in the blog content... and then try to write a great post. Job done!
  10. mizie says:
    for me using SEO it's good but if u are using SEO just for get traffic it's pointless, my opinion is using SEO for gain traffic and share my knowledge into the blog
  11. Derek Jensen says:
    My views on using SEO have always remained the same. Yes, I'm not all too educated in it, but I don't plan on bettering my knowledge of it. Why? I feel I could use my time better by reaching out to people and building a bigger and stronger community without having to use SEO. For example: going to events and network, leaving great comments, having live shows, adding to conversations on Twitter, or creating great products. Sure I could focus on SEO and would probably take less time. But, I rather work harder and longer because I strongly care about my community and each community member that joins.
  12. Colleen says:
    Btw (second comment, sorry), where did you get that blog image? Very cool selection Jara! ;)
    • Hesham says:
      I do most of images selection on the blog! mm.. that one I got it by searching Google!
      • Colleen says:
        Excellent image choice Hesham! :)
  13. Colleen says:
    Very good Jara. I think SEO without consideration of the visitor is a waste of time also. "I wondered if there was a place in the blogging world for people who actually loved writing." The folks who love to write are the best type of blogger. You'll continue to do well Jara.
  14. Andreas says:
    It is normal to try, test and fail. If you keep trying you will eventually succeed. All people who failed and stop trying have already lost.
  15. Jennifer R says:
    It's a good idea, I usually write my blog post for my visitor and I think it's important than for the SE crawler, nice post.
  16. TJ McDowell says:
    I think a lot of people get frustrated by SEO. Depending on what you're blogging about, I think you can make a blog "succeed" without SEO. It would be an interesting experiment for a blogger to try to run a successful blog without any search engine traffic at all. They could block the search engines from indexing pages and run it as an anti-search engine campaign. I don't know of any blogger that has done it, so being the first, it might just work.
  17. lawmacs says:
    This is the reality of most new comers trying to enter in the world of blogging seo is important but that is for natural organic traffic the real stuff in blogging is writing quality content and networking with your fellow bloggers.
  18. Rahul says:
    Great article. First we must write nice articles and then only we must concentrate on publicity and SEO of our blog since ornaments of blog are its contents and articles.
  19. Abhishek-seekersfind.com says:
    Hi This is completely true first come stuff and rest come everything.Awesome post friend love it Thanks For Sharing -Abhishek
  20. Cindy says:
    great post jara and quite inspiring :) I came to that point once. I feel all the SEO I learned isnt enough. It's better to work on your content more and make it great, then SEO will come later. It makes a huge difference :)
  21. Blazing Minds says:
    SEO seems to be the one thing that new bloggers either go over the top with or don't do it enough, I personally think that it does take a bit of practice to get the right balance when working with SEO on a blog, hopefully I've got it right on mine, so far so good ;)
  22. Lyn Murphy says:
    When you're just getting started and your head is buzzing with all of the new terminology that is still so much like a foreign language - how nice to find some one who speaks plain English! Just keep writing. Don't let yourself get bogged down in the technicalities. Thank you. I will do just that!
  23. Tran Tinh says:
    I think that starting a new blog is quite easy for 5 mins but how to get it on the top and optimize for SEO is challenging and it is not like what many people say nowadays. I think bloggers should be aware of this before starting a new blog. Your points reminded me 2 draft articles that I have never completed :-)
  24. Dev says:
    Jara, Really wonderful Post. I'm totally agree with you. I always write blog post for my readers first, than i do some seo part...! Thanks for sharing this great Post.
  25. Ryan Biddulph says:
    Hi Jara, Excellent advice. SEO is a small part of the big picture. Write for your audience first then tweak with some SEO as far as keywords, etc. Ryan Biddulph
  26. Alison Golden says:
    Thanks for this. As a new blogger who is trying to work out how important it is to work the SEO thing, I really appreciate the advice to keep on writing.
  27. Dennis Edell says:
    I couldn't have said it better! SEO is now and always has been an after thought for me on all blogs. I write until I'm done, for readers only. Just before publishing, comes the proof-reading and SEO. :)
  28. AJ says:
    You hit it dead on. Many people fail miserably to understand the difference between search engine optimization and marketing. You don't have to rank well in order to get people to visit your blog - if you focus on awesome content, creating online friendships and marketing yourself as a person and not a website, then the traffic will come naturally. And ultimately so will the back-links and organic ranking in search engines. If you take a look at some of the famous bloggers out there, if they were to start a new blog they will automatically get tons of traffic - not from search engines. Their focus has been on developing a "brand image" for themselves not on creating seo-optimized blog posts. For writters/bloggers it is especially important to think of SEO as a tool they can use to get an extra bit of traffic. Focus on quality content then worry about seo later... Of course for other sites, such as a tight niche store, like "Cheap Fishing Lures", SEO becomes the primary concern. ps: what was "the next blog"? I want to check it out.
  29. Trevor B. Reed says:
    Very interesting perspective. It is important to realize that SEO is a tool, not the end all be all. It is the way you market your blog and when done properly should help enhance your posts, not hinder the message within. Every blogger needs to find that median where the love of writing and the reality of making money can work in tandem. Thanks for bringing up such a great topic!
  30. Joy says:
    bigjara, nicely said! I have had a similar situation as you in that I first started building my website for the search engines and not the end users. Big mistake! Within a few short months I had my first google penalty. So back to the drawing board for me and I have finally realized that you have to work for the readers and you will be okay.
  31. JAMES PRUITT says:
    Hey Jara, Great post you have there. Too many people get so focused on SEO that they fail to see how to run their site effectively. SEO is a great source of traffic, but if everything that you do is to please the bots, you are going in the wrong direction. SEO is a very minor part of any successful strategy. There is so much traffic that you can grab out there that you really don't need seo to get it going well. IF you focus on your readers, the rest will follow. I wish more people would realize this, and quit spreading lies around to all the newbies. I think that is why the failure rate is so high.