Some time back I received an email from a former client wanting to know if he could stuff his site full of all the keywords he could to boost his placement in search results. Perhaps it is my growing hatred of Google that prompt me to write him back and tell him to pull his head out of his butt. Or maybe it was the fact he was the 4th person to ask me that same question in less then a week.
I have been blogging for over 6 years now. A lifetime when you measure it in an online timeframe. I wonder if instead of using doggie years, we should use one year online equals 10 years or even 15 years of our lifetime. It sure seems that way. However, what has not changed over that long lifetime of mine online is the fact people are still looking for shortcuts to getting traffic, getting customers and getting noticed by Google.
Let me tell you a little secret. There is no freaking magic pill. No top secret way of getting traffic. And no, Google does not control whether you are successful online or not. And if you continue to look for that and think that way, your blog is going to fail. The only living being or artificial life form that determines whether you are successful online is you.
Before we go any further with this post let me be the first to admit however, SEO is important. And you should have a plan in place to take advantage of it and use it. However, don’t get caught up in the old ways and the outdated SEO tactics which just don’t work anymore.
Old SEO Tactics and Misinformation
What we are all after on our websites and blogs is traffic. We want visitors. Some of those visitors should become readers and hopefully, some of those readers will subscribe or become regulars. In the end however, our ultimate goal is money. Seriously, why sugar coat it. We need to pay the bills. Customers and clients are where we get the money. And selling our products is where we get the money. And we have to get them to our sites to accomplish all of that.
Four or five years ago it was a lot easier to get traffic and achieve those high search engine rankings we all wanted. What we were doing however was really gaming the system. Not only have our audiences evolved over the last few years. Search engines have too and this has rendered the old ways of doing things useless for the most part. Like you, I know there are still snake oil salesman out there trying to convince all of us these old, outdated SEO tactics still work. But they don’t. And it is probably this type of hype that prompted that old client of mine to ask me about keyword stuffing too.
The problem is, those still pushing the old ways are providing outdated tactics and spreading misinformation too. And it is this misinformation which needs to stop. And we all need to stop listening to it too.
Old SEO Tactics and the Modern Alternatives
Old ways:
- Keyword Stuffing
- Spamming in Blog Comments
- Search Engine Submissions
- Link Exchanges
The new, improved and modern ways:
Write good, relevant and up-to-date content. How many times have you seen me write that here or others do the same on their blogs? And how many more times do some need to read that before they get it? Stuffing your site’s pages with keywords can actually have a negative impact on your search engine rankings. However, the key to content is the mere fact you should actually be more concerned about writing for the human search engines and not Google. If you write your post so they solve a problem, provide a solution or a product and are relevant, the human search engines are going to find you.
While you should make certain you do put some keywords in your post titles, use good subheadings and put some keywords in the post. Don’t overstuff them. Good, relevant and up-to-date content is going to do way more good for you than keyword stuffing.
Go forth and comment, but don’t spam. I still get on a daily basis too many spamming comments on this blog. And since I moderate my comments, you don’t see them. You know the ones I am talking about however. We have all seen them. “Great post, I agree.” “Good information, thanks for this post.” And my all time favorite, “This is my first visit to your articles, I have book marked it and will return.” With as many times as I see that from the same commenter, I wonder how many first times they have had.
And it is not just their stupid comments that are completely wrong. It is the fact they put in two or three crappy links in the comment too. Or the link they insert in the required fields is nothing but a spammy landing page.
People, this is not the way to leave a comment and everyone needs to stop it.
Rather than be a comment spammer, leave a comment that adds to or produces something of value. Value for both the blogger you are commenting on and the readers who will see it. Creating well thought out, well-written, engaging content is one of the best ways to attract traffic. And commenting is creating content. In addition, if you leave that kind of comment, you are going to get links to your blog too. Because that blogger you are leaving the right kind of comment on is going to notice, investigate you by visiting your site and chances are, they are going to link to you too.
Other readers of the blog you are commenting on are also going to notice if you are commenting right. They are going to also investigate you, visit your site and read your stuff. And guess what, you just gained traffic, gained a reader and hopefully a regular.
Spread your own links around. There are still too many people using the old, wore out method of search engine submissions in an attempt to get noticed. And if you are paying a company to do this for you, you are wasting your money.
The new, modern, best practice of getting noticed instead of this old method is to take advantage of social media. And spread your own links around. Are you on twitter? Write a new post and tweet about it. There are too many tools to mention that will do this for you each and every time you post a new post. And guess what, twitter is crawled by the search engines constantly, so a link to your new post will be discovered in the blink of an eye.
And if you want links to your blog, link out to others. Not in a blogroll, but use organic linking. Link in your blog post.
There is no top secret formula and no magic pill. To get traffic to your blog takes work.
David Risley had a great post on his own blog about this very subject. David provided a great list of activities you can do to get traffic and here they are.
- Make lots of good content.
- Get it out there, while focusing on authority sites.
- Point it all at your blog.
- Get an email list. Use it. Mobilize your subscribers and point them to your blog.
- Say “hi” to other players in your market. Form a relationship and see what happens.
- Rinse. Repeat. Repeat some more.
Look familiar? Content and effort on your part. The keys to getting results.
