Hey, Blog Coach: “What About SEO?”

By on March 28, 2007 in Blog Coach, Marketing with 12 Comments

Forget About It. Well, almost.

Customers and prospects often ask me, with a wink and a twinkle in their eye, about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) "tricks" and how they can quickly rise to the top of the search results. My answer is often along these lines: "Forget about SEO and just engage with human beings in mind."

Mind Your Own Business
Since my work is with busy business owners and leaders, learning the complex world of SEO will often do one thing – take them away from their business and their customers. Sometimes, hiring a reputable SEO pro, a solid (and up-to-date) web development team or a blogging coach will help – they can do most of the background and coding stuff that can put your site on the right path. But for you:

  • You have a business to run. That takes up most of your day.
  • You have customers and prospects to engage. In part, that’s where writing the blog posts and comments come in. Do you have time for SEO?

Content is king; Community is the kingdom it serves
If content is king, what is Google’s content? A relevant and valuable search result, right? If the user doesn’t continually find solid results in their search, Google will lose users to Yahoo (and vice-versa). Therefore, Google’s job is to provide relevant and valuable results to…human beings.

Help Google; help yourself. Provide content that’s relevant to your business and helpful to people searching on items relevant to your business. By doing that, you’ll find yourself rising to the top.

Ryan Healy says: One primary objective: Readers or Search Engines – not both. Wise advice.

I think it’s a fine idea to be familiar with SEO strategies, just don’t make it your focus. If you’re for more, Lee Odden provides a great library of resources: TopRank SEO Resources

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Find Your Social Media ROI

I hear it from a lot of business owners: “Where is the ROI with all this Social Media?“ If this is a question you ask yourself, maybe we should work together a bit more. We can work together solo, or via a professional learning community. Find and increase your ROI. There is a “there” there.

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  • Matt Ambrose

    I wholeheartedly agree. It’s a shame so many people think of content as just a tool for climbing Google, rather than realising that it could actually be used to build trust in their business. When will they learn!

  • http://www.objectwareinc.com/SEOPromotionAndStrategy.aspx Mike Bradbury

    Great points -
    In my experience, Letting business owners in on the world of SEO turns them into these super-villains bent on Google domination.
    They forget all about content, and just try the next best thing that they read on the forums to try and get to the top.
    Very solid advice.

  • http://www.maryschmidt.com Mary Schmidt

    I believe it’s (painfully) obvious when people are writing content solely for Google juice. They focus on “hot” topics (rather or not they really have anything relevant to say about such) and/or do their best to be “edgy” (which all often ends up looking like a 13-year-old with anger issues – boring reading at best. We’ve all heard/read and used the “f” word a few thousand times now, thank you, Mr./Ms. blogger.)
    And, please, spare me all those cute parody blogs/sites. It takes a lot of time and wit to do such things well – and most don’t come up to the level of Mad magazine (which still has the ability to make me chuckle.)

  • http://www.bikerchicknews.com Janet Green

    >>”Forget about SEO and just engage with human beings in mind.”<< Excellent advice! If you are having a dialogue with your customers, you are most likely using keywords and common search phrases related to your business in the conversation naturally. Focus on having a relevant conversation, and the rankings will follow!

  • http://delivermagazine.com Nancy

    So many companies are so caught up in the need to achieve top-of-list status that they forget why they’re in business to begin with.
    If you keep your company at the top of its game by continuing to keep the lines of customer communication open, people will find you.

  • http://dmiracle.com Dawud Miracle

    All too true. Especially for new websites and blogs. You’re going to get far more return out of the invest of time and money in understanding how to speak to people – your target market – through your website and blog than you will focusing on SEO.
    Look at it this way, if you were able to drive tons of traffic to your site through Google would you be ready? First off, could your content convert a percentage of those visitors? And if it could, would you be able to handle the influx of new prospects and business – immediately?
    It all sounds good – but it’s a true formula for failure. Focus on your website/blog meeting your target market. Focus on conversion. Focus on good service. Focus on converting good clients into great referring sources. Then, once you have some momentum and success – consider SEO.
    Oops, I gave away a bit too many secrets there.

  • http://www.businessbloggingtips.com derrick sorles-web 2.0 consultant

    I so agree! I get the SEO question, and also, people want to start a blog today and make money with their blog tomorrow! You don’t start a blog to get to page one of Google and make $200 a day. Though that would be nice! – I tell people, start your blog and don’t even tell anyone for the first 30 days. Start to build your content. Give them something to read. If you’re ready in 30-60 days, then start to tell the world. Do it because you have something to say, because you have something to share. If it’s good, they will come. And so will the rankings. And maybe some money….way down the line! But for now, forget about the fame and fortune!

  • http://claireraikes.blogs.com/bizblogangel/2007/03/business_bloggi.html BusinessBlogAngel

    Business blogging and SEO

    One of my clients emailed me the other day about SEO in relation to her business blog… I will give her a more comprehensive answer by email, but this conversation over on Mike Sansone’s ConverStations echoes a lot of my

  • http://www.blogopreneur.com Kian Ann

    Great insights Mike. I think sites should cater to humans.
    Like you said, the job of search engines are to find relevant content for humans. In that sense, I think Google, Yahoo and Live Search will one day read content like humans do – taking into account the positioning of the text, colors, images and everything…
    We just have to wait for the day to come :P

  • http://www.sunny-kumar.blogspot.com/ Music and Resources

    I hope that this little Beginners Guide will help you to optimize and improve your Blogger or Blogspot blog functionality and overall ratings. Note that this E-Book is related only to Blogger blogs accounts. But have some tips that can help others too!

  • http://vdhdesigns.com/ seo service

    Thanks for this information, Now I have some idea on SEO.

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