using blog platform instead of website?

Medievalist said:

How's it workin' for you then? Got a pagerank of 5 ? 3?

How's the SEO mojo working?

Good writing, other than a few basic principles regarding titles, links and alt tags, will trump SEO any day, no matter what plug in you use.

Google and Bing have been exceedingly explicit about what they want to see, and what they don't want.

I note, by the way, I'm exceedingly technical—I not only run this server, I've been blogging for twelve years.

Here's pretty much everything writers need to know about SEO

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And I've been doing this for 13. Not just basic blogging, which isn't at all technical, but actual internet marketing and SEO.

I'd say my SEO mojo is great considering I make mid 4 figures every month with my web based subscription business that only requires a few minutes of work every day to run and upkeep It ranks at the top of the first page for an EXTREMELY competitive, non long tail keyword tyvm.

As a non-nerd, maybe I shouldn't stick my head into this (but it's such a great way to procrastinate!)--for Wordpress hosting, you can install SEO plugins that make your page rank #1.
Maybe not withing 5 minutes (who needs to rank #1 within 5 minutes?), but with a matter of days. At least that's how it worked with my website and blog, and I don't even use my author name as the domain name. But the domain (wordpress, self-hosted) ranks between #1 and #4 when people google my name.

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You can probably get that ranking for your own name without any plugin because your name isnt a competitive keyword.

A site which is perfectly optimised for SEO will be of no interest whatsoever to the people you want to attract. They might find your site, but they'll click away just as fast as they arrived because your site will be full of SEO-optimised jargon, and won't have any content they want to read.

A site with strong, interesting content which is pertinent to your potential readership will attract and hold the interest of the people you're trying to attract, and will do the same job that SEO does with regard to indexing and rankings.

So why bother with SEO?

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Um, what you're describing here IS good SEO. You do realize content can be both informative and compelling and SE friendly...right? What you're comparing it to is actually grey hat/black hat seo. Besides, no one is saying you HAVE to bother with SEO, but it's always beneficial, and not at all time consuming or complicated if you're smart and know what you're doing.

I don't think it's Medievalist who is missing the point here, Ingrid.

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And I think it's both of you who are missing the point. But hey, its not my bottom line that's hurting lol

ingridash said:

I'd say my SEO mojo is great considering I make mid 4 figures every month with my web based subscription business that only requires a few minutes of work every day to run and upkeep It ranks at the top of the first page for an EXTREMELY competitive, non long tail keyword tyvm.

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You haven't been doing it very well then, because your author Web site ingridash.com has a page rank of 0.

It's been up for a month. You should at least have a 1 ranking. Your Facebook page comes up before your Web site—in part because you have untagged images, grammar errors, and poor linking practices.

One of the things that Google looks for are basic grammar and punctuation errors; those incorrect possessive apostrophes are killer.

If you're here to pimp SEO you're going to be banned.

If you're here to interact with other writers, you're welcome, but we've had too many people attempting to sell SEO services to writers who are just beginning to establish a Web presence and can't afford to line someone else's pockets for something they could do more effectively via good writing.

ingridash said:

I'd say my SEO mojo is great considering I make mid 4 figures every month with my web based subscription business that only requires a few minutes of work every day to run and upkeep It ranks at the top of the first page for an EXTREMELY competitive, non long tail keyword tyvm.

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This paragraph is a perfect example of the sort of jargon-ridden text I see on SEO-dependent websites, and it's exactly the sort of writing which has no place on a writer's website.

And I think it's both of you who are missing the point. But hey, its not my bottom line that's hurting lol

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Oh god. A lol and a smiley.

When writers can't express themselves in words I start to wonder if they really are writers.

AW Admin said:

If you're here to pimp SEO you're going to be banned.

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Yep.

If you're here to interact with other writers, you're welcome, but we've had too many people attempting to sell SEO services to writers who are just beginning to establish a Web presence and can't afford to line someone else's pockets for something they could do more effectively via good writing.

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Yep again.

And with that, I think we're done here.

If anyone can come up with a good reason for me to reopen this thread they're welcome to PM me.