As any of my regular readers will know, me and Google have a very strange relationship! I decided to write this blog exclusively for people and develop it’s readership via ’social media marketing.’ As a marketing professional, I wince when I see blogs, which are clearly written primarily to score SEO points; with the actual readers needs placed second.
So, I decided to develop this blog around a ‘100% human-focused approach’ – rather than writing for SEO and then relying on Google to provide me with a readership.
This saw me break a few SEO rules. For example, I provide do-follow links to people who comment here, even though I was strongly advised NOT to, because it would harm my Google ranking (It didn’t by the way!) I also decided to only write posts when I have something I want to share – rather than posting every day just to keep Google happy with the “regularly updated content” we are often told it needs.
Google rewards quality content
When I announced how I was going to build jimsmarketingblog.com’s community, a few SEO professionals said that because I was focusing on providing good quality content, Google would actually still provide ‘targeted traffic’ to the blog. They said that Google was getting a lot better at identifying high value content.
After looking at the stats for the past month, I can confirm that these SEO professionals were 100% correct! Even though I write in my natural style and often don’t blog for a few days at a time, Google now sends legions of people to this blog every day, with very relevant search enquiries. Moreover, it has given the blog a revised PageRank of 4 (up from 3), after just 4 months of blogging and with me offering do-follow links.
Writing for Google and SEO
The lesson here is that despite what some might tell you, it seems that there is no real need to “write for Google” in order to attract new visitors via their search engine.
My experiences have shown that if a blog is SEO friendly and well written, lots of people will link to it. Once you get the links and you keep your focus on high quality content, it seems Google will figure the rest out!
It also shows the effectiveness of good SEO and the importance of the work provided by SEO experts, like those who have guided me in recent months. I especially want to thank Gregor Spowart from MMD.
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Ditto on Lucy above. So many games are played about Google. Should we do this? Should we do that?
Let’s just write good copy for our audiences. Period.
Most of what we think Google wants is questionable anyway.
Google SEO boggles my mind. Quality content is always key, but I still can’t seem to get it just right…no matter how many people link to the site. Glad to see that your content is doing so well.
Very refreshing info, and advice. Thanks.
I sometimes put things up on HubPages, but find much of what I read there to be “keyword rich” drivel. I’ve been trying to write good, meaningful content and have slowly been rewarded with more Google traffic — without dumbing down what I write to accomodate keywords. Much appreciated!
http://hubpages.com/profile/Bruce+Elkin
I was surprised to end up with a Google PR of 3 after only about 6 weeks of blogging on my site. I had very few links, but just wrote some very detailed posts about the specific niche that my blog is focused on.
I dont get tons of google referrals, but I think that I get a fair amount that is reflective of the volume of people searching for the type of info I provide.
Thanks for this article and all of the other info provided here and through your Tweets. I find much of it very useful.
Do you know a good resource guide that explains the rules for duplicate content?
Is a blog post that has videos from YouTube or Blip penalized?
Or if something is reposted with only a couple of sentences introducing why it is there, is that a negative?
Appreciate the feedback.
Ron McFarland
Excellent post and very good site. I have been struggling with what to do with the “no follow” tags on the site I am currently developing. I’d say if your site has PagePank of 4 after 4 months of blogging, allowing Google to follow is not doing too much harm.
I have subscribed to your RSS feed and look forward to many more insightful postings.
I think the SEO guys who advised you about the quality content deserve a drink and the other who mentions that do follow will harm your blog
… well…
they are possibly a little behind an being cautious about the leakage of “link juice” but in my opinion your 100% correct with Do Follow and long may it continue, after all you get out what you put in.
Justin,
I agree. One of the main reasons people have been so kind in recommending this blog and linking to it, is that they know I’m trying hard to make it a valuable resource.
You make a lot of sense – thanks!
Most people are killing their website’s content trying to impress Google.
Words are written to be read NOT crawled (search engines).
Bloggers will link back to your site because of well written content NOT because your site is well ‘crawled’.
So prioritize the ‘readers’ not ‘crawlers’!
Good read!
Hi Jim,
Excellent blog post and very well said. As a writer myself my primary focus when writing blog posts is my readers and how my words can help them. My blog has a PR of 0 at the moment but I’m really not worried. I have traffic and regular readers so that is all that matters to me. I am hoping to get recognised by Google at some stage though.
Amanda
I’m not sure what’s worse – blogs written for Google, or blogs written by big corporations because their PR agency told them to…
Andy,
All BIG companies blog in order to profit their business; usually with the PR company writing the blog for them. At least with a small business (like mine) you get content written by the actual company – in my case, me.
does it realy matter wether you use nofollow or dofollow,i mean in the eyes of google because they send traffic no matter wich tag you are useing and ive seen loads of dofollow blogs pop up now,everyone seems to be heading in the way of dofollow
You make a really good point.
The challenge we all face as website or blog owners, is that no one (other than Google) actually knows what Google does in order to allocate rankings.
Content is King when it comes to Google but a few “quality” links don’t hurt – Quality = topic related sites even if they have a lower page rank are valuable
Still, I feel people read this because you allow dofollows. You think youd get that many comments on this article otherwise?