A reader emailed me today with a great question. If you are interested in Content Marketing or blogging and want to know how I built my blog, you will find this really useful. So, here’s what Sally asked:
I work in SEO and notice that you don’t optimize your blog posts the way I’d expect yet you rank on page 1 of Google for some top search terms. I believe I know how you do this, but I’d love you to write a post to explain it.
Thanks Jim. ~ Sally
Business is human
I work from the mindset that business is all about people, so we need to maintain a human-based approach to business, if we want to succeed in any meaningful way.
One of the core reasons that people struggle to achieve the quality and volume of sales leads or subscribers they would like from their sites, is that they focus too little on human engagement. For them, it’s about numbers. They talk about building their ‘list‘ rather than building a community. If you read about their approach to online marketing, it sounds like they are developing a spreadsheet, rather than welcoming and nurturing human relationships.
People belong in a community, not on a spreadsheet!
Here’s the thing that so many people seem to forget, when marketing their business online. Feel free to quote me on this:
Behind every blog comment, tweet, Facebook update and avatar picture is a person. A human being. Someone worthy of recognition. Someone’s son, daughter, mother or father. Real people, worthy of being respected as such, and not treated like inventory items on someone’s marketing list.
Why do I reply to just about every comment on this blog and every tweet I see? Because it matters to me. It REALLY matters. Why? Because without the people behind the clicks, emails, comments, tweets and shares, this blog has no value.
Here’s the short answer to Sally’s question
It’s almost 4 years since I wrote my first post on Jim’s marketing Blog and from day 1, I decided to develop the blog by focusing on community building, rather than focus on heavy SEO, guest posting, link building and ‘list building’. As a result, the readers of this blog have built the blog with me.
I put content out there and if it’s good enough, the community connect with it, value it and share it. I never, ever forget that.
The upside
The upside of this approach, is that I don’t need to spend time SEOing any of my posts. So, I never see a downturn in visitor numbers, when Google change their algorithm. Also, because I have the freedom to write exclusively for humans, rather than figure out how to work certain key phrases into blog posts, it’s easy for me to publish better quality content, more frequently.
I also don’t need to do things, like write those ‘best of the week’ blog post at the weekends, just to quench Google’s thirst for keyword rich, frequently updated content. I can write posts like this, instead.
The downside
It takes a leap of faith at the beginning to go against the grain, but after that, it’s easy because you are blogging from a mindset of total freedom. Other than that, I haven’t found a downside to embracing a human focused approach to blogging and online marketing.
Ironically, I manage to achieve better results than most spreadsheet marketing guys, in the areas where they are fixated. For example, around 40 new people, and climbing, subscribe to this blog every day via email. Without offering a newsletter, I have permission to send email to thousands and thousands of great people daily, who are part of this blog’s community. That’s an enormously valuable, Permission Marketing asset; built on providing value.
Equally, by focusing only on writing content that people will find useful, my posts tend to organically attract the back-links, which Google values so highly. Then, because it’s so much quicker to write posts when you are not deliberately SEOing the content or thinking of things like ‘SEO friendly HTML title-tags’, I am able to publish more content, more often – giving Google lots of that frequently updated content I mentioned earlier.
This approach works for me, because it allows me to focus freely on producing content, which I believe you will find useful. I don’t have to waste a minute, learning about the latest and greatest ways to keep the search engines happy or figuring out how to ‘build my list’.
Google’s position
Interestingly, this is the exact approach to blogging, which Google’s Matt Cutts advocates. Google staffers have told us again and again, that they are all about helping the best content reach the top of search results.
When you think about it for a moment, this makes perfect sense. Google lives or dies based on the quality of the search results it delivers. If Google allows generic, scraped or over-SEO’d content to take over the search rankings, people will stop using their product and advertisers will go elsewhere.
Conclusion
The longer I have studied online marketing, (I started my first email newsletter in 1998), the more I see that long term success comes from producing frequent, useful, original, people-focused content.
I believe that the mindset, which says people are to be targeted and referred to like inventory items on a spreadsheet, rather than valued members of your community, is both disrespectful and totally missing the point. As I said at the beginning of this post, business is all about people. It’s people who hire you, buy from you, connect with you and recommend you.
In short: I believe there’s real value in ‘keeping it human’.
What do you think?
Jim Connolly can help you grow your business and achieve the breakthrough marketing results your hard work deserves. To find out more, simply click here!
Photo: Jesslee Cuizon
I couldn’t agree more Jim and thanks for sharing this.
The reason I only subscribe to you, Seth Godin, Chris brogan, and a few others is that you write blogs for people and not for searchbots.
Keep up the good work and thanks for all you do for the community here. We appreciate it.
Thanks CJ.
100% agree. Those that don’t understand and invest in community building are doomed from the start in my mind. The human based approach has worked for me as well over the past 6 years.
Hey Drew. Thanks for sharing your experience, from 6 years of a people focused approach. It’s great to see that it has worked for you.
I think this is one of the best posts you have ever written and I like a lot of your work. I think it is too easy to get caught up in the methods we are supposed to use when working with social media and online marketing concepts. If we would just focus on people, a large number of those issues would really be non-factors. It really is all about where you want to spend your time and I agree with you, take the time to be a part of a community by writing content that helps people resolve issues and gain a better understanding of concepts.
Thanks again for a great post!
Brent
Hi Brent.
Thanks for the kind words, sir. As you say, it’s all too easy to focus on the methods rather than the people.
Good Morning/Afternoon, Jim! Once again, you have inspired me, and I appreciate you for that. These are such valuable thoughts for all of us to remember.
I love your philosophy of community-building vs. list-building. Also, you have walked the talk when it comes to the kindness and understanding you have shown me. I will never forget that. I hope I can return your kindness throughout the days.
Take care, and have a wonderful week.
Hi there Nancy. I appreciate your kindness, though I basically just a fan of yours after watching the way you handled some massive challenges, with strength, humility and soul.
Have a great week, my friend.
Thanks Jim….your words mean a great deal to me, especially these: “my friend”
Having your support during my difficult year has meant more to me than you know.
You have a great week, too, MY friend!
Jim,
I think this post is spot on. Some of the SEO focus tries to strip the soul and original intention of the author away. I love the comment about feeling free enough to write about what you are interested in and what your community finds interesting. This allows your uniqueness to differentiate your continent in the conversation.
Cecilia
Hi Cecilia. I wish I’d been smart enough to include what you said there, about stripping the soul and original intention of the author away. Thanks for sharing your feedback.
Agree 100% Jim. People are people, they are not numbers. True success comes through online relationships. I just read an incredible book on inbound and content marketing and part from many other things, your sentiments are endorsed in this book. Thanks for all the inspiration.
You’re very welcome, Wade.
Really enjoy receiving your blogs Jim and then passing them on even though I suspect the people who receive them are subscribed to you too! You are a great resource and you really make blogging seem like a good thing to do, not with a hidden agenda to get ripped off.
You’re extremely kind, Margaret. Thank you for everything you do for the community.
Great post, Jim! Once again, you have absolutely nailed it! For so long, I have wasted time trying to make my blog so SEO friendly, when I should be spending time working on good content, and everything else will follow. Thanks for the inspiration, Jim.
Thanks, Bill and good luck with the blog.
Powerful post Jim, you remind me of Steve Pavlina who said in one of his posts “how to build a high traffic blog” first write for humans before writing for search engines. Interestingly just like you steve focuses more on building a community rather than a list and he’s one of the top earning bloggers in the world. He’ll rather focus on creating high value even if it takes him 10 years than make money right away because according to him the greater the value you create, the more money you make on the long run. Steve is testament to the message you spreading here Jim, I know for a fact that google isn’t going to take SEO tricks lightly hence why many SEO tactics don’t seem to work these days!
Thanks for the feedback, Paul.
Hey Jim,
We are on the same page here, although doing understanding and utilizing basic SEO should still be done…after all, if you don’t play, you aren’t in the game.
I personally think that community building is hands down the best practice although it is hands down the hardest because there isn’t necessarily a blueprint and to a small degree there is an element of luck involved (ie. meeting the right people who share your views that happen to have an audience themselves that share your views as well.) Of course, there are ways to nudge this but overall, there are almost always random encounters to help you break through plateaus. That at least, has been my experience.
Hi there, Leo. I’m not against basic SEO – too much SEO is where people get it wrong.
Thanks for sharing your experience and being a regular commenter here. I appreciate that.
Jim, you have got to be the first to actually come right out and say it, halleluiah! Writing for SEO strictly has always been hard for me. I much prefer to write from the heart and share our area with a community that will hopefully enjoy what I write and find it valuable to what they are looking for. I have found the changes in Google liberating in so many ways.
Thank you for this post, it just solidifies that the methods I have been using are OK.
Hey Tammy. Thanks for the kind words, regarding the post.
Ultimately, the way to see if your approach to blogging is working, is to measure it against your objectives.
I’m off to take a look at http://www.bedandbreakfastjeffersontx.com/ now – because of your ‘human’ touch here, reaching out to me – Not because of it’s SEO.
There’s something in that.
That’s sweet Jim. I feel it is working for me because I am floating to the top of Google searches for relevant content being searched for our area. Our website is a baby (only love 4 months)compared to most but it has risen from approximately page 10 or more to sometimes page one for what people are searching for in our area. Events and such so that makes me happy and I’m pretty sure getting me the results I desire.
I definitely agree in your post.”Human” is all that matters because without human there is no business and no customers.Business is serving human.
Thanks, Becca.
HI Jim
Nice article and I totally agree with eerything you’ve said. It is a shame that at the moment, Google still seems to be trying to get it right though, as they have penalised some sites that actually were giving Google exactly what they said they wanted, in an ethical manner.
Anyway, with the approach you have taken, you can almost forget about what Google is doing, because you will have something much more powerful, and that’s word of mouth. So, I’d imagine that even if Google shut shop tomorrow, you would still be getting a ton of repeat visitors.
Best wishes
Phil
This is a great perspective on this stuff. I have a parallel approach with my website. As it is a tax and estate planning site, my thought was to give the public a place where they can find articles discussing various issues. I have found that not many websites offer the articles and insights that I have worked hard to produce. The harder part for me is trying to be less technical at my blog. That is still a work in process.
Anyway, your point of view is the only point of view and it is the way I have practiced law for 35 years. Clients interests come first and the rest takes care of itself. Thanks Jim.
No, I am going to be the spoil sport in this party. You have to write for the robots and the humans, and it isn’t easy managing the tradeoff.
You are using the Headway theme which does a lot of the advanced SEO for you, and you write in an engaging manner – at least for me.
But, you are managing the trade-off writing for the machines and humans. And nicely done, too.
Hi Michael. Thanks for the kind words. I write exclusively for people. The SEO here is just the code tweaks that the theme applies globally. It doesn’t impact how I write in any way.
Thanks for the feedback and welcome to the blog.
Jim;
The SEO built into in Headway Theme provides meta information to the robots about your content – just so you don’t have to worry about it.
Most people have wildly unrealistic expectation about ranking and so they become prematurely unhappy with the results of their SEO.
Hi Michael. In the post I say I do not write for SEO and I don’t. I’m struggling to see how you believe I am:
“you are managing the trade-off writing for the machines and humans.”
How does the fact I use a premium blog theme, mean I am no longer writing for people, when it has zero impact on the words I use and when I make zero deliberate SEO tweaks to my content, sub heads, images, title tags etc?
Jim asks:
“[SEO] it has zero impact on the words I use and when I make zero deliberate SEO tweaks to my content, sub heads, images, title tags etc?”
Quickly scan the view page source for any page. You will see a great deal of information, not available to the ordinary reader, contained in your case as open graph or og tags. Right out of the box your template is doing a lot of SEO work for you – you don’t have to do anything.
Your template if you keep it updated will give you an advantage when the robots are searching for microdata.
I think on this one Michael, we were talking about 2 different things. I am exclusively saying I do not adapt how I write for Google, and I don’t.
You seem to be saying the same, but are referring exclusively to the fact I use my friend’s theme has good built in optimisation (Disclaimer: Headway are clients of mine). Headway, like all top, premium themes does basic global seo.
I think I get where you are coming from.
In either case, thanks for your contribution, sir.
Michael – Why can’t you see the difference between theme SEO and the topic of this blog, which is SEO free content writing?
This blog is about content as a few people have mentioned and youre talking again and again about his themes SEO.
@Michael – I believe Jims correct.
None of the content is written for “robots and humans”.
Within his content (which is what this post is all about) He has not worked on key phrase density, alt tags, image optimization, embolding or optimized the of H1,2,3,4 text.
Surely you can see that none of the usual SEO content techniques have been employed here?
I may be incorrect Michael but I believe you were not referring to Jims content, but to only the built in seo? If so, how does that mean he’s adapting his writing style for Googlebot?
Hi Raj. One of the frustrations of blogging and a key reason Seth Godin switched comments off, is that it’s just about impossible to write a post and have everyone understand your point.
I’m happy for people to disagree with me, it often makes for a hugely valuable exchange. I also learn a great deal from people who comment here.
The challenge is when you are both in agreement, but a misunderstanding of the message is stopping both people seeing it.
Thanks for the feedback, sir.
Raj correctly asks: “how does that mean he’s adapting his writing style for Googlebot”
He isn’t, and perhaps he shouldn’t.
But, take a quick peek at the view page source. Someone is writing for the bot! Else why the open graph tags?
“Someone is writing for the bot! Else why the open graph tags?”
That’s Theme SEO – not the topic of this blog and not the point Jim is making.
Hi Martin. That is indeed the topic. I think there are some crossed wires.
Thanks for the feedback.
Hallo Jim
This is frustrating to watch.
Jim, he’s delibverately baiting you. You add nothing to the quality of the blog by allowing people to eff-up a great post like that.
I disagree.
Michael is trying to expand the conversation and isn’t trolling.
Trolls I delete.
People adding to the debate, like Michael, I not only welcome here but encourage.
Thanks for the feedback and sorry if you have found the conversation frustrating.
I think most of the ground has been covered.
But let me add one thing. Forget about what you thought SEO is or was.
Let’s focus on the og tags, or meta content.
Jim is writing for the machine because he allows his excellent theme to put in meta content – describing what the post is about to both humans and the robots.
His meta content strategy is to allow one machine – the theme- to write for another – the search bots via the og tags – which are both local and global.
There is nothing inherently right or wrong with this strategy. (Even if he disallowed meta content, he would be writing for the machine, unless banned all search bots effectively.)
We are all writing for the machine. We are all writing for humans. We are books being judged and ranked by our covers. (I also liked Jim’s post or I wouldn’t have taken the time to respond.)
Seems we don’t have crossed wires, Michael, so lets agree to disagree.
Life’s too short
A good stopping place!
I hope that both positions are sufficiently laid out that people get some value thinking through their own views.
Jim,
I get it now. That was clever.
Hi Jim,
I agree with you 100%! I don’t actually do email marketing, but I have a “follow by email” along with Feedburner. I get people that email me asking what my numbers are for everything on my blog, I have to tell them I don’t know. I don’t monitor it, nor do I push to increase it.
I get new visitors and also repeat visitors, that is what counts to me. Once you get too involved with your numbers, you are less likely to produce something that people will read.
As for SEO, I never really worried much about that. My topic may get mentioned enough times in a post to be optimized, or it may not. I don’t keep track of how much the density is.
Hi Dawn. In my experience, as long as your blog theme has been set up for good SEO, you publish regularly and you blog around a certain topic of interest, the traffic will come.
I reach thousands of people with each blog post, without writing for Google. Interestingly, Chris Brogan, Seth Godin and Robert Scoble all write for people too and they have massive communities around their work.
Definitely have to be yourself and not keyword stuffing.
My work at home blog took a hit in traffic a couple years back because I was worried about numbers and keywords and such. I stopped worrying so much and started writing like me again and it did pick back up quickly.
My Mommy blog never had any kind of keyword optimization in posts, but people come to read it because it is a person writing it with a sense of humor and fun parenting tips and ideas. It makes the difference.
Too many people are so worried about their numbers that they don’t concentrate on what’s important! I know people who check stats many times a day and then they are trying to optimize to get better numbers.
You can definitely tell when people are trying to write for Google, that is for sure.
You make a great point at the end of your comment, Dawn. I agree – I absolutely can tell when a post is written for the search engines. Thanks for reminding me of a key reason, not to write for the bots!
I came to blogging after I’d already written several books so I had the mindset of a writer who expects readers (real people) to read my posts. While I’ve looked into SEO and everything the gurus say to do, in the end I return to the simple method of one writer writing to engage first one reader and then another and another.
It’s been up and down but in the end it’s what I enjoy.
Enjoyed your post–a lot.
Glad you found it useful, Vikki. With Google placing greater and greater importance on social signals (links from social networks), so long as your theme is SEO optimized and you write around a central topic, you will attract plenty of targeted traffic. Yes, you could probably get more traffic if you SEO’d the crap out of everything you wrote, but it wouldn’t sound like you any more. Thanks for the comment.
Jim, I believe you are correct but I think so many people want instant results that they use every SEO tactic out there to get to the top as fast as they can. The tortoise won the race, right?
Using Google best practices, is not taking the tortoise route, Lisa. Google say to write original, compelling content. They need to see what you are doing, so you need a blog theme, which has ‘clean code’ – such as the one I use here; Headway.
Conversely, over SEOing blog content doesn’t lead to instant results, either. If anything, it can stop you getting the results you want. Badly written copy (aimed at Googlebot and not readers) will get few links, few comments and few mentions. Without those signals, search engines will take little notice.
Interesting threads. I design and develop websites and there are best practices I follow that help with SEO but often as a additional bonus. For example if you have a page listing your articles with a short summary never ever make the link words “read more” for each article, the reason is accessibility – visually impared visitors using screen readers will just read the links – and read more, read more, read more doesn’t make any sense. You should akways use a descriptive text for links. As an added bonus this helps with SEO as well.
So this can be partially a writing for humans whilst acknowledging non human devices. However the bulk of each article should be written in plain English as Jim does do well here. Building that community by allowing comments (can be time consuming answering all) and getting good links out and back are also pieces in the SEO puzzle. Excellent work Jim.
I am no SEO expert, therefore I started my writing without any SEO research. I just write what I feel and write for people. The result of my blog is tiny in comparison with many famous blogs . But I will continue to write for people, build a community via blog and facebook page. And yes, we are in the people business, no doubt.
I think the key point that you’ve made here Jim is that you remain unaffected by the algorithm changes. Your site contains exactly the sort of content that Google want to deliver and that people want to read. It was a brave move from the start but none the less a glittering example of the power of great content. I’m currently working on a totally new project with which I hope to build a community. I always try to deliver quality original content but with an eye on SEO. I may throw caution to the wind with this new project and see what happens!
Regards
Steve
I am soooo totally with you on this. When I started my blog two years ago, it was for the express purpose of stopping the self-editor in me. I write for my readers, and pay scant attention to analytics…sacrilege, I know, according to most. I’m delighted to see a kindred spirit here. I’m not sure that I’m attracting numbers, but I do know I have a very loyal and supportive community. And that’s what matters to me. Cheers! Kaarina
Hi Kaarina. Building that community is where the value is. Yes, you need to measure your progress (you can’t manage what you can’t measure), but fixating on SEO is insane.
Thanks for the feedback.
Thank you for validating what appears to be good instincts on my part! I used to be an accountant, and now write, but am surprisingly unfocused on the numbers. (I’m having too much fun with words now, I guess.)
I appreciate the inspiration-boost, and enjoyed your piece immensely.
Hi, Joanna. Welcome to the blog. As a former accountant, one thing you will certainly appreciate is the ROI of a human approach to your work.
Thanks for the feedback.
Nice tips but the long posts are the post that attracts the big amount traffic than the shorter one on every blog.
Hi, Gaurav. Thanks for the feedback, but my experience over thousands of posts, is that the best posts get the most interest – not the longest.
Thanks for the feedback.