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.