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Sometimes, SEO matters, sometimes it doesn’t. Do you have a good feel for the difference?
I’m on record here at Website In A Weekend stating that by and largely, when you’re writing evergreen content from a unique or personal perspective, on WordPress, extensive SEO tweaking doesn’t matter too much in the long term. Longevity weighting comes into play, Google and other search engines evolve their algorithms over time, and hot keywords come and go.
However, not everyone has the luxury of writing into the long tail. Sometimes, SEO matters, and it might matter a lot! Here’s a few cases:
- You have a lot of competitors. For example, if you intend on making a living selling scented candles on the internet, you better learn everything you possibly can about SEO.
- You need results right now. You can get some of these results using Adwords, but getting ranked highly for organic search might be cheaper.
- You aren’t using WordPress. Or even worse, you’re building out your own web pages from scratch, by hand. For example, long form sales letters are typically written as static web pages, not as blog posts or pages. In this case, a small investment in learning SEO basics will pay off.
Fortunately for those of us using WordPress, we have about 85% of SEO handled automatically, according to Matt Cutts from Google. This is good to know, and is a compelling reason to use WordPress, even for small, static web sites. Make sure your article titles and <title> elements are good, you’ve covered about half the remaining.
There’s bound to be more reasons when SEO really matters. What have I missed? Leave a comment and let me know…
I’ve started using WordPress even for simple, static sites, because it is easier, faster, and takes care of these SEO sorts of things for me.
Viva la WordPress!
.-= Sean´s last blog ..Web Art: Some Examples =-.
@Sean –
Dr WordPress suggests you take advantage of an immediate opportunity to write a spiffy guest post on how you do this… showcasing your design skills of course.
.-= Dr WordPress!´s last blog ..Join A Mastermind Group For Personal And Professional Success =-.
When I made the change from a basic html website to a WordPress blog I noticed the search engine traffic skyrocket from where it was prior to being a WordPress Blog.
All though I still really don’t try to work the search engine game all that often, I just write.
.-= Extreme John´s last blog ..6 Alexa Review Chain Reviews =-.
Dave,
Great stuff about SEO. A lot of times people get stressed about SEO when it really doesn’t matter (you’re not going to win the make money online SEO war, so why stress about it?)..
It when you’re on fair ground with a lot of competitors that SEO will really shine like in your candle example…
.-= Blake @ props blog´s last blog ..10 Guidelines To Making A User Friendly Website =-.
I definitely agree that when I’m not using WordPress as a CMS, and instead opt to build valid XHTML/CSS websites, SEO strategies are MUST.
However, I’m slowly moving to building everything on WordPress because the plugins are far above what I can do with a static website…or at least feel like doing. :)
@Extreme – You saw that “WordPress 85%” that Matt Cutts says Google looks for.
@Blake – Yup. It always make me laugh when I see an article stuffed with keywords. Keywords repeated over and over, keywords on bold, keywords in italics… stupid!
.-= Dr WordPress!´s last blog ..How Dangerous Are Private Label Rights To Your Blogging Credibility? =-.
@Flippa –
As a shortcut, you can rip a WordPress generated web page to use as a template!
Stay tuned for a link to a site that will help get your mandatory SEO stuff handled. Really, it’s not SEO… it’s more making sure your web page is well-structured, which helps readers.
.-= Dr WordPress!´s last blog ..How Dangerous Are Private Label Rights To Your Blogging Credibility? =-.
SEO is a must for free traffic from search engine. But content is still the king. I prefer direct and revisit reader. ;)
.-= Jayce´s last blog ..How to hack Facebook account profile =-.