seo for wordpressOK, this seems like a nasty question, everybody would jump right at me asking me how would I dare to ask such a question? SEO is good, SEO is great so yes, apply it on your blog as much as possible.

Well, is this really the truth?

The truth is that , there is a certain level of SEO you need to apply on your blog, BUT NOT THAT MUCH! Wooo…shivers…

First, the reasons that make me say that, after a few good years spent in doing SEO:

Blogs are communication tools, they target people, not search engines and SEO is, as the name says it, for search engines only.

Of course everybody would like some love from Google, Yahoo! or any other search engine, it is free and brings the best traffic available when used right, but if your blog will be a success, trust me, not Google will be the reason, but people, word of mouth, social media, communication, branding. That’s what blogging really is, you know?

Then what is SEO good for?

Well, as I said, everybody loves free things, and we are all suckers for free quality traffic and nothing beats SEO here, but the level of SEO you can apply on a blog is not high. Usually, websites optimized for search engines are written in a particular, somehow mathematical way, because they must follow some well defined rules. Well, in such cases, some of the articles written this way don’t sound very natural to somebody reading them.

Blogging is about communication, connecting with other people, so your posts must reach the very heart of your readers, other rules apply, like good, catchy titles, catchy starting lines, you need to capture your readers attention in seconds and the last thing you want to do is bother your visitor with mathematically written text.

SEO is great for static websites, SEO is great for selling products, nothing beats SEO in targeting the right market, narrowing it down to the exact needed audience which by the way converts great, but really is not the thing to bother with on a blog.

So, should I forget all about SEO for WordPress?

No, you should optimize your WordPress using all the available SEO rules, just that you should not make a stressful habit in optimizing your posts for search engines the same way you should do when writing a page for a static website designed to sell products on a well defined, narrow market.

You should invest your time asking you how to write better articles so your readers receive more from reading them, how to increase your RSS readers, how to increase your traffic, etc. This should be your constant concern, not SEO.

You should apply a few basic rules on your blog, you should optimize your WordPress theme, good titles, links, you should write good content with keywords, you should have keywords in your titles, alt on images, but that’s all you should stress about from this point of view.

For the rest…think how to blog better and give something back to your readers, the results will be great on the long run, far better than optimizing the blog for search engines!

By the way, the most important 5 SEO rules for your WordPress blog coming in just a few days, so subscribe to my feeds to not miss it!

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