[thelist] SEO Studio

[VOLKAN ÖZÇELİK]

I'm generally of the opinion that SEO software is scam, or at best a way to
> spend a ton of time obsessing over small things that make little
> difference
> in actual rankings.


+1.

A real-life example from me:

I've been recently authoring a  "going solo blog" (in Turkish).
I've not optimized it for search engines by any means (well except for using
CSS for layout if that counts).

All pages of my blog currently have google Pagerenk 0(zero). And it has been
about three months since I started this blog.

And I absolutely do not care at all.

Why?

Because I observe a more than exponential increase in my regular readers,
rss subscribers and unique visitors.
I observe and equally exponential increase in my adsense revenue.

So who cares about SEO. I have quality content. My niche is interested in
it. (I believe) They love to read it. They know my URL and they tell their
friends and friends of friends to subscribe to my blog.

Hence to me, content comes first. If there is quality content; if you add
some value to the community, the community will optimize your search engine
rankings sooner or later.

This (quote and quote) "optimization" will definitely NOT be a spiky
increase in your traffic or a sudden impulse in your alexa ranking, or a
great leap in your google PR etc.

But it will not die out suddenly after a few months either.

A Turkish proverb says:

"An eagle can fly to the top of the mountain quickly. On the other hand a
snake climbs (to that mountain) so slowly that you cannot even recognize it.
However, if you throw a large stone the eagle will go away; but the snake
will remain there no matter what."

(Have I said Turkish is a compact language)

Cheers,
-- 
Volkan Ozcelik
+>Yep! I'm blogging! : http://www.volkanozcelik.com/cre8/blog/
+> Going solo in Turkish: http://www.volkanozcelik.com/donkisot/
+> My projects/studies/trials/errors : http://www.sarmal.com/
+> Sardalya JavaScript Library: http://www.sarmal.com/sardalya/