How I Think About SEO

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Part of a cross blog conversation with Lynn Terry.

Lynn asks me and Nicole: “How much emphasis do you put on SEO (search engine optimization) and what are your general thoughts on the topic?”

Hey Lynn,

Search Engine Optimization is part of the air I breathe every day. (I know you understand) When I create new pages I always give a thought to which keyword phrase I want to incorporate into the file name.  When I create graphics I choose a keyword phrase for the graphic file name.  When I link to something I decide which keyword phrase I should include in the anchor text.

I think these are the simple things that everyone should be considering as they build their websites.  To be absolutely honest, I don’t go beyond this on a regular basis.  I just write about things I think my market wants to read and I use language that I would normally use.

Every so often I will tackle a particular area of a website and do some ‘optimization’ - which means that I’ll use my desired keyword phrase for that page in a heading and a couple of times within the first couple of paragraphs of text.

I avoid anything unnatural and never pass up readability for optimization.  I don’t employ anything black hat or even gray hat.   I don’t submit my site to crap directories and I don’t do link exchanges.  I just let links come where they may.

Of course, back in my early days I was a lot more aggressive.  I didn’t do anything differently, I just did a lot more of it.  Now I get to enjoy the blessings of several well established websites and getting new pages ranked is easier than back then.
Some of my thoughts about SEO are not very nice.  I hate it that there are hundreds if not thousands of evil spammers out there attacking my blogs, forums and web forms with their worthless link spam.  I hate it that someone makes money by making it happen and I hate it that someone pays them to do it thinking it will actually benefit them if their cell phone ring link ends up on one of my forum member profiles.

It’s such an ugly underbelly to an otherwise interesting  and useful area of business.

There you go :)  All my thinks on SEO in a neat little bundle.

I have another question for you if you’re willing to answer… it requires a bit of building up though:

It’s 1am.  You’re blogging again.  You feel a nagging twinge.  It’s the munchies again!

What do you choose for a late night snack?

It’s my burning question

And how about you reader?  What’s your fave late night treat?