July 2006 – problogger philippines

SEO Myths

Everyone praises search engine optimization (SEO) like it’s the holy grail to a successful website — it isn’t. First of all, always remember that content is king. If you do not have good original content and just link to other sites without even providing valuable insights, your sites have less chances at good traffic growth. Even having good content can be less effective if not published at the appropriate time.

A recently popular article over at digg entitled “5 Myths in SEO” lists the following pitfalls: “Overnight Results,” “Placement Can Be Guaranteed,” “Meta Tags,” “Submitting to Search Engines,” and “More Links > Good Links.” Any SEO company or practitioner who promises you these things is most likely lying, or too confident with his illegal methods.

My personal SEO recommendation: Write to your heart’s desire. Write with passion, and always try to provide something unique.

Optimize WordPress for Search Engines

Remember my entry on WordPress being the choice of professional bloggers? That wouldn’t be entirely complete with just a blog with nothing on it, right? First of all, remember that content is king. Always is. You need some high quality content on your site, concerning your specific niche. Not just good resource, but good original content paired with writing optimized for the web.

Nowadays, good content takes you to the doorstep, helping you keep readers coming back. But you can’t get readers out of nowhere, and most of the time search engines will provide this for you. The downside to this is that you have to compete with everyone writing about the same topics. This is where search engine optimization comes in.

Using the excellent WordPress, you can apply these wonderful tips to make your weblog nicer to the eyes of search engine bots. Technically, applying these guidelines makes your pages and content more accessible for your readers, as determined by seasoned web professionals. A positive side effect is that these optimizations makes them more attractive to search engines as well, increasing your chances of being highly relevant for the said topic. A blog with good content with optimized structure for its readers will always have a greater chance at success.