strategy Archives | Ian M Rountree

As much as we bloggers love to focus on it, SEO is really a small consideration for us – or should be.

The heck, you say! Getting found is the paragon of publishing success!

Yes. It is. But let me explain.

Search Engine Optimization, as a process, is fairly straightforward. It’s about giving a robot, like Google, a very precise, very clear view of what your content is, how it relates to the rest of the web, and why you deserve more points for quality and relevance on certain subjects than other websites do. It’s an almost religious-scale obsession for some web workers, because we know so little about how the robot works, and what really has an effect on the rankings.

Bloggers have it fairly easy. Where some sites struggle for rankings on their own business names, we have an opportunity to work both towards our readers’ benefits, and align our sites with the robots’ required signs of quality. How? Because we know the following;

The robot loves content. New, fresh, refreshed sites draw the robot back for more. If we’d just write our darn blogs, we can already have a head start over other classes of website.

The robot loves consistency. If we make sure our content is on purpose, rather than shooting off on tangents, we’re sending signs that we’re worth authority.

The robot LOVES consistency! Schedule, will you? Keeping on top of our internal calendars gives us yet another advantage.

People love taking action, and the robot loves seeing action taken. Bookmarking, revisiting – any actions the robot can tell are available to the visitors of a site send signals that interactivity is available. It’s good for the people, thus good for the robot.

People like to share – and when sharing happens (in certain ways) the robot takes notice. Having your pieces passed on, or passing on the work of others, sends yet more signals that your site is worth paying attention to – not just to the robot, but to the people who are looking for something to pay attention to!

We all love to talk, especially to each other. Content is relevance. Updated content is increased relevance. Discussion on, around, or about your site is a huge indicator that you may be engaging with people, and the robot loves signs of interactivity. So do people, by the way. don’t we?

Back up and thing about that for a second. Content is relevance.

Bloggers have unique opportunities. Where business, individuals, and all manner of website creators have to think about information architecture, content strategy, and minutiae of all kinds, for the blogger, the content IS the strategy. We can say whatever we like, sure, but building a set of guidelines for ourselves, encouraging people to get on board with what we’re saying, and over all making our blogs useful, puts us far ahead of the game.

How can you put this into action for yourself?

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Or, read the entire SEO for Bloggers series from the start to see where we’re coming from.

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I’d like you to join the conversation. What have we missed so far? What needs revisiting? What kind of opportunities can we take from developing our content intentionally?

Image by Frerieke.

Last week I got the audiobook form of Seth Godin’s The Dip through iTunes – it was on for four dollars, how could I say no? – and finished it over about three days of on-foot commutes. I’ve since been trying to come up with a good way to communicate some of the lessons in the book.

Regular book reviews give me the gyp. I can’t write them. If you want a better example of a synopsis review, see Brad J Ward’s sum-up – he did a good job. I like the Dip. I like its message, I love Seth Godin’s writing. But I always have trouble with book reviews, because I look so hard to find application more than just assessment. So why not do something entirely different. Why not an assessment, then an example?

The assessment.

Godin is very good at adding value to simple concepts, but it still feels like you only need one page to write this book. Never quit is a stupid piece of advice, because sticking with things that aren’t working for you is a waste of energy, effort and capital. Godin uses the term Strategic Quitting very often in the book, and talks a lot about the things that are legitimate reasons for us to quit, and the irrational, reactionary reasons why most people quit and then, in true Godin fashion, he wraps it all up with a very simple message.

Being prepared to quit for good reasons (and knowing the reasons why you quit) is of infinite value in any endeavour. This is because, until you reach those limits- the ones you set for yourself when you plan, you’re never going to give up and you’ll eventually become (as Godin says so many times) The Best In The World.

The example.

I’ve been reading Mark Dykeman’s Broadcasting Brain for just under a year. It was one of the first blogs I happened upon when I was looking into doing this very thing myself – and I consider myself very lucky to have found it. Mark’s writing is incredible. The angle from which he approaches life is at once pragmatic and inspired; he gathers massive numbers of ideas for blog posts, and recently crowd-sourced a lot of wisdom about doing work better in the coming year. However, this is now. The dip was then. In August, Mark wrote a perspective on his previous two years of blogging, and it was a visible sign that he was leaning into a big personal dip. Or, perhaps even better considering the awesomeness he’s been producing lately, August may have been the end of the Dip, and the Mark Dykeman we’re seeing now is on the other side, on the hard hill upward, reaping all the benefits of his experience crossing the dip.

Here are the questions I asked Mark, and his responses. [Read more…]