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What Has Blog SEO Got to Do With How Your Readers Feel?

Posted By Guest Blogger 17th of January 2012 Search Engine Optimization 0 Comments

This guest post is by Dr. Mani of Internet infopreneur.

My blogging has evolved. Since 2003, when I first started blogging, the style and nature of my writing has changed to match trends, experience, and personal growth.

One thing however has remained constant. I write for my audience—and about things that matter to them. Or at least, I try to.

And, from what I’ve seen shared by many successful bloggers, that’s one of the keys to enjoying rich rewards from blogging. I read this snippet in an article about gaining social media influence by Haydn Shaughnessy:

“Writing stopped being a megaphone a long time ago and is now a journey where you meet a few of the same people regularly and a whole lot of new people all the time.”—Haydn Shaughnessy

So the key to blogging success is to attract a relevant, clearly defined, and in some way ultimately profitable (to you) readership—and this begins by knowing what to share with them in order that you may reach out meaningfully.

Listen, no one cares about you. Not in the beginning. Maybe never. They only care about how much you care for them—and how you can help them.

It helps when you genuinely care about them, because then your blogging will automatically align with ways you can help them meet their most pressing needs, get rid of their most worrying problems, and take them closer to their most desired dreams.

In order to reach the largest possible audience of such prospects, you need to rely upon tactical approaches like blog SEO. For many years, I blithely ignored that and wrote ad lib. In the early days, it worked because a. there was little, if any, competition, and b. the writing still appealed to readers, who then helped amplify the signal to others like them.

This last point is still in effect, except that the playing field has grown unbelievably more crowded. Everyone is an author. Everyone has a blog. Everyone is out to find more readers. Everyone is clamoring for your attention. Everyone is getting frustrated at not finding it.

Everyone wants a magic wand to wave at their computer screen and attract blog visitors.

Blog SEO can become yours.

Search engine optimization is partly the art of weaving into your content specific keywords and phrases which are used by people seeking information on search engines. Google and Bing get a humongous number of visitors every day, all of them in pursuit of more information. By positioning yourself in front of this crowd, you can funnel a few folks to your blog.

But you’ve got to know the right words to use.

Blog SEO is, in that respect, unique and special, because it speaks to the way your audience thinks and feels. When you’re in synch with your viewers, you already know intuitively what keeps them awake late into the night. You sense what things might get them bounding out of bed each morning, eager and excited.

You know because you care.

You care enough to ask people in your niche. You care enough to monitor your blog metrics and follow trends. You care enough to engage in conversations with your loyal readers. You care enough to take time to read other blogs, network with other bloggers, and keep up with industry developments that fuel these fears and dreams.

And then, you care enough to write (or speak or record a video) about these things—things which speak deeply, intimately, personally to each individual member of your tribe who favors you with their attention and time.

Blog SEO involves using that insight about your audience, matching it to time-tested principles like keyword density and anchor text for links, and optimizing each of your blog posts in such a way that they not only rank high on search engines, but also resonate with those who visit and read them.

Your keywords aren’t always those with the highest search volume—they are the ones closest to your readers’ hearts. Your on-site optimization isn’t all about seeding the text of your blog with the right density of phrases, but sharing value that your market craves.

Because blog SEO is no longer influenced by purely on-page factors, but also depends heavily on social sharing, this approach maximizes your impact. Your blog readers will happily share things they find helpful and interesting with their friends and contacts, growing your blog’s ranking ability and attracting new readers into your fold.

That’s why the craft of SEO for bloggers has morphed into a fine art that hinges more upon how your special people feel—and why. Understand that, apply it intelligently, and you’ll crack the secret code to blogging success—even in this over-crowded and cluttered marketplace.

Dr. Mani is a heart surgeon and Internet infopreneur. His information business helps fund treatment for under-privileged children. He has taught thousands of entrepreneurs “how to earn a steady online income doing what you love”. Learn more about information marketing at his blog, or get his book Think, Write & Retire!

About Guest Blogger
This post was written by a guest contributor. Please see their details in the post above.
Comments
  1. Great psot, Dr. Mani. I am still having a few issues as far as SEOptimizing my posts but I feel that this will get better ocer time. As long as what I am writing is good, quality content for my readers my SEO skills will eventually evolve and look good to the search engines and my readers. Thanks.

  2. Hey Dr. Mani, that is a really insightful way of writing about SEO. For years I’ve turned my nose up at SEO (mostly because it all seemed to complicated for me). But you have won me over with the simplicity of your explanation. SEO is not just about the search engines, it is about those I really want to help. This post is a prime example of why I signed up to receive your mails. Thank you.

  3. True. SEO is important. But some sites use so much SEO that content becomes unnatural. It’s important to have a happy medium between generating traffic and really helping others.

  4. I agree with you 100%. It’s about what you can do for your readers overall and how you can help their lives improve in some way shape or fashion. Doing so only pays you back in dividends. It’s a hard thing to be able to comfortably be able to do that when you are just starting out on a brand new blog.

  5. I’ve really enjoyed learning more about SEO and it’s come to be habit for me to include SEO in all of my writing, even writing that doesn’t necessarily need to optimized. I am constantly looking for new ways to learn more about how I can more easily optimize my material, especially the material on my blog. I really enjoyed reading your post and I hope that you guest post for Problogger again soon!

  6. I think we need to provide the good information for readers and also apply some SEO tech for the search engine. This is the best way to get more rewards.

  7. Dr. Mani, I think that the important thing about using keywords on your blog, in addition to SEO, is to emphasize to your readers that the blog is relevant to them. When I search for something in Google, I often check how many times the keyword shows up on the page. Kind of a quirky thing I know. However, I want to see that different words within my keyword phrase are actually showing up on the blog page (they often don’t which is really frustrating). I don’t want a blog post that shows the keyword once in the footnotes, because it isn’t relevant to what I am searching for. So SEO should be about your readers as well, agreed 100%. Thanks for the great post!

  8. SEO really makes my eyeballs want to fall out. I’m thankful for plugins that help and people who love to assist me.

    This post reminds me of that old saying ” No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care”

    Very True I always apply this principal to my readers and hope they know how much I care- Great Post

  9. Thanks Dr. Mani for such a nice article. SEO is important to get a large audience. But quality of the content is far more important. One has to write for his/her users. Search engines will also like you for this.

  10. So true that many bloggers forget to be real in lieu of of SEO.
    thanks!

  11. If you are somewhat able to “write”, it is usually easier to write to the person. That is the case for me. I have decided to do an extensive search for Keywords. Group them to closely related terms. Pick out a topic (for my IM blog) and then write the rough draft just like I was talking to you — very natural for me. Then I will go back and add in my keywords where possible without overdoing. Think it will work for me. What do you think?

  12. Straight talk is always appreciated, as we people get wiser, we see right though the fake. I’m certain everyone has made their blog or website about them at some point, this article should have people running to get their editing on. Thanks Doc!

  13. thank you for the tips…i am just starting a new blog and I’ll keep this in mind. Quality content, then SEO..

  14. One thing that the search engines will continue to get better at is recognizing contrived content. With their increasing attention to user metrics (bounce rate, pages per visit, etc) and social sharing they will get a better picture of how people enjoy your content.

    So knowing and writing for your audience will become more and more the SEO technique of the future.

  15. Mani, the interesting thing is indeed that if you focus on the human beings, you get most of the SEO benefits as a side-effect… The same underlying principle as in many other areas of life, too… :-)

    Regine

  16. This is very educative and loaded with insightful information on blogging which I can relate to my other web activities. Well put together. Thanks for sharing.

  17. Interesting twist.

    I also found this difficult when I started blogging because I would write using my own style, simply trying to get the info out in a creative and entertaining way.

    When I learned about SEO, I had a hard time integrating keywords because it just didn’t make the article sound the way I wanted it to.

    This is now how I know if I have done my SEO well. It still sounds natural.

    My technique now is to write the article first, then go back and edit for SEO purposes. Seems to work well.

  18. Hi! I’m Carol F. Benfield. A newbie in this community. I’m actually looking for the best outsourcing company in the Philippines. Looking forward for a good respond.

  19. I think there has to be a balance between SEO and also the ‘art of writing’ content is key! and if you really want to engage or attract an audience then you really have to make the effort to write something interesting for the reader.

  20. SEO really means a lot for a blog! It’s the second most important thing after your blog content. Great content when clubbed with SEO can give too good results! Nice post!

  21. Really great post Dr. Mani. There are some useful tips here for everyone to use. SEO is pretty much the way to go these days, if it’s done right! I agree that writing something tailor fitted to the reader is the most important piece of information that is provided in this post. Great article!

    Infobia—Crime, Safety, and Consumer Issues

  22. Good day! I simply want to give an enormous thumbs up for the good information you’ve got here on this post. I will probably be coming back to your blog for more soon.

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