ProBlogger put up an eye-catching article titled “Ignore the A-List Bloggers” and the title, did indeed catch my eye. I’m not one for being sucked in with gimmick titles about SEO but it being ProBlogger, this one did because of how I approach handling my website. WTH did they mean by ignoring A-List bloggers?
What the article did mean was don’t get caught up in the large websites metrics or advertising schemes. That can drag you down the wrong path if you focus on that aspect only. But what is repeated often from ProBlogger and other SEO guiding websites is that content is the basis of your site and to focus on that first, then build the community around the content as you develop your “voice” on the website.
What sucked me into the ignoring A-List bloggers is the premise that sometimes the A-Listers don’t always subscribe to the basics of SEO formatting for writing articles. And they don’t necessarily have to either, because they’ve already developed their traction. Regardless of their voice or practices.
One particular site I have to watch constantly to make sure nothing fishy happens with my own content there tends to break, no, smash some of the basic rules of SEO we all hear about. If you are thinking of modeling your practices after what you see, you should be careful who you model after. Make sure the site you choose to mimic is not a desperate links-getting site. Patterning your own practices after the wrong site can keep your site mired in the SEO muck of the web. It takes time to watch the right websites to see how they’re doing.
On the other hand, what I have noticed is that consistency does pay off in some fashion. I’ve run one of my websites in a consistent fashion and it did not have the luxury of having SEO practices applied to it and it’s Google Rank is actually pretty strong. That’s without all the cross-linking to my own tags and what not. I know other websites that don’t practice proper SEO… not rampant, shove it down your throat SEO, but bare-minimalist, if any SEO practices, and they are huge in their genre of coverage. But they have simple, to the point and consistent article writing posts that in the long run, develop that voice, that community and Google does recognize them and gives them the traction they deserve for their hard work. And they don’t have a single internal link and rarely any outbound links. They just have good content.
So it’s really a crap shoot. If you want to write articles, then write. If you want to spend an hour formatting each article to be Google and other search engine friendly, then do so. Both will pay off in the end. That’s been my experience. One will get where you’re going a little bit slower, but it still gets there.
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/07/05/ignore-the-a-list-bloggers/
