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Blogger Magic - An SEO Kit Does Not Come In A Box

Occasionally in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?, we see the curious and naive query
How do I SEO my blog?
or odder still
What SEO kit can I get, for my Blogger blog?

Some people seem to think that

  1. SEO is a magical or mystical process that you do to your blog.
  2. SEO works the same, for all Blogger blogs.
  3. You can buy a thing called an "SEO Kit", for your blog.

Anybody who really believes that you can buy an "Acme SEO Kit" for your blog, read no further. Anybody who truly understands why you publish a blog, read on.

Blogger SEO involves people, as the medium, and the target.

To define the SEO process, I will start by saying, simply

People are both the medium of, and the reason for, SEO.

You, the blog owner, are the "SEO kit" for your blog.

You need to know what people view your blog.

To start with your SEO kit, you, the blog owner, need to know who the people are who provide your SEO. The people who benefit from your blog - Followers, readers, and subscribers - differently:

  1. Find out about your blog.
  2. Access your blog.
  3. Help provide access to your blog, to other people.
  4. Lather, rinse, repeat. For the kidz here, we'll use Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat.

There are millions of Blogger blogs, with almost as many different owners.

  1. Very few people intentionally publish two Blogger blogs with the same, identical, subject.
  2. Every different Blogger blog, covering a different subject, will attract a different set of viewers.
  3. Every different Blogger blog will have different ways to reach additional people, who may view it, and may reach still more people.

You, the blog owner, control the SEO by targeting the people.

Every Blogger blog is different - and each different blog owner has to be the "SEO Kit", for that blog.

If you're just starting your blog, you will simply want to publish, and publicise. You'll be mostly concerned with developing content and style, and with getting a base of viewers. Since you're starting from the bottom up, you'll be able to work gradually - and you'll appreciate each new viewer.

You'll need a strategy when the blog is new - and as the blog goes forward.

When the blog is established, and you have both reputation and a viewer base, you'll want to keep what you have. Whether you rename the blog (to a different BlogSpot name), or publish the blog using a custom domain (to a non BlogSpot URL), you'll want to retain both the reputation and traffic from your viewers, and from search engines and other Internet services.

To keep what you have, planning will be much more important - and you'll be simultaneously focused on getting more viewers, and on keeping what you have. You can design your blog, based jointly on how you want to present your content - and how you allow your readers to choose to read your content.

There is no magic, in either case - just you, the blog owner. Your own style of publishing, and publicising, combined with the content and subject of your blog, will determine what viewers you attract. And that is how you SEO your blog.

Comments

Susan Maricle said…
Good post, Chuck. I recently attended a blogging training on the Compendium platform, and thought the built-in SEO feature was pretty slick. (It works the way a password meter gauges the strength of a password.) But then it reminded me of FrontPage, with its "We'll do the thinking for you" approach to HTML. There's satisfaction in discovering for yourself what the prime keywords are.
Kelly Buerster said…
Thanks for your advice, Chuck.
Pastor Duke said…
You have redefined the meaning of the term "SEO". SEO means Search Engine Optimization. Not Blogger User Optimization. Just because you redefine a definition does not mean that the problem doesn't exist or that the problem will go away. When search engines become people, then your definition will have validity.
Nitecruzr said…
Duke,

Search engines are here to serve people - people are not here to serve search engines.

If people write blogs to serve people, then the search engines can index our blogs, to serve people. And we can make the search engines serve us, not the other way around.

Put real content into your blogs, and let the search engines index your blog based on the real content - your readers are here to read your content, are they not?

Put it another way - your readers use the search engines to find your blog. They don't use your blog, as an excuse for playing with the search engines.

Serve your readers.

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