5 Reasons Matt Cutts and I Love Your Blog

Greg Narayan

11 years ago

Dear Readers,

Updated due to angry emailers

Predicting the weather is often necessary for a good day at the beach.

Such is the case with SEO.

If you know how climates at Google are shifting, you can position your articles so they receive better rankings and more clicks.

And though I always keep my methods white-hat, free, and organic, it seems I’m really ticking a few folks off.

I got this message today in an Aweber back-email:

Update: Angry Emails and Should I Care?

The title of this post is something we’ll get to a bit further down…firstly:

The morning started out as usually – an iced coffee from literally the cheapest place in Chinatown and a 35 minute walk to my current day job. During my walk, Aweber sent out the Tuesday newsletter. Seemed normal.

But when I got to work, my inbox looked different. Several readers responded saying (in less nice words) they basically wanted me to stop writing about SEO.

Here’s an example:

“Your posts are supposed to be answers. No “fluff” things that HELP my blog. Who is asking about SEO? Every blog pitches SEO content that NEVER works but sounds great, and I THOUGHT your blog was difrent. Unsubcribe, sry.” – anonymous reader

Verbatim, this is just one of several emails that landed in my inbox today. My first response was to basically pound my fist down. While we have a large and healthy community here now, I like to think I personally recruited each member of the club.

And while this comment holds sometruth in that lots of blogs talk SEO, I write about it because of a) waves of emails from you and b) I think there are holes in other coverage online. That’s it.

I’m not convincing you to buy my SEO product, am I?

After I picked the papers and old coffee cups up off the floor, I sat back and realized what this meant for the blog.

To SEO or not to SEO?

“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone.” – Bill Cosby Tweet this quote!

Of the many topics on this blog, SEO may be the least of your interest, but ultimately, I think it’s the big kahuna. If you can secure organic Search rankings, everything else becomes easier.

So, while I could just listen to the angry emailers and keep pitching happy little answers or stories about my life, which folks actually go-figure enjoy, I think I’ll take a different route.

Because climates are changing fast and in favor of bloggers. And if you provide original, inspirational content, in a smart way, you have a real chance at online success in the next few months.

Excited yet? Let me show you what I’ve found as of late.

Yep, The Blogger is Excited Too

If you just stopped by to skim this post, please skim what’s below. I’ve sifted through tons of SEO videos, articles, and forums, and have packaged my thoughts on SEO into these strategies you should at least try in the months to come.

Content strengthening

The status quo in blogging (well, one of them) is this: write a post, publish it, market it, move on. But what I see happening then, is you have lots of posts that are mediocre at best. What if you did it like this instead?

Write 10 great posts, see which one ranks closest to the Top 10, then take that post, and make it the best it possibly can be. Simply put, when you update a post and add content to it, Google notices. They see that as a sign you care. And readers notice too. Adding more modules and sections to a post you want to rank is still one of the most hidden, organic methods, so you can bet I’ll talk more about it soon.
Niche-blogging 2.0

You know all about niche blogging. Or, do you?

See to you, Mr. Angry email unsubscriber, I think niche-blogging means blogging about one thing. Niche blogging to me, for the past 8 months or so, has meant blogging about everything! I mean breaking out of your niche and writing posts for different types of blogs. This is a refreshing way to improve your writing, and a great solution for you guys who email me complaining your niche is dried up and your sources of backlinks limited.
Authorship vs backlinks: The new popularity

It’s happening, and you shouldn’t be afraid, but you should start dominating Google Plus pronto. Google seems to be blending Search with Social more every day, so becoming relevant and (though I hate the word) popular on Google Plus will really help your content rank. Try get +1s on your posts, and make it easy for folks to circle you with a badge on your blog. Niche-blogging my way helps too.

(Image soon)

The more sites you’ve appeared on with the rel=”author” tag, the more of a voice you’ll have and the more authority you’ll command around the web.

Gifting links (the new link-swap)

Now it gets interesting, this one is a SEO strategy I’m happy to say I personally pioneered. Why? Because of a problem. Blogrolls and links swaps were the problem, you simply don’t gain much from cross-linking with someone because the SEO juice is zero-sum, not to mention Google doesn’t even like this method anymore because they think it’s spammy. So, how do you turn one back link into two backlinks and beat the odds. You use your network to hook up other bloggers, like how in my ProBlogger posts I’ll mention other bloggers. Can you imagine that? You don’t even have to send an email, write an epic guest post, or anything and you get a ProBlogger backlink. Yep, that’s nice of me, and yep, Matt Cutts would love that. Sometimes you have to look long and hard at the blogging scene to uncover openings like this.
Content alignment
Alignment is perhaps the least interesting item on my list here to I’ve left it for last. It’s not really an SEO tip, it can produce the right results for SEO so here’s how it works:
Bad example of alignment (misalignment):

Title: “How I Tip Cows”
Header: “I love cows”
Topic Sentence: “It all began when I was 3.”

Stronger example:

Title:”How I Tip Cows Without Getting Caught”
Header: “I enter at 11:30pm”
Topic sentence: “And bring my cat to distract them.”

The idea with alignment is you make your entire posts flow so readers can digest them more easily, which should lead to more points landed, more impressed readers, more shares, more social, more interaction, you get the picture.