Every day someone tells me they found Blogging From Paradise through search engines. Google mainly.
Sweet.
All that hard work I never put into SEO is paying off 🙂 Meaning the detachment I generally operated with in regards to SEO over my blogging career benefited me beautifully.
Sure I reached page 1 for a few competitive keywords. Hyper competitive words at that.
Here’s a video explaining how to do so:
But 99% of the time over the last 9 years I paid little or no attention to SEO. I paid little attention to trying to dominate Google.
I was never a Sucker For SEO.
Suckers For SEO are bloggers who approach Google and blogging in general with the lottery ticket mentality. If they can do everything perfectly – quickly – they will rank #1 on Page 1 of Google for hyper competitive keywords. Money and fame and traffic will flow in. Blogging on easy street. Making money on auto pilot. Driving passive targeted traffic. Making money while you sleep.
These suckers are sucked in by manipulate bloggers who prey on their fear and greed and desperate based urges of the sucker crowd. Many fearful bloggers – some of whom have zero experience ranking on Google – wrongly tell bloggers how ranking on Page 1 for Google is easy. Or how you can rank on Page 1 of Google quickly. For any keyword.
This is just not true for most bloggers. It is *never* true for suckers.
Why did I rank on Page 1 of Google for a few days, for the keywords: “how to submit a guest post” and “how to rank on page 1 of Google”, both of which are SUPER competitive keywords?
For years I created helpful posts. I built my domain by sharing targeted, insightful content. I guest posted for years. I linked out to related, authority blogs.
After months, and years, Google judged my blog to be an authority site. So after writing 2 helpful posts for stupid competitive keywords, I ranked on the first page of Google for a minute.
Not bad, eh?
I am nowhere near Page 1 for those key phrases now but who cares? All the content I created over the years drives traffic to my blog through hundreds of sites if not thousands of sites and through hundreds of courses.
All because I was never sucked in to the SEO obsession. I devote my energies to creating helpful content and to promoting other bloggers, so I could build my friend network.
Google values these activities more than ever these days. Which is exactly why I ranked on Page 1 for 2 highly competitive keywords with some of the most famous sites on earth as my Page 1 neighbors, without even caring much about SEO.
I was not sucked in. So I was not a Sucker For SEO.
What To Focus On Instead
Move your obsession for SEO over to serving people.
Focus on humans. Not inanimate objects.
Help folks through forums. Or though Quora. Write helpful posts for your blog. Guest post. Comment on top blogs from your niche.
Promote other bloggers. Serve other bloggers. Assist other bloggers.
Good SEO is predicated on helping folks through a few different channels. No way to game the system anymore. Those days are dead. Because Google places a premium on creating and connecting. Not on rewarding folks who try to manipulate things and people via black hat tactics, all of which have gone the way of the dinosaur.
Don’t get sucked in by SEO. Feel free to learn and follow sound SEO practices. But focus virtually all of your attention and energy to serving human beings from a heart felt space, by writing helpful posts and guest posts as well as promoting top bloggers in your niche to build bonds.
Your Turn
Are you obsessed with SEO? Or are you more focused on serving human beings? How can you get sucked in less by SEO?