Personal websites are one of those projects that you can sink any amount of time (and money) into and still be dissatisfied. There’s always something to optimize, fix, tweak, beautify, and enhance. Not to mention that extra bar of white at the bottom of the page that only you seem to notice, but it drives you mad.
We care about our platforms.
Unfortunately, when you launch your beautiful and polished website for the world to see, the world seems to have missed it entirely. Maybe except friends and family, but they only gave your first post more traffic than the next ten put together.
That’s when most people go late into the night googling phrases like “How to get initial website traffic?” or “How do I promote my blog?” or “Why my great content has zero views?” Soon enough, the search results will take you to pages with three big letters: SEO. Search Engine Optimization.
I’m here to tell you that, as a writer, you shouldn’t worry about SEO. Not for now, anyway.
SEO costs either a lot of money or a lot of extra effort. You either pay someone to do it for you, splurge on an $80/month tool, or spend an hour or so before each post to research your long-tail keyphrase, letting the internet dictate the kind of content you should write. And for what? Unless that 80 bucks a month helps you turn a hundred in profits, it makes no sense as an investment.
Worst of all, SEO could turn your writing into this:
IT Equipment in Hospitals is important not only to the staff, but also to patients. Without the IT Equipment in Hospitals we would all be worse off. That’s why you need to spend money on properly maintaining IT Equipment in Hospitals. Today I test four cleaning solutions used in hospitals to maintain their IT Equipment in Hospitals.
Yuck!
SEO makes almost every single blog sound the same. Websites trip over themselves and hire cheap content writers that manufacture long monotonous pieces about a topic they care little for so that the site can rank well in Google.
But there’s a different, better way to build your online presence. Whether you’re a writer, an editor, or a freelancer for hire, make yourself useful to the people your website is for. Make them miss you when you’re gone. Why spend an hour researching the next long-tail keyphrase you didn’t even want to write about if you could spend the same hour connecting with others?
It may not be as fast, but you’re going to build something that reaches beyond Google’s algorithms, a presence that you could be proud of.
Love this. SEO really can be so consuming, as does trying to get your page to look right.
Exactly!