For those of you in a rush, the answer is.
“Write what they want to read.”
For those with a little more time let me expand.
If you have an SEO blog ,you no doubt read other SEO blogs. You probably read blogs like Searchengineland, Searchenginewatch, Wolf-Howl, Stuntdbl, SEOmoz and many many more. You probably want these SEO bloggers to read your stuff and say, “Your cool, lets hang” and give you a link. I know I do.
What other industry would you expect this to happen? For example if you were in the film industry you wouldn’t expect Scorsese to come watch your movie and then tell everyone about it, or have Paul McCartney turn up at your gig if you are in the music industry.
So why do we expect people who are at the top of their field to take notice of lessor known, lessor connected blogs like this one.
Quite frankly, I don’t expect any recognition or any link love. I started this blog to reflect where I was at in my SEO journey and to reflect my thoughts and experiences. To be honest I didn’t expect the level of attention it has recieved.
What I have learned is that when you are passionate, intelligent and communicative about something – without being an arse – people like that.
People like to learn what you learn if it adds to the sum of their knowledge.
Everyone has a different perspective so everyone has a unique view of what is happening in their attempts at SEO and what they see happening in the industry around them.
One thing I have noticed whilst blogging about SEO is that the same news gets replicated by bloggers. So when Mybloglog was bought by Yahoo it bounced around the SEO blog world and seemed to be everywhere. I don’t think that such a post is worth linking to. I make it a point of my blog strategy not to reblog SEO news.
Of course if I get the scoop that Google is buying Apple, Ask or AOL I will blog about it, but only if I am the only one.
I would like to see more SEO bloggers write about case studies. Realistic attempts to rank for a keyword and a forensic analysis of the results. I have an idea regarding this subject which I may blog about later.
So far I have been linked to twice by Searchengineland (yes I am sad enough to count), Linkbuildingblog, Threadwatch (thanks Web-professor), Searchenginewatch.
Non SEO sites that have given a link Problogger ( yes I am counting links from here too), Techmeme, Jason Calacanis, Marketing Pilgrim
It’s enough that people in the industry read my stuff. If they link too then that’s a bonus and very welcome. A few people commented that my Enormous list of Linkbait articles was linkbait, the reality was it wasn’t my intention to produce linkbait when I gathered the links. I simply wanted a list of the best linkbait articles I had read in the past, so I could go back and read again. It seemed that a number of other people also valued such a list and the links followed.
I’m not saying forget about your audience. Give them what they want, but don’t obsess over getting links and don’t whinge when no one links to you. It doesn’t mean they don’t like you, they just don’t like what you wrote. So write something else.
This is the post that inspired me to write, although the meat of the post has been on my mind for a while. By Aaron Pratt.
Circular linking patterns of the SEO elites
Here is a response by Ahmed Bilal
Why won?t Matt Cutts link to me?
Andy Hagens has some tips.
5 Tips to Make it in the SEO Community
Dave Davies on linkbuilding
How To Win Links & Influence Engines
Jennifer Laycock gives great advice so good it had to be rationed into three posts.
How to Win Links and Influence People – Part 1
How to Win Links and Influence People – Part 2
How to Win Links and Influence People – Part 3