Blogging about search engine optimisation is a tricky thing to do. Or rather a tricky thing to do well.
There are a number of difficulties with trying to get an SEO blog going.
1. Huge competition for eyeballs.
2. SEO types use cutting edge marketing techniques. It’s hard work keeping up.
3. A lot of A list SEO bloggers are famous for something other than blogging.
4. Ideas are easy to find but easy to copy, causing an echo effect. If you are not first, you look like you have no original ideas.
1. Huge Competition for eyeballs.
The flip side, of course, is the SEO community live online. Because of this, every SEO on the planet can be reached through IM, email, Skype or any other online communication tool. This makes collaboration and joint ventures easy to participate it. It also means you can approach the leaders in the industry and ask them stuff.
What other industry can you talk to the leading experts? Imagine a new actor contacting Robert de Niro and asking advice.
2. SEO bloggers use cutting edge techniques.
If they are not then they are either lazy ( me ), stupid or don’t know much. I have to get round to fine-tuning my robots.txt, although I deleted the links to archives the other day as they were creating a duplicate content problem. If you have 600 SEO blogs loaded in your RSS reader you will soon be aware of the new techniques on the block. For example, it sounds like the party is over at Digg.
Techniques such as linkbait are developed and utilised by SEO bloggers long before the mainstream. If you are plugged into the SEO blogosphere you get to hear about them first, you can then use them, fine-tune them and then blog about them.
Blogging about a new thing means you can position yourself in a less competitive area. If you read all there is on the subject, perform your own tests and blog the results, add your own little spin, blog what others are doing, then you may be on your way to becoming an authority on the subject.
3. A lot of A list SEO bloggers are famous for something other than blogging.
It’s hard to believe it but SEO existed long before blogging. In ancient times did SEO’s communicate to the outside world without using a blog. These guys have done it, seen it and are still doing it. OK some of them had to be dragged kicking and screaming to blogging, but once they started they had an inbuilt readership.
But new bloggers do have an edge, there are no preconceptions, probably no one reads your blog so you can experiment a little, you are not tied down by a present fan base, you get to chose which sector within SEO to concentrate on.
A new blogger has freedom, of course, freedom brings the ability to make errors. Even so, it’s a great time to get into SEO blogging.
4. Ideas are easy to find but easy to copy, causing an echo effect.
When SEO bloggers simply copy news from other SEO blogs or think their blog should be the one to announce that Microsoft has been bought by Google.
You have to ask yourself, “Do I have anything original to say?”
The answer should be yes. If you have been performing SEO on websites you will most certainly have come across problems which you then solved. This is interesting to the SEO Blogosphere, and it’s something that only you can write about.
Only you can blog about what’s bouncing around your mind, so make sure what’s in there is interesting.
So how do I blog?
Here are the rules I try to blog by:
I do not blog SEO news or who is buying who.
If I think a post may offend someone I make sure to post it.
I try to write about my own SEO experiences as much as poss.
I allow a bit of lateral thinking.
For every post, I write I abandon three.
Ideas are cheap, it’s the implementation that’s expensive.
I love the concept of linkbait so I write about it when I can.
I am liberal with my outlinking and do not expect a link back.
I hack out the big words which I think make me look clever.
I write in my own voice.