Should You SEO Your Blog?

Lately I’ve been speaking to quite a few more people than I’d expect to who write blogs, but don’t SEO them. I’ve even heard a few debates about whether or not you should SEO a blog. The pros and cons and yada yada yada. Quite frankly, I find the discussion just silly. Why wouldn’t you SEO your blog?

The thinking behind not SEOing your blog boils down to one thing really: The blog owner doesn’t want to appear like they are spamming. They want their content to be “readable”. Well, who doesn’t?

By “readable”, those who argue against SEO for a blog do so on the basis that natural language writing is best for humans because it is more interesting, thought provoking, and inviting. I agree. You should always write your blog in a natural way. Natural language writing is better for humans and, here’s a little secret, the search engines like it too.

The whole argument about SEO on your blog is really missing the point. Those who argue against SEO don’t really understand SEO. It isn’t about tossing in keywords where they don’t belong. In fact, if you toss in keywords just for the sake of it, you are likely to do yourself more damage in the search engines than good. That’s not what SEO is all about.

Effective SEO is natural language writing. But it’s natural language writing that is cognizant of the SEO benefits. If you are aware that the words you use will be ranked in a certain way then you’ll use those words in such a way that they benefit you while you write in a natural language way.

So the next time someone invites you into a discussion about SEO vs. natural language, just grin and say, “I’d like both please.”