I’ve been studying SEO (search engine optimization) and putting it to practical use for the last 5 years. It’s one of those skills that you need to stay on top of on regular basis because of frequency of updates the search providers do to their algorithms, which are kept top secret. There are a tonne of resources online that teach how to do SEO. Some resources are great, some are horrible and others are just very questionable. One thing that they all share in common is optimizing your website, page and content for search engines, and only search engines. Of course its nice to rank high in search results as fast as possible. But search engines don’t consume your content, humans do.
The focus needs to shift to optimizing websites, pages and content for real human beings instead of software algorithms. If you develop your content for people your search rankings will naturally rank higher. I’m not suggesting to completely abandon SEO practices. You should follow the SEO guidelines, but your focus should be on creating quality web copy and content for people to consume. If you have something worth while, people will consume more of it, subscribe to it and share it.
