12 Months Without SEO
A year ago, I started two new web sites without any real thought of SEO. As a writer, I was happy to try to provide what search engines wanted: original content on what people were searching for. While I did provide title and description tags, everything else was just written on a go with the flow basis. The keyword phrase for any page would come out in the natural flow. I could just write to my heart’s content without using any tools checking keyword density.
The first of those new web sites 13 months ago was in the self improvement niche, which is highly competitive. Of course, none of us outside Google knows for sure if there is such a thing as a sandbox, but there is undoubtedly a waiting time before a new site is thrown fully into the ranking melting pot.
In the self improvement case, the last Google update saw my site emerge from the sandbox after about 12 months. So, at last, I was able see whether my no SEO approach was to yield any positive results. Thankfully, a few high rankings were immediately apparent, including a few #1 positions. On one of those terms, Yahoo followed a few weeks later to the #1 position, while the site was #2 (now 1) at MSN.
Now, this is early days for that particular site, and there is much to do to get more high rankings. However, I am confident that SEO is infinitely more simple than some experts, especially those selling ranking tools, tend to have you believe.
Since I started that particular site, I have only made one major change, and that is convert all my web sites to CSS. Providing a content rich site that is easy to crawl for search engine robots is the most important aspect of the new, simplified SEO. In fact, following Google’s advice to webmasters is about all you need to do, and that is free.
Of course, those with software products to peddle will argue that I could do even better with their software. But if Google decides to blacklist that software as a manipulating tool, then all my hard work could be undone. So I will leave the others to chase shadows with ranking software, and just enjoy writing content. After all, that is what basic marketing told me to do.
About the author: Sean Nalewanyjs is an SEO and works on affordable web hosting.
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