SEO Drudgery
SEO Drudgery, there you go, I have just started the post and repeated the title because SEO says its something I have to do. On top of that, I have already broken a rule by using more than twenty words in the first sentence.
View from our back window. (zoomed in)
The turbines give a clue as to the weather. To be honest we do get reasonable breaks from the wind.
SEO – (Search engine optimization) Drudgery – dull, irksome, and fatiguing work: uninspiring or menial labour.
If you have arrived on this page looking for expert help regarding SEO, sorry, I do not have the expertise, However, I will add a link which will take you to what you are looking for. SEO information
Focus Keyword
I more often than not add the post title as the keyword. The WordPress SEO which I use lets me know the title is too short, I amend this occasionally. When I have completed a post its time to check the Seo score. A list appears under the keyword section indicating the good the bad and the ugly.
Green light – Good
Yellow light – Fair
Red light bad
Suggestions are made on how to improve the offending items. I generally persevere with this until I get the full green for go.
Readability
What are they looking for? well to start with the majority of words should have no more than two syllables.
Short sentences also get the thumbs up as does short paragraphs.
Apparently, I am guilty of using a passive voice too often, which affects your SEO score. I will give this one example.
Passive voice – At dinner, three potatoes were eaten by James. (bad)
Active voice – James ate three potatoes at dinner. (good)
Apparently, I do not use enough (Transitions) which are phrases or words used to connect one idea to the next.
So, we are looking to get equally good green lights for readability as we did for Focus keyword.
For me, I am fed up trying to achieve this goal. I got much more pleasure and success out of my blog in the past when I was totally unaware of SEO.
From this moment on I will use SEO in the most basic of manners,
In the early days, a few tag words were enough to get my posts noticed favourably on Google.
A general tip I received a number of years ago (not really SEO related) was to keep posts relatively short. Let’s say you have a number of followers who tend to comment on your posts if you make them of marathon proportion they will get fed up no matter how clever your writing may be., and start to skim through it.
Conclusion
Well, times have changed, and quality content (which I am striving for) is essential. ignoring the requirements of SEO is probably inadvisable.
My blog posts will be a little more frequent, mid-month will contain general garden news from here in Fife and sometimes a little nostalgia from when we were in Aberdeen and also in Cheshire.
End of the month I will publish a plant profile post.
Our garden on the 11th of January
Cold but no sign of snow as yet. The garden is looking bare and dormant, the Snowdrops are only just peeking through the soil.
It’s kind of mind-boggling that we swear by optimization plugins like yoast. The only solution that I’ve found thus far is a platform called INK for All. I’ve only used it a couple times…but it’s already helping me refine my writing and save me loads of time
Thanks for the wonderful musical tour of your winter garden.
Debra
Sunil, seems to me you are doing very well without SEO.
Hello Alistair, gosh, I don’t do any of this stuff! I’m not sure I would blog otherwise. Some of my posts are just brain dumps and flit from one topic to another with little coherence. I’m scared to imagine what the SEO results might be for some of my posts! Best not find out!
Will do. Happy New year.
Thanks Pam. not sure if I meant to sound so downbeat. Happy New year to you also.
Oh, Alistair, SEO really IS drudgery! No wonder you sound so jaded. But don’t give up blogging, just ignore the stupid SEO — Lucy and Catmint have the right idea. Your postings seem perfect to me with great pictures and interesting information. I enjoyed the video and the music but have tons of questions about what-is-what. I can’t believe how many blooms you have — my winter garden is just snow and ice. Keep blogging and have a very Happy New Year! P. x
Do what ever, write what ever, be what ever makes YOU happy !
Thanks for the encouragement Lucy. Every three years I pay for my domain, its just about due. As I haven’t been feeling so enthusiastic lately I had been thinking I wouldn’t renew it. However I know I would regret it, I guess I will put it down to Winter blues.
Ah! I will do that, maybe not the next time but in the near future. Mind you, my broad Aberdeen accent will make me cringe even if I try to posh it up a bit.
Hi catmint, I honestly couldn’t have said it better myself.
I meant also to say that I enjoyed the video and the music but would appreciate it even more if you gave a running commentary on what we were seeing.
Interesting – I didn’t know what SEO was. If I was thinking all the time about this I wouldn’t enjoy blogging any more, and I would stop doing it. I think it’s my blog, and I will do it however I want. And if you visit other people’s blogs regularly they become cyber friends and will visit and comment on yours. I enjoy your blog, Alastair, because we have been visiting each other for years, and I feel I have gotten to know you a bit, and that makes blogging meaningful and rewarding. So I reckon – life’s too short for drudgery, and just blog in whatever way you enjoy expressing yourself.
In what way? I feel a little concerned. For years you have had this very polished and consistent blog. Are you getting weary with it and looking for a different style? A different topic? What’s up?
I guess I am losing my way after doing this for so many years.
Sounds like advice worth ignoring.
If your style is long sentences, short titles or whatever . . . that’s what gives each blogger a distinctive voice.
About long posts – I confess there are blogs where I find posts too long and end up skimming. However, some of them have masses of comments so either people enjoy picking out the bits which interest them or like to have a good read – a bit as if they have picked up a magazine.
And there are blogs where the writing is so good I enjoy what they say, however long. Like the comment section in a newspaper.
And sometimes I feel a cheated if I turn up and there’s nothing but a picture when there’s generally more.
And sometimes one picture is exactly enough because it says it all.
There are even blogs which I think are badly written but the topics they cover are such fun or so interesting I’m not bothered about literary quality.
Don’t let the advisers wear us down!