There are 3 lessons I’ve learned with SEO (search engine optimization) from blogging on this blog over the past 2 years. Just so you understand where i’m coming from, I started this blog not only to write about my passion which is open source, but to also run SEO tests to figure out the truths behind what Google likes and dislikes. I was curious to see what Blogging alone could do in the search engines, without the common SEO efforts such as Keyword inserting and Link Baiting. Here are 3 valuable lessons I learned:

Keyword = Direct TV Commercials

This is an interesting one. Awhile back I was in the mood to write something of no relevance and of no real importance on my blog. I had seen a few of these commercials that Direct TV had aired, and I thought they were very clever and funny. So I started searching through YouTube to find the commercials, and posted the ones that I could find. This was back in May of 2008.

I didn’t see any traffic from this article after writing it. Not until this fall of 2009. Then all of a sudden the search queries started to increase for this term and Google had ranked me in the 2nd slot underneath Directtv.com for the term “direct tv commercials”. How did this happen? The content on my blog is not relevant to DirectTV at all? And the 1 post I wrote about these commercials contained about 3 lines of content and 2 embeded videos from YouTube.

Lesson Learned = It’s okay to have some fun with your blog now and again. And even having some fun can result in some traffic increases and improved page rank to your overall blog. It’s also okay to go off topic from time to time. Let people know who you are. Rant and rave about whatever it is that’s on your mind. Just do it from time to time and try to stay on topic most of the time.

Keyword = Magento Import

Using your blog to write posts that solve people’s problems really does work. Over a year ago I noticed that there was no real documentation on how to import a big list of products into the Magento ecommerce cms. So after doing some research and testing, I figured out how to get it done. Then I wrote what exactly I did step for step, so that other people could figure it out as well.

As you can see I have the very first listing for this keyword, even above Magento’s website which has some similar content. This keyword continues to give me a large amount of traffic each day.

Lesson Learned = If your content is good enough for the reader, you can get listed above highly reputable sites. In this case I was able to outrank MagentoCommerce.com which is the website for the Magento open source ecommerce platform. I also learned that there is much value in taking the time to figure out problems that have not yet been figured out, or at least written about. You really can help people by saving them tons of time, not to mention you get a ton of traffic this way.

Keyword = SEO Task List

Sometimes it’s all about figuring out in your head what the searchers needs are. SEO experts love to boast about their keyword research techniques and all the benefits that come from it. But sometimes, it’s better to just figure out what people’s needs are and then write accordingly. 2 years ago to date I wrote a blog post about the My Top 10 SEO Tasks that I would perform for my clients at the time. A very simple, to the point, easy to read, blog article that just told everyone what it is I do based off what I had learned.

The results were a top organic listing in Google of course, because the key phrase was of a long tail nature. But what I didn’t see coming was the amount of traffic I would receive from this search query. On average over the past 2 years, I get 5 unique visits per day just from the search query ’seo task list’ in Google! So even though 5 unique visits a day seems small, it has resulted in over 9,000 unique visits over the past 2 years. All from a blog post that took me about 15 minutes to put together.

Lesson Learned = Take the time to write articles that feature long tail key phrases. But rather than doing keyword research to find out what those key phrases are, just use your gut! I have found that because of my passion for the topic, combined with my continual research into what’s going on in the industry that I cover, that I always seem to have a sense for what people’s needs are in my industry. This has allowed me to spend less time researching keywords, and more time brainstorming on content ideas and what to write next.