As someone of Asian-American decent, I like so many of my peers grew up
idolizing Bruce Lee. I remember spending my youth watching his movies,
and I actually even trained in Shaolin Kempo and Tae Kwon Do for 8
years. So what does this have to do with SEO? Well the other day as I
was watching one of Bruce Lee’s old movies in my spare time, I came
across a clip that for whatever reason at the time reminded me of what
is being touted by Google as the best “technique for SEO”. Here is the
video clip of what I was talking about, can you catch the parallels
between what Bruce is saying and today’s modern day SEO landscape?
Did you get it? At about the 0:23 mark Bruce’s teacher asks “What is the highest technique you hope to achieve?” to which he responds “To have no technique”, and interestingly enough this is one way that is actually a fairly effective strategy in your quest to gain search engine traffic. Let me explain.
Remember Google doesn’t want us to actively engage in manipulating search engine results. They tell us if we want search engine traffic, then all we have to do is focus on creating great content that people will want to share, and then the Google overlords will bless us with server melting traffic to our websites! So according to Google, the best SEO technique is to have no SEO technique! Welllllllllll yes and um no.
Of course at the heart of any good website is the creation of good content. You need to have content that engages your readers, and ideally you want to have lots of it. However for the most part I live in the real world where people don’t read stuff and say “OMG that was a great article, I’m now going to jump on my high PR blog and write an article about it and link to it”. This just doesn’t happen people, or if it does it is pretty rare. So what we have to do is create this content and then go out there and promote it, but promote it in the right way.
So I think probably the easiest example would be to use this blog. When I first started this blog, I absolutely did no linkbuilding. All I did was write, write, and write some more. Remember Google tells me all I have to do is “create great content” and then search traffic will be mine! However after writing about 45 articles or so for the site, I still had zero search traffic! I outlined the results in my article here, but basically at that point I threw in the towel and began linkbuilding.
So briefly after I “threw in the towel” on relying on content alone, I started to do a little bit of linkbuilding. Nothing too heavy, just a few high PR blog posts and some forum signatures on popular internet marketing forums I regularly post on (Warrior Forum + Black Hat World). However a little while after I started linkbuilding I got really busy with client obligations and I went back to focusing on only writing for this blog (no linkbuilding). I also did begin to utilize social media, and I would tweet on Twitter and post on Facebook occasionally some of the stuff that was being produced here.
After focusing on creating content and the occasional social media promotion, I did notice that traffic from search engines started to rise. Basically I would try to post once a day about things I thought my readers would find helpful, and then maybe tweet the link or post a link on Facebook. However it seems that with each passing day the search engines started giving me more love. Coincidence? Was it true that maybe the best technique was to have no technique? Well the jury is still out on that.
Some of you may be thinking “well you did start to use social media, so maybe Google is giving you love because of that”, well this could be true, but I have found in all of my tests that social media in itself does not rank a site. If you built a website and tried to purely rank it with social media, assuming that people that you reach via social media don’t begin linking to you from their own web properties, links from Twitter and Facebook in itself as of now is not enough to rank a site (someone please prove me wrong!).
So what should you take away from all this? Well I would say if you haven’t done so already, try to create an authority site in some evergreen niche and really just focus on writing for the site. Then set-up all the social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and a YouTube channel. Write articles, tweet tweets, post to Facebook, create a YouTube video that links back to the site. Focus on banging out great content and using these social media platforms every now and then to promote it. Then in a little bit watch the search engine traffic rise. So maybe it’s true that the best technique is no technique (no active linkbuilding, only promotion), but the only way you’ll find out is if you actually give it a try!
Did you get it? At about the 0:23 mark Bruce’s teacher asks “What is the highest technique you hope to achieve?” to which he responds “To have no technique”, and interestingly enough this is one way that is actually a fairly effective strategy in your quest to gain search engine traffic. Let me explain.
Remember Google doesn’t want us to actively engage in manipulating search engine results. They tell us if we want search engine traffic, then all we have to do is focus on creating great content that people will want to share, and then the Google overlords will bless us with server melting traffic to our websites! So according to Google, the best SEO technique is to have no SEO technique! Welllllllllll yes and um no.
Of course at the heart of any good website is the creation of good content. You need to have content that engages your readers, and ideally you want to have lots of it. However for the most part I live in the real world where people don’t read stuff and say “OMG that was a great article, I’m now going to jump on my high PR blog and write an article about it and link to it”. This just doesn’t happen people, or if it does it is pretty rare. So what we have to do is create this content and then go out there and promote it, but promote it in the right way.
So I think probably the easiest example would be to use this blog. When I first started this blog, I absolutely did no linkbuilding. All I did was write, write, and write some more. Remember Google tells me all I have to do is “create great content” and then search traffic will be mine! However after writing about 45 articles or so for the site, I still had zero search traffic! I outlined the results in my article here, but basically at that point I threw in the towel and began linkbuilding.
So briefly after I “threw in the towel” on relying on content alone, I started to do a little bit of linkbuilding. Nothing too heavy, just a few high PR blog posts and some forum signatures on popular internet marketing forums I regularly post on (Warrior Forum + Black Hat World). However a little while after I started linkbuilding I got really busy with client obligations and I went back to focusing on only writing for this blog (no linkbuilding). I also did begin to utilize social media, and I would tweet on Twitter and post on Facebook occasionally some of the stuff that was being produced here.
After focusing on creating content and the occasional social media promotion, I did notice that traffic from search engines started to rise. Basically I would try to post once a day about things I thought my readers would find helpful, and then maybe tweet the link or post a link on Facebook. However it seems that with each passing day the search engines started giving me more love. Coincidence? Was it true that maybe the best technique was to have no technique? Well the jury is still out on that.
Some of you may be thinking “well you did start to use social media, so maybe Google is giving you love because of that”, well this could be true, but I have found in all of my tests that social media in itself does not rank a site. If you built a website and tried to purely rank it with social media, assuming that people that you reach via social media don’t begin linking to you from their own web properties, links from Twitter and Facebook in itself as of now is not enough to rank a site (someone please prove me wrong!).
So what should you take away from all this? Well I would say if you haven’t done so already, try to create an authority site in some evergreen niche and really just focus on writing for the site. Then set-up all the social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and a YouTube channel. Write articles, tweet tweets, post to Facebook, create a YouTube video that links back to the site. Focus on banging out great content and using these social media platforms every now and then to promote it. Then in a little bit watch the search engine traffic rise. So maybe it’s true that the best technique is no technique (no active linkbuilding, only promotion), but the only way you’ll find out is if you actually give it a try!
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