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5 Warning Signs You Are in SEO Denial

I am often surprised how often I encounter writers and bloggers who don’t know what SEO is, don’t want to know what SEO is, or think they don’t have time to learn about SEO. Yes, the writing of a post should be your first priority, as should writing in a clever and engaging manner to hook readers. But those readers need to find you before they can get hooked.

So here are a few signs you are in SEO denial:

You don’t know what SEO is or what it stands for. In groups, you make a nervous giggle when people throw out terms like SEO, SEF and SERP. You cross your fingers and hope no one confronts you about your actual knowledge.
You write vague but clever headlines for your blog posts. No, they don’t state what the post is about. But boy, they sure are catchy. And clever. Did I say clever?
You like to take about 500 words to get to your point. You don’t get that point into your first graph even, where a search engine might encounter it and deem it important to the page. But hey, you’re writing for people who like to linger and dwell on web pages a while before they figure out what they’re about. Because lots of people surf the web that way.
Meta tags? They sound like a mega pain! Why should you have to tell an algorithm what your page is about? You’re writing for people!
You don’t need any stinking incoming links. You might have to socialize or something, and you’re a reclusive writer/blogger type. If people want to read you, they will find you. Won’t they?

Written by kelbycarr from Kelby Carr
Posted on April 22nd, 2008 and filed under Search Engine Optimisation
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16027 Responses5+Warning+Signs+You+Are+in+SEO+Denial2008-04-22+12%3A50%3A00kelbycarr to “5 Warning Signs You Are in SEO Denial”

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Louis Liem says:

April 22, 2008 at 12:41 pm

I once read that we used to get visitors only by writing articles without marketing them too much. But it was back then when there were only 175 new blogs everyday.
Nowadays, with 175,000 new blogs everyday, no matter how great your contents are, if people can’t find them, they’re useless. It also said, if you spend 2 hours creating an article, you should spend at least the same amount marketing your article. And that includes SEO stuffs inside your article..
Irene Rose says:

April 23, 2008 at 1:44 am

nice heads-up. although SEO is relatively unknown to a lot, but everybody seems to be connected to it in some way or the other. everything ultimatley comes down to subtle use of keywords. keywords are the things that will ultimately help win the race.
Internet Marketing Joy says:

April 25, 2008 at 5:55 pm

GReat post Kelby!..it is true that a lot of people are misinformed about what SEO is all about..that’s why a lot of newbies (like me) are also misinformed of what we really are the ways of doing the proper SEO.
Philip Norton says:

April 25, 2008 at 6:13 pm

6. You honestly believe that SEO is just a buzz word, that the industry is full of cowboys just waiting to rip you off and that no SEO technique is more reliable than astrology.
Milt Le says:

May 24, 2008 at 10:34 am

I'll try to say this in a measured way – rather than express my exasperation at folks who are on the "inside" and write for others who are on the "inside".

I found your article because I googled " what is seo, sef, serp?" I found these terms in an article that was a tutorial on joomla (a content management system used for creating websites) It went on and on about how important these things (seo, sef, and serp) are, but never once took the 30 seconds it would take to explain that SEO stands for "search engine optimization" .

Now I've read your post, and only because you put a tag at the end that said "search engine optimization" did I find out what it was. I still need to keep searching to find out what the other 2 terms are referring to.

Of course you are not the only person who does this – obviously I wouldn't even be here if you were, but I have to say, it's amazing to see how many people forget that not all of us know the arcane language and abbreviations that seem to abound in the internet world.