Web Success Without SEO Works: How I Entered the Top 10 for SEO Blog
When I started this blog – SEO 2.0 – I proclaimed that SEO is dead and that you don’t need it anymore to succeed on the Web.
Moreover I proclaimed a new kind of SEO, SEO 2.0 which works almost completely different than what you know as SEO.
Just 15 months later here I am ranking in the top 10 for seo blog at Google.com and I haven’t done 90% of the things that traditional SEO or SEO 1.0 consists of.
Obsolete SEO methods I haven’t used:
I have
- not submitted this blog to any directories, not even blog directories
- not exchanged links, neither reciprocal nor “3 way links” or anything like that
- not optimized my meta tags, in fact I don’t have any, not even a description
- not made any effort for traditional link building
Conventional SEOs still preach some of these tactics or come up with new useless ones like
- “PageRank sculpting”
- commenting on dofollow blogs
- setting up multiple profiles on social media for the link value
While I do not support this flawed advice I did some of it inadvertently by using the Web as it was intended:
- I never did use nofollow on this blog for PageRank reasons, I just nofollowed a few sources that were just wrong.
- I commented on all kinds of blogs but always with my name for a name and not for SEO reasons, some dofollow blogs were among them I bet.
- As an early adopter I tried dozens of new services but I have never done that just for “getting a free link”.
What did I do instead to push my rankings?
- I linked out plenty to other SEO bloggers and beyond
- I socialized on a few platforms (StumbleUpon, Twitter, Delicious most notably)
- I contributed on social media for reputation not traffic
Moreover I broke a few rules of business, blogging and SEO in my writing:
- I used outrageous humor
- I wrote about politics and my opinions
- I spoke out against the obnoxious Digg and Reddit cesspools
The only SEO 1.0 tactic I really used and that is also still valid was changing the title and headline of SEO 2.0 adding the “SEO blog” as otherwise Google was too stupid to recognize my WordPress blog as a weblog.
While I was ranking on top for SEO 2.0 from the start, it was only when people saw my h1 headline “SEO blog” and started referring to my publication as a “SEO blog” that Google finally managed to notice the fact that I’m indeed running a SEO blog.
On November 21st, 2008 I was the top 10 for [seo blog] from both the US and Germany (where I operate from) for two days in a row. The rankings fluctuated so I might have shown up in the Top 20 again.
Also you might argue that the keyphrase [seo blog] does not yield much traffic and most people do not optimize for it, but as stated above I didn’t do much SEO either ;-). Nonetheless it’s a proof of concept.
I left out many SEO 1.0 best practices on purpose to prove that in a Web 2.0 environment you don’t need them anymore.
15 months later I’m in the top ten just behind Matt Cutts, Aaron Wall and outranking all kinds of renowned industry experts from all over the planet.
Congratulations! How much traffic does it bring in?
#10 on Google UK – Good practices and well demonstrated, thanks.
Hey DMV, thanks. It seems I got 10 visitors with the seo blog keyphrase yesterday. 5 of them bounced. Google Analytics shows 12 referers but at least 2 have been counted twice.
So assuming that 40% of searchers click the #1 result and only 2.5% the #10 you can expect 160 visitors daily for being #1 for seo blog.
zigojacko: In the UK (google.co.uk) I dominate the top 10 for seo blog, I’m twice in it, once with SEO 2.0 at #10, once with SEOptimise where I contribute at #4 ;-)
@onreact: Haha, little did I know that was also you also. Well done, 3 more rankings to nail :p
Nothing beats having some RSS subscribers :)
I’d say something you did that was very successful, was your logo says ‘seo blog’ and it’s a site-wide logo.
I bet you 20$ (paypal?) if you change that to ‘OnReact Blog’ image, within 2 month’s you’ll see you drop down below top 50, maybe even below top 100. :D
Congrats on the success, you did SEO right! You harnessed the power of Social Media. I see your stuff on Sphinn a lot (I subscribe to the RSS feed for ‘hot topics’ and your there a lot).
Quality content + Social following = SEO master ;)
Keep being a hardcore SEO master :P
Wowzer… not show what to make of all that. Still waiting for the coffee to kick in, but nevertheless, I loved reading it.
Hearing about success with Google is always good, You just presented the facts as above without and fluff. Nice.
Graham
Infact i was looking for more on seo and stumbled upon this page and you also talked about stumble..
i guess i m doing the right thing stumbling
I didn’t know anything about it until today morning. I don’t know how I reached your page today in the morning but I am sure I didn’t reach you today while searching for do follow blogs because although I do that at times, I was not doing that this morning. I didn’t know that you don’t use conventional SEO methods. I don’t know what do you do as yet because I haven’t read any of your previous posts except for the “commenting netiquette” one which I liked so much so that I returned to check out your SEO blog again in the evening. I must tell you that you have gained a fan today and I am subscribing to you, Awesome job Onreact !( guess what, I don’t know your name as yet). I hope you all the best(not luck, because you don’t need luck, you can make it happen all by yourself) for ranking ahead of Matt Cutts and ranking inside top 10 for SEO in an year.
Wow, Congratulations to you. Great job, Now onwards I will be following your ideas. Thanks for sharing
Heartily congratulations to you Tad! You deserved it. A good blog, a good resource always gets rewarded…I mean, yeah that’s the way it should be…isn’t it? :)
Way to go!
That was a true eye opener for me, Tad! No more all those time wasting SEO spamming “blue, white, black and grey hat” techniques all over the web…thanks, mate!
Congrats Tad. I’ve followed the same philosophy as yourself almost ignoring traditional SEO. It’s nice to know there’s gold at the end of the rainbow.
Hey Tad,
Good post and interesting take on it. I would say though you left out some things, Title tag, url, h1, meta description and other areas around the site are all keyword stuffed with “SEO Blog”. Isn’t that where it really counts?
I was able to reach the first page SERP for Doug on google by the same means. The game isn’t that hard if you semantically format your page.
Your site would rank even higher if you removed the h1 from the logo and made it the title of each post.
I just wonder if this can be repeated for other sites and subjects…
My guess is, if somebody actively worked in the same market for similar keywords and uses some of the “normal” SEO-techniques, they would be ranked better in the long term…
zigojacko: Yeah, you never know where Tad Chef is cooking, hehe.
mrproper: Right! I have 1330 – 1400 of them. Are you one of them? This post is quite popular among my subscribers.
IJC: You, thanks. I bet soon you outrank me though. You’re the friendliest most social guy on the whole Internet.
Joshua: Right! It’s in th epost though. Read thoroughly first before pointing things out ;-)
Shabbar: Yeah, it seems SU works well for both of us. Stay tuned, I often write about Stumble.
Ghatozkat: Thanks Ghatozkat. it’ really what the dofollow is for. Showing people respect and giving back. The more you give the more you get.
kristr: Thanks for the feedback. Nice to have you on board.
Manish: Thank you! Yeah, I tried to prove that it works. It does.
adam: Not all SEO is spam, but most of it can be skipped by now. :-)
James: Thanks, I bet you will succeed too. You very good at what you do. The guest blogging alone should have pushed you over the edge in Google if you ask me.
Doug: It seems you did not read the post thoroughly. It’s mentioned in it.
Radicke: Yes, you can! It’s even easier. SEO, naturally is one of the most competitive niches. Look for something less crowded and you’ll succeed faster.
If you outrank both Matt Cutts and Aaron Wall I will send you the cost of beer in your country. I think my money is safe.
I agree with Johan, if you beat Matt Cutts you deserve a round of beers. Content is king.
Geeze, Congrats!
Ha! Well there you have it. Ditch all of your old techniques and go with the new ‘Non technique’. :-)
[…] been swirling around in my head for awhile, but I wasn’t inspired until I started reading the SEO 2.0 blog. SEO 2.0 is basically about how to avoid being an SEO dick (or an SEO 1.0 if you want to be nice […]
Good work – it’s far to easy to just focus on the SEO and not on the content and interaction with your followers.
Keep up the great work!
That’s pretty impressive. I’ve had a few blogs in the past where I’ve tried SEO techniques. I grew bored with it. Now I write mainly for myself; I no longer stuff posts with keywords or go mental with articles & directories. You know what – I’m having way more fun with it. Not sure if money or traffic will arrive some day – don’t reaaly care.
this SEO 2.0 is NOT fair. This SEO 2.0 so called tehniques are based on StumbleUpon, Sphinn, Mixx, Twitter, Social|Median – which are english speakers social networks. I don’t know any nonEnglesh social networking that is treated by Google as StumbleUpon, Sphinn, Mixx, Twitter, Social|Median are.
When I started with SEO – last yers – SEO 1.0 had rulles that where aplied no matter language. What you proclame to be SEO 2.0 (don’t get me wrong, I totally agree with this taxonony, I even like it and I will use it) it was in fact secondary set of rulles for good seo in SEO 1 packeage, if I may say so. Tha change is that the first package (meta, link directoriesadn stuff) dosn’t seem to count now.
Any way, by all means, Google should came out with a more accurate set of rulles for SEO mastres. This is my opinion.
I see SEO 2.0 thrown around a lot lately as well as comment on SEO 1.0 are dead. Sure, automatic submission and software based solutions are dead and have been for several years, but there are still many concepts in SEO that we started using years ago and that still work (even a few you used in this post)…
I do agree that social networking helps tremendously, but it’s main benefit is still link building. It’s just a different method.
You used most of the methods of traditional landing page optimization in this blog post. 1. You’ve repeated the keyword phrase ‘SEO Blog’ (helped ya out there) a good number of times as well as repeated the separate words dozens of times throughout the page.
2. The keywords are in the URL
3. You’ve used the keywords in H1 tags and bolded, quoted, otherwise highlighted them in the post as well.
4. The additional content (google ads, navigation text links, and ads) are all targeted toward your keywords.
5. Your visitor comments are helping out as well.
While you wouldn’t be ranked where you are without the help of your social media efforts to get link sources that have SEO blog (helped twice) in their anchor text, you can’t rule out the stock and standard SEO techniques you used for the page design and content.
With that said, I feel that traditional SEO is alive and thriving. Without it as a base for your site, your social marketing efforts wouldn’t get anywhere…
great post, I especially found it useful where did you stated…
Yes I agree with you, linked out to relevant sites do help, as long as the spider not come to you site and dead end. SEO is all about spider linking to each other.
This is one hell of the post. Thank you. I’m SEO developer and the subject you hightlighted here was greatly useful and interesting to me. I think I can use all it in my future work. Please continue your work.
When I started with SEO – last yers – SEO 1.0 had rulles that where aplied no matter language. What you proclame to be SEO 2.0 (don’t get me wrong, I totally agree with this taxonony, I even like it and I will use it) it was in fact secondary set of rulles for good seo in SEO 1 packeage, if I may say so. Tha change is that the first package (meta, link directoriesadn stuff) dosn’t seem to count now.
Any way, by all means, Google should came out with a more accurate set of rulles for SEO mastres. This is my opinion.
well i guess try different methods out, get to know the effects and then go for the one that yeilds the highest, run with it until you run out of resources or it becomes obsolete.
Congratulations on your success.
A very interesting and free-thinking experiment.
I believe you have been a pioneer in finding new ways to promote yourself and your site on the Internet, using a variety of non-traditional methods, including social media platforms (which have become more widely recognized as valuable communication media).
A good message; quality over quantity, and reputation over traffic.