[OnionJack]

Not quite sure why you state that. Where do I "discount linking"? I'm against partaking in link exchanges, schemes, etc., not organic linking.

Here

Don't try to rely heavily on SE Traffic, it's a free source of traffic and you should look at other ways.

I understand you can get high SE ranking without lots of inbound quotes on certain areas. But if you look to do it on any highly contested keywords. Yes I said it again lol. It's not going to happen without inbound links. It's just a part of the game. And if you do start to rank high it will bring you good traffic.

You can also do directory listings, albeit a majority of directories suck but there a handful worth going after.

Or why do so many website still focus on SEO because it's useless?

As I stated before, rank checking is a useless practice, Google has thousands of datacenters it uses to calculate rankings. You could be on the first page of Google one day, then drop down to page 50 the next. I don't worry about it.

If you want to go ahead and "check my rankings" or something to see how *well* I'm doing, feel more than welcome to .

I couldn't care less. That's up to you.

Because?

Because it's an easier arena to compete in that you can get ranked well for and can bring in extra traffic.

And then I should hire a so-called "SEO Expert" because?

This you took the wannabe out of context I think, rofl. I meant that your article SEO wannabe may be able to get ranked well because of it's name. But again I haven't looked into the SEO value of it.

What do you mean by "one of those yay or nay stances"?

You could spend hours, even days, *researching keywords for Search Engines* or you could focus on writing a quality post with lots of thought put into it and giving useful info to your visitors.

IMO if you are a good writer / blogger, thinking about so-called "keywords" is an afterthought.

Exactly what you said. It's an afterthought instead of part of the process to you.

I'm not saying oh yea let me keep looking up words that have a lot of SEO value.

What I'm proposing is think up what you want your article to be about. Outline it. Then spend some time looking up what keywords you may include in place of other words. Then write your article.

For instance what if no one search for SEO when you use it. Would your article lose any value by spelling out Search Engine Optimization? Or if you used Search Engine Friendly when people are really searching for SEF?

But in all honestly I don't care. Was just trying to give some food for thought. Take it as you will.

-OJ