Inspirational traffic building

[PaulDJ]

Hey Steve. I was having a quick browse of the forums last night and stumbled upon a post of yours which said something to the tune of you started making money when you actually stopped trying to make money and started doing what you loved. That really resonates with me, and got me thinking what other things this advice could apply to.

My question to you is does this also apply to building website traffic? Do you concentrate your efforts on identifying keywords and SEO or do you just post content that inspires you? I’m guessing now it's the latter, at least while your trial is ongoing! But was this always the case? What about when you were first starting out?

I’d love to hear other people's opinions on this too.

[tod]

I think that SEO is pretty useless. A few years ago I designed a Christmas card for my own personal use. My intention was to order a few hundred and send to everyone I know. The design was an idea I had for awhile, and it only took a few hours to create. As an afterthought, I created a quickie webpage and offered it for sale online on a domain name I owned but didn't really use for anything (so it had no traffic, history, etc.) I did no market research, didn't look for keywords, didn't study the competition. I wrote a brief description that was honest and described my product. The site was one page and very simple. By the way, the HTML didn't even adhere to any kind of web standard. I just took an old template I created that still had stuff like table tags in it, put my words in, and uploaded it. I didn't write meta tags, didn't stick keywords in, or any of that.

By the time it was all over, I had logged about 60,000 unique visitors and sold a ton of cards. I mean a ton. I had to make three trips to the post office with my car loaded with cards. I got orders from every English speaking country in the world, and many others, too.

So I really chuckle when I read the pitches from SEO firms. I don't care if it's white hat. I honestly don't think it makes much of a difference. You can automate some of the SEO-friendly techniques with Wordpress plugins, but why bother trying to manipulate the black box of search, which you can never understand? Look at what they use that stuff for: to get eyeballs looking at something they probably don't care that much about, because they have to be tricked or conned into looking at it. I aim to create things so compelling that people are just mad to tell others about it.

[PaulDJ]

Originally Posted by tod

I think that SEO is pretty useless. A few years ago I designed a Christmas card for my own personal use. My intention was to order a few hundred and send to everyone I know. The design was an idea I had for awhile, and it only took a few hours to create. As an afterthought, I created a quickie webpage and offered it for sale online on a domain name I owned but didn't really use for anything (so it had no traffic, history, etc.) I did no market research, didn't look for keywords, didn't study the competition. I wrote a brief description that was honest and described my product. The site was one page and very simple. By the way, the HTML didn't even adhere to any kind of web standard. I just took an old template I created that still had stuff like table tags in it, put my words in, and uploaded it. I didn't write meta tags, didn't stick keywords in, or any of that.

By the time it was all over, I had logged about 60,000 unique visitors and sold a ton of cards. I mean a ton. I had to make three trips to the post office with my car loaded with cards. I got orders from every English speaking country in the world, and many others, too.

So I really chuckle when I read the pitches from SEO firms. I don't care if it's white hat. I honestly don't think it makes much of a difference. You can automate some of the SEO-friendly techniques with Wordpress plugins, but why bother trying to manipulate the black box of search, which you can never understand? Look at what they use that stuff for: to get eyeballs looking at something they probably don't care that much about, because they have to be tricked or conned into looking at it. I aim to create things so compelling that people are just mad to tell others about it.

Wow, that's awesome Tod! Must have been a pretty amazing card! Do you still that site on the Internet?

[Savage]

Originally Posted by PaulDJ

Hey Steve. I was having a quick browse of the forums last night and stumbled upon a post of yours which said something to the tune of you started making money when you actually stopped trying to make money and started doing what you loved. That really resonates with me, and got me thinking what other things this advice could apply to.

My question to you is does this also apply to building website traffic? Do you concentrate your efforts on identifying keywords and SEO or do you just post content that inspires you? I’m guessing now it's the latter, at least while your trial is ongoing! But was this always the case? What about when you were first starting out?

I’d love to hear other people's opinions on this too.

I probably did keyword research for not even 10 articles out of 1000, so less than 1%. I found it boring and tedious -- and unnecessary.

I prefer to write about what interests and especially what excites me.

We aren't so different really. What excites me tends to excite many other people too, so there's always someone wanting to read what I'm able to share.

I still don't try to make money. How is this inspiration trial going to generate income for me? Even my ebay auction idea was a flop in that regard. It should be pretty obvious that I'm not doing this to make money. I'm doing it because I'm loving the adventure of it.

An abundant flow of resources always seems to be there when I'm in the flow of doing something I love.

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by tod

I think that SEO is pretty useless. A few years ago I designed a Christmas card for my own personal use. My intention was to order a few hundred and send to everyone I know. The design was an idea I had for awhile, and it only took a few hours to create. As an afterthought, I created a quickie webpage and offered it for sale online on a domain name I owned but didn't really use for anything (so it had no traffic, history, etc.) I did no market research, didn't look for keywords, didn't study the competition. I wrote a brief description that was honest and described my product. The site was one page and very simple. By the way, the HTML didn't even adhere to any kind of web standard. I just took an old template I created that still had stuff like table tags in it, put my words in, and uploaded it. I didn't write meta tags, didn't stick keywords in, or any of that.

By the time it was all over, I had logged about 60,000 unique visitors and sold a ton of cards. I mean a ton. I had to make three trips to the post office with my car loaded with cards. I got orders from every English speaking country in the world, and many others, too.

So I really chuckle when I read the pitches from SEO firms. I don't care if it's white hat. I honestly don't think it makes much of a difference. You can automate some of the SEO-friendly techniques with Wordpress plugins, but why bother trying to manipulate the black box of search, which you can never understand? Look at what they use that stuff for: to get eyeballs looking at something they probably don't care that much about, because they have to be tricked or conned into looking at it. I aim to create things so compelling that people are just mad to tell others about it.

Very cool story, but I disagree with SEO being useless.

Metaphorically speaking that is kind of a similar attitude to saying that sales people are all con-artists.

If you look up "personal development" in Google right now, you will see Steve Pavlina's site #1. Steve gets a crapload of new traffic every month from people because his site ranks high for certain terms in the search engines.

There are thousands of businesses out there that provide good quality services and products that are suffering right now and one of the ways they could improve their business model is by utilizing proper SEO.

Now, I'm not talking about tricky, black-hat crap here. I'm talking about being smart in the way they create their websites and implementing a proper SEO strategy.

The stuff you're talking about, like sticking keywords in your content, tags, meta etc. is not SEO anyways, that stuff doesn't work anymore.

Bottom line is this. Imagine if you had two Reiki Healers in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Both had websites. Both were amazing healers.

One of them did proper SEO and their website appears #3 for the term "Reiki Healer Edmonton" and the other one isn't even listed in the top 100. Which of them would be able to help more people with their healing because they took the time to be visible on the search engines?

Steve doesn't really have to worry about SEO because Yahoo alone reports over 274,000 pages with links to Steve's site, and he's running a Page Rank 6 site. With that kind of link and Page Rank authority Steve's article "How to Cook Brown Rice" can be #1 even though it's not a personal development article and he outranks even well established COOKING websites, but for a Reiki Healer in Edmonton with a brand new site that isn't going to be the case - regardless how good their Reiki healing skills are.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't provide value. I'm not saying that black-hat spammy SEO is going to get you anywhere. I'm just saying why NOT do proper SEO for your sites? It's not that hard and proper SEO actually provides tremendous value anyways.

Maybe with proper SEO you could have gotten 600,000 Unique Visitors, not 60k and sold 10x as many cards.

Your point is valid in that in MOST cases people worry about SEO too much instead of focusing on creating value, but that is not the case always. Some people are providing a lot of value, but they just don't know how to properly optimize themselves on the search engines. And since the Yellow Pages isn't working anymore as an advertising medium, their businesses are suffering from a loss of potential clients that AREN'T finding them.

[90802]

The stuff you're talking about, like sticking keywords in your content, tags, meta etc. is not SEO anyways, that stuff doesn't work anymore.

Then what is SEO?

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by 90802

Then what is SEO?

Getting out from within the limited perspective of our own Ego and seeing things from the perspective of "others".

Building websites and content that connects and communicates with people in their values, not just your own.

Imagine me handing you my business card and on that card all it says is "Entropy Decombobulation Inc." and that's it. No phone number. No definition of services. No email. No Website. Just my company name.

Would that be a good business card? You would have no clue what I do, what my services are, how to contact me etc. right?

That would be a ridiculous business card to have, yet most websites are setup to be even more ridiculous than that. They come from an attitude of "Oh, people will figure it out. They'll find me. If they are really my target market, they'll find a way to get in touch with me."

People who don't believe in proper SEO typically have the attitude that somehow people are magically supposed to find them online no matter how they setup their websites, how they create and organize their content etc.

For example, a non-SEO-minded dentist named Dr. John Smith in Vancouver, BC will use this as the main title of his home page "Dr. John Smith", because he thinks he's the most important thing in the world and people should just somehow magically know that he is a dentist and come see him.

An SEO-minded dentist name Dr. Jane Smith in Vancouver, BC will use this as the main title of her home page "Vancouver Dentist - Dental Implants, Braces and Children's Dentist" or something like that.

SEO is a philosophy, not a technique.

Ask yourself this...

When you search for "Tony Robbins" you find TonyRobbins.com.

When you search for "Steve Pavlina" you find StevePavlina.com.

Right?

However, when you search for "Personal Development" who do you find?

Tony Robbins, who has been in personal development for over 30 years? No, in fact Tony Robbins doesn't even appear in the top 10 for that keyword. You find StevePavlina.com.

That's SEO. It's a philosophy. It has nothing to do with Google. It has to do with understanding humans and communicating with them based on THEIR needs.

At least that's the way I look at it.