Fellow Bloggers Speaking – Edition 1

Therefore, I had a new sun (!!) and we got a new friend with us – John Cribbs a fellow blogger.

What is he doing here! He is actually writing a guest post, and I asked him to share his SEO experiences with all of us.

I will ask a lot of other people (as I come across) to write their part of story out here. If you want to share your experiences with us, just mail me and get ready with your keyboard. Therefore, here goes John Cribbs or John C – as you know him.

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MrDoubt invited me to guest blog here a few weeks ago, as well as it being related to the content here. While I do content writing purely as an amateur and am in no way considered knowledgeable about the inner workings of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), I do know the difference between what makes a website a success and what brings it to it’s knees…worrying about stats instead of content for the audience.

If you’ve had any interest in either SEO, Content Management Systems (CMS), or analytics then you’ve been hit with an onslaught of amateurs, wannabes, and people ultimately fishing you as a reader to buy their book. It all started years ago with the infomercials of creating your own website if you bought a little red box that looked like a toolbox. It continues with envelopes with free tickets in your mailbox to the next event hosted and led by one of Donald Trumps people.

SEO as Internet Pals Claim Is BS!

I know. Go to Yahoo.com and do a search on homeless family. No boolean operators, just two words without even using quotes.

My site’s just a blog, and only a subdomain of Blogger. Those search terms are just two words, and they’re two of the most common and used words in the English language. Thousands of non profit agencies claiming to be clearinghouses providing information and advocating for homeless families, thousands of service providers of homeless families, thousands and thousands, some CEOs being paid nearly $100,000.00 USD a year…and I…me…huh?

I did what SEO ‘Masters’ preach, but fail to do themselves

Content providing on an issue that was it’s own niche. When homeless with my family, it wasn’t possible to blog as much as I would have wanted. In fact, many entries were unpublished due to conflicts with service providers who could have; and in some cases actually did; retaliate by refusing services or having us ‘blackballed’ in the community. After getting out and in our home, I was able to go further and freer. My Page Rank (PR) went from a PR0 to PR3 within two months.

I looked at my META keyword tags used. For months my site was #1 consistently, but while manipulating my META keyword tags I lost some ground to www.homelessfamilies.org. I’ve since put back what was changed, but depending on the algorithms it’s possible I may never regain the ground lost to them…and I couldn’t have lost that ground to a better site. It was a great learning experience.

I chose quality communities over quantity

I chose MyBlogLog; before they were acquired by Yahoo; and was impressed enough to post for a job position through Eric via telecommuting. Enthusiastic as I’ve been, I was given a professional account. I continue to provide technical bug reports directly to staff, because I want MY community to work right for ME.

Same thing with Fuelmyblog. I got on with them REALLY early. Kevin Dixie had a good online business; with FindYourFleet; and was doing FMB as a hobby. He gave away free avatar space on a front page, the ‘great wall of blogs’, and started tweaking. He’d actually read over 500 blogs, each one of the registrants. Hand slapped porn sites off. Daily he started picking ‘Blog of the Day’s. There were six that he put on ‘Our Blog’, the site’s blog, bit of banter. The seventh was mine. His entry blew me away when I read it. Since then, the site’s grown and I’ve become one of the weekly content writers for the blog, as well as one of four forum moderators.

Now here’s the catch. I never got much traffic from either one. Bit here and there, but both Eric and Kevin have widgets on my site. Both can see what I’m pulling in for visitors to my site. I’ve NEVER had more than 100 a day! I’ve only had one day that I’ve EVER broke 80. My Technorati is only an authority of 23 at the time of this writing. So how can I master a Search Engine Result of #1?

I blogged

I blogged about what I experienced. I blogged about a shopping cart I saw on the side of the road, or socks on a fence someone left. I blogged about the US Flag disgraced by my City Hall. As I travelled up and out of homeless community into self sufficiency, I blogged about the new challenges and things I experienced. Throughout I was an active advocate for parents and children and families experiencing homelessness. I became networked with professionals, doctors, professors, media, and anyone else I could learn from or mentor about what other homeless families weren’t able to voice of their experiences.

I blogged

I networked with people to learn and to teach. I related to them and their interests. I fell back on my experiences.

Blackhat operations are games children play. If your running a site for the sake of what your site’s about, you don’t have to fall into the game. You’ll be recognized for what you contribute to the online community, if your consistent and stay focused on the original reason of why you started your site online.

In closing, sometimes I wish I weren’t #1. Sometimes I wish I could have gone unnoticed, and just been the blog next door.

Wanna buy a bridge?

The simple version:

• Don’t listen to bullcrap artists.
• Blog. Blog about your armpit hair if necessary, but blog about something you know about directly. Before you can run you’ve gotta learn to crawl, and THAT’s what so many bloggers NEVER understand.
• Pay nothing, buy NO book, and give NOTHING more than attention to someone claiming knowledge. If you do otherwise, you’re just a victim of a confidence game. Real mentors and helpers NEVER sell their help, EVER!

Best, and thanks to MrDoubts for asking me here for this post.

If your interested in checking out my sites, you can track me down through MyBlogLog, Fuelmyblog, or my site project Homeless In Jax.