ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse chimes in with an excellent, balanced addition to the growing debate over traditional SEO as applied to blogs. This is the topic that I commented on with SEO Copywriting is Dead, which built upon a couple of posts by Nick Wilson of Performancing and was pushed further along by Steve Pavlina.
Darren is always a diplomat, but here his even-handedness is especially welcome. While demonstrating both sides of the story, I think he actually makes a stronger case for writing for humans first.
He points out that blogs are pretty well optimized to be search engine friendly right out of the box, due to “good URL structures, interlink(ing) well within the site (via categories) and (being) regularly updated…” And of course writing for humans pulls in the gold of the Internet — one way links from others.
Keywords in headlines definitely help, and Darren rightly points out that for bloggers with an advertising business model, search traffic is crucial to revenue. I just don’t believe you need keyword stuffing in your body text, and you shouldn’t sacrifice a compelling headline in favor of search traffic you may or may not get.
I primarily write for people selling products and services, although any blogger can benefit from good copywriting (unless you don’t like traffic). But if you read past my sensationalist previous post title, I pretty much arrive at the same place as Darren.
Imagine that… me, writing a sensationalist post title!
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I think the occasional attention grabber is okay, so long as it’s not a habit. Constant controversy shouldn’t be used, but an occasional eyebrow raiser can be a good tool.
There’s more to great headlines than controversy, although this is the crutch that many bloggers resort to.
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