SEO Blogs Banned from Wordpress.com
I recently read a post by Lee Odden on how Wordpress classified blogs as either “popular” blogs or “banned” blogs. As the title suggests, SEO blogs actually fall under banned blogs. Gasp!
Not surprisingly the post generated a lively discussion where in some agreed with Odden about how the term SEO blog was misleading and with others not really taking any offense at all. Granted that Wordpress does make it clear that the SEO blogs they are actually referring to are NOT SEO blogs like ours (blogs with SEO as main topics) but “search optimised” blogs that aim to fool search engines (black hat) I still agree with Odden that if would be better if they called it “Search Engine Spam Blogs”.
As you must have noticed I am a little particular about wording (I don’t like the term over-optimised either) since it does affect the outlook of some people - particularly those new to a certain idea. It is bad enough for genuine SEOs that black hats actually do exist and there are some clients taken advantage of but it is even worse when we are lumped together with those who use unsavoury methods. This is a problem that actually could affect us beyond mere semantics since clients, who do not know much about SEO, might back out if they think that their blog will get banned for being optimised. The truth is that many blogs actually use at least some form of SEO method but since they are not designed to fool search engines (black hat) then it is ok. However, not all clients state their reason for not going on with a project and not all even go as far as contacting an SEO for advice. In cases like these, the clients are lost without any opportunity of explaining our side. Bottomline: Wrong wording equals bad for us.
Today is May 13, 2008
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But the problem is how do u tell if the blog is an SEO Blog or a blog for actual readers.
I want to clear this statement:-
SEO blogs: Blogs that are written for search engines instead of humans. These blogs are dedicated to trying to fool Google and other search engines into ranking them highly. WordPress.com is not meant for this type of activity.
If you are trying to do this wordpress treat this as against spamming and your blog should be block.. and you have to re-submit your blog to wordpress to re-inclusion it.
To an extent I agree with the reponse above. A truly good SEO blog will be good for human readers as well as Google. So is it still an SEO blog? Oh wait we are getting all confused… basically wordpress doesn’t like SEO blogs generated only for Google - although I see this being something rather difficult for them to evaluate.
Anyone planning out a long term strategy should most definitely look to build a blog around its users. If done well this will naturally attract the search engines - the two go hand in hand. So as mentioned above, a truly good SEO blog will be made with users in mind.