SEO and Blog Lessons Converge

As I mentioned previously, I was learning about SEO and Blogs around the same time. It was the spring of 2003. Because both blogs and SEO were at the top of mind at the time, each affected the way I viewed the other. For example, when I was learning about blogs, I did so with my "SEO goggles" on -- I couldn't but think about the SEO considerations with respect to blogging.

It is for this reason that several of the Blog Lessons I learned have more to do with the psychology and behavior of Bloggers themselves, rather than actual blog sites and technologies. Central to this line of thinking was the stark contrast between the world of SEO and the world of Blogs. In the SEO world, links were important and very hard to come by. Links were almost never free: you had to exchange links or pay for them. At the same time, I learned about this Blog world (the blogosphere, at it is sometimes called), where everyone was volontarily linking like crazy. I found it quite fascinating.

Even more curious was that many of SEO experts in the SEO forums didn't seem to know or care about blogs. When they did care, it was usually the common complaint that blogs were polluting the search engines or outranking their (presumably commercial) web sites. Which brings up an interesting point: blogs were primarily non-commercial entities, most bloggers were not doing it for money or business. And since most of the topics of blogs were not commercial or money-making in nature, perhaps there was little appeal to SEO experts or online business people to get into blogs. I, too, struggled with the question: how could one merge the benefits of the blog world with web-based businesses or other money making business? I didn't have an answer to the question...at least not yet.