Importance of SEO

Content is the king queen mother father child and everything of the blog.  SEO matters but only just 

Agreed. Tonnes of SEO knowledge and no quality content is in vain...

Content is kind. SEO is queen. Can one win a game of chess with just the King? 

And what happens when SEO leads you an unspeakable blog? Do you stay and read because SEO led you there? NO. You leave, quickly, as quickly as possible. At least I do.

Everything has a place.

Well its not that I can't win but it will be really difficult...but the king needs to be alive. If there is no king the queen is of no importance

Exactly Ajesh...sometimes SEO leads us to sites that don't deserve to exist! 

@ Ajeesh 

And what happens when no one even visits the lonely blog? Do you try all the millions of random strings that are valid URLs and reach there just because some fairy appeared in your dream and said that there is a blog being neglected by Google? NO. You don't. You forget the dream as quickly as possible. At least I do.

If there is no one else to support the king, what is the use of the king being alive?

NOTE: I am not talking about bloggers who write stories and poems. 

Ranjith the chess can be played with just the king and the pawns and be won 

Pawns are also SEO 

And content is the king! It needs to be alive...ate we discussing a game of chess or the importance of SEO????

Can you light your cigar without fire? Certainly no... doesn't matter how much warm your lips are... you still need the fire [Sigh]

And what if you have no cigar???

Still if you fidget with a classy lighter relatively dumber chicks (take the masculine if you're a lady) may fantasize you as a reachable Churchill... thus you're getting some leverage... and something is better than nothing anytime.

That's exactly what I wanted to ask...does SEO help and how do you define the "something"? I've tried a few tricks I learnt from SEO experts but I think its not working at all! So is the something working? Maybe I'm am doing something or it doesn't actually work...any one it can be!

Something definitely works... at least for sometime till google recognises your site to be a crap/spam. To define 'something' an expert from the forum has to know which tricks you did fall for... anyway, as I'm a techno-dumb I'm still stuck with contents-rule principle.

I'll give you a same pinch for the techno dumb-all the knowledge I have is from other SEO blogs... 

The correct answer is both are required. I don't why this debate even exists. The number of SEO "experts" is astronomical. 99% of them are young kids (everyone is a kid to me, now that I'm in my mid-50s) who I would hesitate to trust. Their English grammar on this forum does not match the English grammar on their blogs, which leads me to believe they are cutting and pasting from somewhere.

If all you get excited about are "hits" then follow ALL the SEO tricks and tropes. If you are interested in interacting with genuinely interested readers, then content is a prerequisite.

Having said that I have read a few blogs where the comment counts far, far exceeds anything I have seen on my blog. Yet, the blogs, in my opinion, were badly written, poorly laid out, had ads crawling over it to the point where the content (such as it was) could not be found without a microscope.

So clearly, I have no idea what I am talking about....and you should listen to the SEO experts.

@ Shahen What are the SEO principles you have followed on your blog? Cna you list them.

All I know is that one blogger who is also an SEO expert contacted me and offered to transform my blog. Obviously through his SEO skills after analysis.

One days later she said: Because you are from the blogger community, I will offer you a discounted rate.

The special charges for me only were 10,000 per month.

One time SEO brushing was offered for 8-10,000.

Now can someone please tell me which blogger who isn't earning anything, can afford this?

So even if SEO makes a lot of sense, I would stay away from it unless...

1. I learn the tricks and do it all myself

2. Someone offers to help me for free.

:)

Exactly...for us who want to just express ourselves through blogs and don't actually have a steady flow of money can't afford such services! We want to express more than earn!

When SEO is being discussed, you need to mention the category of blogs that you are talking about. As ND mentioned, SEO doesn't matter for blogs that contain stories or poems because they don't get any traffic from search engines. Even if they do, the traffic is too low and most of the visitors don't stay for long enough. 

For other blogs, it matters a lot. And SEO is not about spamming sites with backlinks or fooling search engines.

Search engines rankings are based on some algorithms. So, SEO does have some importance. By making a blanket statement that SEO is useless, you are preferring to live in the dark for ever.

Consider the case of IndiBlogger which you probably love a lot. Look into the HTML and you will find a lot of SEO principles implemented.

Well I do not even know if what I am doing are any sort of SEO principles...its just bits and parts of what I have gathered from others..

I alter the URL of my blogposts in a manner that support SEO. For example when I give the post a title that no one in this world is ever going to search for...I give it a custom URL so as to make it work for me...I do not think it is getting me the loads of traffic and visitors I may want.

And I rely mostly on promoting my site on social media. I try and get back links by commenting on the blogs of what are similar to me. I give my URL...very rarely does it work...mostly only for my movie reviews...

IndiBlogger has to implement lot of SEO principles...they do not want people to hunt for the site on the third or fourth page of Google!!!

It is better to implement SEO for worthy content! If you write a movie review for Mary kom and someone is just wanting to know her life history...and with long tail keywords SEO principles you get them to your site! It may be good for some visitors but not for all! And we cannot please everyone can we???

I try and get back links by commenting on the blogs of what are similar to me.

Almost all sites make backlinks in comments no-follow. So, it hardly helps. But yes, it helps to build good relations with fellow bloggers.

I give it a custom URL so as to make it work for me

It does work to a certain work, provided your blog post actually talks about the keywords mentioned in the URL.

IndiBlogger has to implement lot of SEO principles...they do not want people to hunt for the site on the third or fourth page of Google!!!

Yes, IB too needs to improve in some SEO areas - especially in URL's and duplicate content issues due to reverse chronological sorting of forum posts. 

Which keywords are you referring to when you said 3rd or 4th page?

@Ranjith you are talking about alchemy to a milkman! What is no follow? And the third or fourth keyword!! I never thought about anything you said when I replied!

No follow and do follow links - http://www.blogarchitects.com/seo-tutorial/no-follow-do-follow-links 

And the third or fourth keyword!

You said that IB is being shown in 3rd/4th page in Google search results. I asked what was the query you typed in the search box ( keyword ) which showed IB in the 3rd or 4th page.

Thanks for the link! Will check it surely...what seo do you implement in ur posts???

I use keywords in the titles, h tags in the content and ensure that most of my posts have at least 700 words.  I feel that this  helps my site a lot because for all the programs posts I have on my site, I get good traffic and the only difference between my posts and those that rank lower is that my posts have a higher word count. 

I also have a QA site. Over there, I edit titles of the questions asked by users to include keywords. Apart from helping in SEO, this also makes it easier for someone who is browsing the list of questions.

SEO is most important for blogging, We all are doing blogging,local business website and we all need good SEO for blog and website.  We all know- how SEO impact in search engine. But end of day content is king 

Yes, at the end of the day the content is the king! But what about people blogging about personal experiences and poems??? Does SEO apply over there???

Basic SEO is definately important !!! But better to spend more effort in content compare to over doing SEO..