Over the ten short months I’ve been blogging on Writing For SEO I’ve seen SEO, and my thoughts about the site evolve.

I can see clearly now…

I started the site with a view to helping people write content that could help them become king in their niche on the web, but perhaps counter-intuitively, the increased importance of content within SEO has made me realise what the site is really about. And that’s more than content alone.

Writing For SEO has evolved to be about writing great content and making every piece of content you create work harder for you.

Thinking about the changes I’ve seen this year, one thing for me stands out…

Linking withdraws into the twilight

Linking used to be an essential part of an SEO campaign. Google has more or less spiked most linking activities through a series of algorithm updates. Many webmasters have received warnings from Google about their link profiles – basically, where they have got their links from and the nature of their links – and seen

I work a lot with my colleague, technical SEO Paul Silver. We’ve found that, while you can run a linking campaign and not get penalised by Google, the benefits are harder to see than at any time during the decade we’ve been working together.

That’s why I’ve been trying an experiment with Writing For SEO. I’ve done no link building at all. I’m relying on natural links and social media. This strategy is working well for this site.

Which leads me to Social Media

I’ve been largely avoiding writing about Social Media. I’ve wanted to create a resource centred around website content. But social media has become such an integral part of getting web content to perform well, I’m going to start a new category.

I’ll be focusing on using Social Media with a particular bias towards making your content work harder and boosting the performance of your website or blog.

How does that sound?

Thanks to Denise Krebs for making her image available via Creative Commons.