Morgret Designs

Like ShoeMoney, I agree that FuckingPirate does have a point regarding the “countless ‘SEO blogs’ syndicating with other ‘SEO blogs’ syndicated from another ‘SEO blog’ that syndicated some bullshit guru”. FuckingPirate is actually generous with the term syndicating — in some cases, plagiarism or scraping is the more accurate term. Do a tag search for SEO on wordpress.com and you’ll see what I mean. One of the worst I have seen is a plagiarized post giving tips on how to get indexed in Google. One of the tips is “add your urls in your email signature, to your profile and whenever you email add it to your subject, body and mention it as often as possible when you send your email…”

Even not taking into a account the splog sites, FP does point to the elephant in the middle of the room. A Google Blog Search for the terms “google maps mapquest yahoo seo” (not submitted in quotes) yields roughly 69 results for the past week. Some of the posts mention that Google is no longer showing Yahoo! Maps or MapQuest results, others show screenshots of before and after, and others link to other blogs that have already posted about this.. and only does the rare post even ask what the implications for this might be for search. I bet there would be a bunch of posts on SEO blogs if Google changed the G in their logo from blue to green. Yes, it’s a capitalistic society and we all want to be the one to break the news.. but please, at least add something unique and insightful and on-topic to the post. Give us a reason to read your blog over the other ten that will be reporting the same thing.

As a reader of many SEO blogs, I also get tired of the same thing repeated on so many blogs, and post roundups of the posts from earlier that day. As someone who is trying to write a blog with a fair amount of focus on SEO and search engines, I can understand the circumstances the posters are in. You’re trying to post regularly, trying to get a following of readers, trying to stay on the breaking edge of news, but there are times when you have little time to compose a post, there are no topics that come to mind, the car broke down, and you’re looking for an easy post.

Looking at my recent posting history, you can see I took the easy way out as well — I certainly wasn’t the only one to post that DMOZ submissions are back, nor that WordPress users need to update their software. However, I try to make the bulk of my posts original or adding significant commentary on other posts (if it’s just a couple of sentences, I leave it as a comment on the original blog post). It does mean I don’t post every day. I aim for two to three original posts a week, more if I can, and limit the number of “me too” and filler posts. I promise to post less frequently, but to never be accused of posting a roundup of the best of the posting roundup posts.