I didn’t need to listen to last week episode of Rand Fishkin on Whiteboard Friday where he discussed the impacts of the last Google’s evolution to come to that conclusion. I learned that lesson several years ago when I was a full-time blogger. Through my blogging and online presence, I became one the foremost lifestyle & entertaining experts in Canada. I did it with organic growth. If it was true then, imagine now!

Sure, I used a few SEO tips every time I wrote a post. My site was optimized for SEO. My posts were well-rated by Google. But SEO didn’t convert as well as visitors who came to my site organically. For that reason alone, I never put more than 30 seconds per post on SEO.

When you produce content, you want to attract people who would actually care about your content. You want to attract people who will come back for more of your content. You want to build an audience. Page views are vanity metrics. In the old days when bloggers monetize their blog with banner ads, having more page views meant more income. If you are a business, you run a blog to ultimately attract people that could become buyers, ambassadors or investors. Page views is not important. Building an audience is.

If you are not convinced, watch Rand Fishin as he explains the latest changes to the Google algorithm. You will see that the old ways to do SEO is a lost cause. If you seek a better ranking on Google, you have no choice but to build an audience.

Photo credits: Life of Pix