No, I don't think he is entirely crazy.
In fact I think about search engine optimzation too. I have a vested interest in considering the topic a sane one. Somewhere Down Under, Darren is smiling in relief.
I also make much of my income from search engine optimization of client websites.
Anyway, back from the digression.
Darren has this to say about thinking SEO thoughts:
It is easy to be overwhelmed by SEO strategy - I know when I first started looking into it I was totally confused but it is well worth doing a little research and having some of the basics in your mind as you blog. Don't become obsessed by it - but be informed and where you can use the basics to enhance your chances of being ranked highly by the search engines.
Darren is right of course.
It's very easy to become obsessed with your blog's ranking on Google, Yahoo, and MSN Search. With blogs, it's not even necessary.
A blog is naturally SEO related.
Now, you can't beat that, now can you?
Search engines value fresh theme relevant content.
Blogs are built on new posts, usually written on the same overall topic. You can't get much more theme relevant than that. The content itself is SEO powered too. Because the same phrases are used over and over, plus in various forms and word order, the site will be found in searches for literally dozens of phrases. High search engine rankings are a byproduct of regular posting.
Search engines love incoming links.
Bloggers are linkers. Almost every blogger has a nice blogroll, linking to and from dozens of other blogs. Most of the linked blogs discuss similar topics. In search engine language, they are theme relevant; and that translates into high search engine rankings. In particular, link obsessed Google loves to see links to and from your blog. They reward your efforts.
The combination of links and content helps too.
When a link is made within a blog post, it gets even more credit from the search engines. Because the clickable link itself often contains an important search phrase, (called link anchor text in the SEO industry), the search engines value that post and link very highly. Usually both linker and linked blog benefit as a result.
Many blogs have separate pages for each post.
The one post per page, seen in Blogger blogs for example, gives that page a real search engine boost. The page is individually named with its own URL internet address, and targeted phrases. Blogs with categories receive a similar benefit as the posts are kept in tightly themed groups. That is always a good thing in the eyes of a search engine spider.
Blogs are easily indexed and are readily visited by search engine spiders.
Blogs have many incoming links from other blogs, blog and mainstream directories, and traditional websites. The internet search engine spiders simply cruise right in and index every page in the blog. There is definitely no need to ever submit a blog to Google, for example. The Googlebot spider will find and index your blog all on its own. That's the power of incoming links.
Tags could be powerful too.
The emergence of blogs posts with tags, as recommended by Technorati, could assist blogs in the search engines as well. The tags tell the search engines the keywords for the post being indexed. The search engine does the rest.
As you can see, you are already a very good search engine optimzation expert. You have already mastered basic SEO.
All you did was maintain your blog as you normally would.
That, all by itself, is powerful SEO.
There now, no need to obsess over search engine optimization.
We'll leave that worry to Darren Rowse!
