Why I Don’t Check Rankings

February 22, 2008 | By Chris Garrett | Filed Under Features, Guides and Tutorials

As I said in a previous post, I am considering selling one of my blogs. It is only now that I have looked to see which search terms it ranks for. Surprisingly it is doing quite well. I rarely check my rankings, and I will tell you why.

Let me say right now that this idea is not something that I am saying is right for everybody. I have friends who do very well by selecting key phrases and being vigilant about search results. They can tell you any day there is an algo change by detecting shifts in the results they monitor. It just doesn’t work for me.

My approach is to write for audiences. I usually have my main audience and also an overlapping audience that I hope to attract with my most recent article. It could be that rather than a shift in audience I want to have a more conversational piece or a more bookmarkable resource.

Keywords do come into it, but not as a priority. Some headlines will be aimed to create curiosity, others will be to create clicks, and others will be selected because they play on the biases of the people I want to take notice.

Take a look at this article I wrote yesterday. What do you think I was aiming to do there?

I only have one directly monetized site and that has a 50-50% chance of being sold. Search traffic is just not high on the list of desires for me so I can afford to play fast and loose with the rules of SEO. Or at least I think so.

Am I wrong? Can you persuade me to change my ways? Am I right? Is there no right and wrong? Share your thoughts in the comments …


About the author: Chris is a professional blogger and internet marketing consultant. As well as Chris' blog tips at The Blog Herald you can read more of his blogging tips, internet marketing advice and copywriting articles over at chrisg.com and make sure you sign up for the Authority Blogger newsletter.

© Copyright 2008 The Blog Herald | Submit post to Blogosphere News | More articles by Chris Garrett


Comments

4 Responses to “Why I Don’t Check Rankings”

  1. Wayne Liew on February 22nd, 2008 6:46 am

    For the titles of my articles, it is usually different compared to the ones within the H2 tags. This can be done by using the title rewriting function of the famous All In One SEO Pack plugin.

  2. dandellion on February 24th, 2008 10:36 am

    I do check my stats (it is kind of fun to watch that lines going up and down) but not SE rankings. Nor I do write for rankings. I simply don’t know how to do that way. I tried, read a lot of posts about the subject, did some thinking. And then I realized that it is better to spend that time and effort in better writing, commenting aside and have fun. I enjoy it more and it gives results as well. Sure, just one third of my traffic comes from search engines, the rest is from the other sites. After all, I started blogging to communicate and have fun, not to play with searchbots.

  3. Brandon Hopkins on February 26th, 2008 10:34 am

    Hey Chris, just wanted to let you know that I responded with a post…Guess the trackback didn’t work :)

  4. ameliyat on February 29th, 2008 3:00 am

    I write for my visitors. And I do not change the text for keyword spamming. But also I like to check my rankings. I do some optimization but not so deep.

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