Blogging and SEO: The “New SEO”

Nick has an interesting post on Threadwatch about the “New SEO,” or what he sees as the fusion of blogging and SEO for a new wave of success for both camps:

I say “new seo”, but it’s not really, as we’re talking about gaining traffic, not gaining traffic specifically from Search engines. There are similarities though:

• It’s all about attention - SEO’s grab it by ranking, bloggers by links on high traffic blogs and word of mouth
• SEO’s tweak titles’ for placement, bloggers for rss click throughs
• SEO’s like clean code, so do bloggers, but bloggers tend to like it more for the sake of it, than SE benefits
• SEO’s write articles for placement, bloggers for contraversy, links, attention - it’s the same thing really…

The list could go on.

The thing is, as SEO get’s tougher and tougher, SEO’s need to learn to do what bloggers do, as the results of whoring for attention are often the same as whoring for links, and bloggers need to learn what SEO’s do, because if they combine what they do with basic white hat SEO techniques, they’ll do far better for traffic.

So, SEO’s and Bloggers, whether either party likes it or not, share much more in common than they may like to think. Those bloggers that can get their heads around SEO, and those SEO’s than can assimilate blogging into their skillsets will reap the benefits.

Die hard SEO’s that shun blogging will suffer eventually, as they’re missing something very important from their marketing mix, and likewise for bloggers that are too pig headed to learn from SEO’s.

If you’ve run a blog, you know the kind of kick it can give you. Then again, you have to (1) run a blog for a reason, (2) love it and (3) blog just about every day. Otherwise, your lack of enthusiasm for your blog bleeds down to your readers (if you have any) and it’s like starting from square one again.