Can You Make Money Blogging With No SEO Traffic?

To earn money blogging you need traffic and lots of it. Nobody will raise any argument with that statement.

One way to get free traffic is to enable search engines to find your blog through search engine optimization.

Why is it then that so many bloggers refuse to pay at least some attention to it?

In several of my previous posts I’ve mentioned seo. For example in Get Blog Traffic.

In my post describing how bloggers help fellow blogger with the title starting Blogging Seo Strategy I’ve even given a concrete example how SEO can help.

There are zillions of articles to be found on search engine optimization in Google and other search engines.

I was going to give the subject of seo some rest but I feel compelled to write about it again.

The reason is primarily to help my readers realize the importance of learning about this subject since it’s somehow tempting for many to ignore it.

I’m continuing to learn as well. It would be easier if it wasn’t necessary.(I do intend to write about it more in the future since I’ve barely scratched the surface).

But I’m also incensed by what I witnessed within the last few days.

It started mildly.

Recently while visiting other blogs I came across a post that speaks of writing for humans first and then, if at all, for the computers i.e. search engines.

I commented on that blog saying something to this effect :

” The search engines’ job is to find the best and most relevant content to what humans are searching for.

The days of keyword stuffing are long gone. The search engines are way too smart for that.

But without keywords, no matter how smart Google, Yahoo and Bing may be, there will be no search results.

If you are famous, people will just type in your name and your blog will be found. So no need for seo if you’re a mega star.

If you just want to keep in touch with your friends through your blog, forget about seo.

But if you want new people to find your blog and what you write about you can bet that without seo it won’t happen.”

I made my comment and felt at peace.

At least I had contributed to making the comment area a discussion which until then was really a good example of consensus.

But today I was stunned to have come across another blog under -blogging for cash- search entry and the contents of it.

It was somewhere on the first page in search results and what I found when reading it floored me.

Since this bloggers comments are conveniently closed the only way to voice my opinion is to mention it here.

At first I was intrigued since the first post I read was 3 or 4 years old. The length of it was over 7000 words.

I read through most of it and noticed there was a heading on traffic less than half way through.

But it said that traffic was covered in a previous post and there was a link to it.

As I continued reading I remembered the word traffic. So I came back to it (since I’m really interested in traffic) and clicked on the link which led to another overly long post, also quite old.

What is wrong with that? You might say. Don’t you like long posts?

Well, inside that post there were many things written out of which very few if any will help anyone get more traffic.

Aside from this blogger talking about himself endlessly and how he wants to help everybody to stop operating from fear and many of his views, there was absolutely nothing about SEO.

This person mentioned in one of his posts that he’s getting 36,666 blog visits per day. (A number of visits per month was given but it spoke to me more clearly when I converted it to a per day number).

This blogger asserts that he only blogs to serve and severely frowns on those who blog for money.

Stuart (not this person’s real name but I’m tired of he, this person etc.) says that he gets less than 1.5% of traffic through search engines.

One of his key points on getting traffic in fact is to write for people and not for computers or search engines.

That mantra almost seems to want to try to make everyone guilty if they do a keyword research.

For Stuart’s information I would add that Google themselves have a mighty good keyword research tool and I’d be willing to bet that Stuart actually uses it.

Why do I say this?

As of today, according to Alexa, Stuart’s blog has been getting around 17% of all traffic from search traffic over the last 3 months. He gets more search traffic (from SEO) than most bloggers.

Is he trying to discourage people from doing seo while he himself takes advantage of it?

I’ve also checked the keywords Stuart gets his search traffic from. The first keyword phrase is his name which is also in the domain name.

The second keyword phrase according to the largest amount of traffic that it brings has money in it.

There are two more keyword phrases on the list that have money in them.

When combined, the keyword phrases with money in them which he gets traffic from bring him roughly as much traffic as that he gets from his name.

Yet, he says his primary goal and motivation is to help people change and improve and not to make money from his blog.

How praiseworthy.

Then why ask for donations?

He takes donations on his blog and has a page devoted to collecting them.

He also monetizes his blog and in addition to links (many) and banners (only two but large) there is a whole paragraph at the bottom of each post promoting the virtues of SBI.

Let’s be honest here.

Even those who aren’t primarily blogging for money enjoy it when it comes.

Those bloggers who don’t care about money won’t try to monetize.

If you have Adsense, banners or any monetization on your site, please, cut out the hypocrisy.

Stop attacking people who are honest about trying to monetize their blog no matter how awkward they may be in doing it.

Stuart not only monetizes quite nicely for himself at $95 or so per head which is a repeat commission coming from annual subscription to SBI.

He also takes donations like a real preacher.

Yet, he hardly helps anybody to get traffic by at least making people aware of SEO.

In my opinion he shouldn’t write on the topic of how to get blog traffic.

Or making money from blogging for that matter, without giving basic information or any mention of optimization.

But how could he then promote SBI? He says basically that SBI will help you make money online.

Ah, so here we are. Stuart is after money after all and in a big way not withstanding his preachy posts.

By the way, I read somewhere that SBI has a kind of police monitoring the internet and reading everything that mentions SBI.

And then they allegedly attack and threaten with lawsuits if it’s not singing praises about them.

Some people even accuse them of being a cult.

That would almost fit together with our preacher Stuart.

But this is not about them, may they rest in peace.

All I wanted to do in this post is to make a point about the importance of search engine optimization.

Nobody should omit at least a mention of it in their post on traffic especially if it’s several thousands of words.

Back to the title of this post.

Earn Money Blogging, Get Traffic Without SEO, True Or False?

Do you think you can get enough traffic to your blog to earn money blogging without seo?

I mean enough free traffic to make enough money to support you so that you don’t have to have a job?

True or false?

Let me know what you think – leave a comment.

Bookmark the post and tweet it just below here.

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Authored by Vance Sova

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Filed under: Earn Money Blogging, SEO Traffic