My first website, Peace and Poetry (peaceandpoetry.com) has been around for years. It's gone through many layout changes, a few logo designs, an entire rebranding, etc., and for what? Part of it was just a learning experience. The site was my first venture in the world of graphic design, web design, and all that stuff. Everything I know now about website management– hosting, domains, CSS/HTML, CMS platforms (the list goes on)– all stemmed from Peace and Poetry. That was the catalyst.
However, in the grand scheme of things, search engine optimization is relatively new to me. Up until a year ago, SEO was not a concept that I consciously though about, let alone could even tell you what the acronym meant. Nine websites later, I finally see the importance of having a good SEO strategy to reach the audiences that I intend to reach for myself and for clients.
This past week I have been performing site audits on peaceandpoetry.com and the site's optimization is mediocre at best. There are years worth of images without alt tags, content without keywords, and, I admit, the homepage could be a little more thoughtful. I'm thinking about transitioning the site from the wordpress.com to wordpress.org platform (to save money) and to then start hashing out this SEO disaster which would be quite the project…
My most recent post on peaceandpoetry.com, titled: "Peace and Poetry: What's the point?" generated a lot of traffic. What made this post stand out as it did? Perhaps it was the use of new tags or the fast that I wrote it with SEO in mind. Surely these things played a role in it but I'd venture to say that the most important attribute was vulnerability.
When writing, or creating any type of content, people can sense whether it's genuine or not.
Not only is it good SEO practice to create human-focused, organic content, but it also opens the door for genuine connections.
Saludos to those who struggle with being vulnerable,
~Jermonté
