Why SEO is still, above all, works in mysterious ways
Let me tell you this, making SEO work in your way is a literal pain in the ass.
Because your SEO rankings can be affected by a host of different factors outside of your control. Be it changes to your competitor's site, changes to your own site, and even the almighty search engine algorithm.
The mysteriousness surrounding the algorithm can be both good and a bad thing.
Good thing is, that if everyone were to correctly predict how SEO works, then everyone will start racing all the way down to the bottom. But the bad thing is, you can never know what to really improve on.
Even if you manage to do everything right - you optimize on Yoast SEO's suggestions, submitted sitemap to Google Search Console, throw your blogs on social media, and still your blog feels like an empty saloon.
If you ever change your domain or brand, your SEO rankings would be affected too.
Being among the newest bloggers in the world, this hits hard. Real hard. A poem called Dreams Deferred by Langston Hughes describes my reality as if he actually knows what I'm going through.
So...what's going to help with your SEO?
Honestly, there's too many influencer blogs on the Internet biasing one thing or method over another. Even though it does help people in some way, at the end I will be somehow clueless what to do next.
In fact, someone suggested ditching SEO from the todo list altogether ( Spoiler alert: Only if social media has your back. )
But one thing I believe to be true, is that no matter what measures you take to improve your site, you're gonna be better off by a margin. Creating internal links in every post can make the URLs in your site highly detectable on Google. Use as much keywords in the search bar in the post also helps.
But one question remains, is how can you deal with issues that has nothing to do with your work, i.e, your blog content ?
I've been publishing on Wordpress for 3 months now, and still I'm wondering why my page is buried deeper and deeper under the list.
I could never know the answer, but one theory is that since my blog changed its domain less than a month ago, the old domain keeps appearing on the search results, which can disrupt the traffic to my site.
And I also suspect that the mismatch between the domain name and the purpose of your blog can make it hard to search for your blog.
For example, my blog name is Nat Geo Nerd but I mainly curate travel vlogs in my blog posts. There's a high chance my home page is not gonna get discovered, and so the bounce rate is artificially going to be a bit higher. Since Google might punish sites with high bounce rate and low page views, I might find myself trapped in this vicious cycle of SEO hell.
The domain should include words like "trekking", "tourist", "virtual traveller" or "nat geo nomad" or some synonyms like these.
But even if my theory turned out to be true, I can't imagine spending hundreds of USDs changing one domain to the next.
If everything else fails, can social media help with SEO?
Last but not least, we have to deal with something we all hate: competition.
There are millions of people blogging about what I'm blogging about, and many of us have different starts in the journey.
Some of them are already famous before their blog exists, therefore everything is smooth sailing for them.
But I believe that the majority of us start with bare hands, and we wouldn't get to the top without networking with social media.
But even so, social media appears to be incredibly saturated with posts in my niche. Especially Instagram and TikTok where you have to deal with the most attention-seeking influencers. And also because you have to work full time marketing your blog there, not only to get your blog noticed, but to also stay relevant.
The only hope I have is by pinning your posts on Pinterest and participate in group pins ( i.e. group posts ). In my opinion, Pinterest's way of curating pins for the search queries is less enigmatic and complex than its bigger competitors, but you'll have to channel more of your effort to graphic design and catchy headlines. Also, I feel like Pinterest is catered towards the blogging community as well as online businesses. I might be biased and falsely hopeful, but the only effort you have to lose is time and dedication.
I think that's all I have to say and I wish that my work would one day be recognized. I'll be blogging here often to journal my thoughts as I'm building it.