An Extended Riff on SEO as Poetry

Or at least, keyword-based search engine optimization, which isn’t the sum total of SEO any more than backlinking is.

Under a vague sense of “buy low, sell high,” I thought I might give Hubpages another go. Some years ago, I was so discouraged (and annoyed) after they locked all my well-trafficked, educational hubs on ancient Greece for being “overly promotional” that I abandoned HP for years (It also didn’t help that I kept getting idiot comments like ‘u wrote it wrong it wuz better in the movie’ when I was recounting myths based on ancient sources). But despite the frustration over all that work down the tubes, I do understand that you’ve got to submit to the rules on a publishing site, or publish elsewhere. So I did. I moved that content to Squidoo and Mythphile.

However, I’ve been keeping a closer eye on Hubpages since Panda. I think I might learn something by experimenting there and trying out different SEO approaches, niches and/or writing styles on a site that’s built just a little differently than Squidoo. I have a hunch Google traffic will come back over time. I want to see if my hunch is right. Also, since they favor non-practical creative pieces over there a little more than on Squidoo, I thought — hey, let the inner writer off its chains and cut loose a bit.

This is triggered partly by a previous post on Squidbits and partly by seeing a writer over there divide the online publishing world between virtuous writers and SEO black hatters. I fear it’s preachy and a little arrogant to be teaching, but I wrote a hub that’s a tutorial on keyword optimization using the paradigm of writing poetry.