SEO

I used to be quite averse to SEO, as it seemed to conflict with the way I wanted to express myself through my blog.

I wanted to simply jot down my thoughts spontaneously, without deliberately trying to pander to platforms or users. However, I’ve now realized that employing certain SEO techniques is, in fact, a necessity.

For instance, I previously wasn’t aware that Google Search Console allows you to submit individual URLs for indexing—and that doing so results in almost immediate indexing. Had I remained ignorant of this feature, my blog might have gone unindexed by search engines—and thus received zero organic traffic—for a year, or even three years. That is an outcome I simply cannot accept.

I originally established my blog’s primary focus areas as “digital nomadism” and “AI.” However, I still reserve the right to curate other content based on my mood; it’s simply a matter of proportion—for example, AI might account for 70% of the content, while other topics make up the remaining 20%.

Re-evaluating My Approach

The most important thing about running a blog is that it brings you joy.

With that in mind, here are the key principles for writing blog posts:

First, write about what you like, what you need, and what you want to write about. For instance, I used to document and analyze programming code snippets—a practice that helped me avoid making the same mistakes in the future.

Second, write content that the platform favors. After all, unless the platform likes your content, users are unlikely to ever see it. If the platform refuses to drive traffic to your site, it’s essentially as if the blog doesn’t exist at all. Take Google Search Console and the Google search engine, for example: they frown upon content related to pornography or warfare. If you insist on writing about those topics anyway, the inevitable result will be zero traffic.

Third, write content that users enjoy. The first two points do not conflict with this third one. For instance, I want to make money; the platform wants to make money; and users want to make money. All three parties share the same objective—it’s merely a matter of perspective. I want to earn revenue by selling tutorials and running Google Ads; the platform wants to earn revenue by selling ad space; and users want to discover methods for generating income—including, but not limited to, Google Ads, affiliate marketing commissions, the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), and so on.

I’ve articulated this countless times before, but I feel compelled to write it down once more:

My specific goals are, in order of priority: Google Ads revenue → Affiliate Marketing commissions → Paid Memberships → YouTube Partner Program (YPP) revenue.

My aim is to generate at least $100 from each of these revenue streams, totaling over $400 in combined income. This would enable me to embark on a “workcation”—traveling to cities I’ve always wanted to visit to enjoy the local food, entertainment, and sights—while simultaneously updating my travel blog and producing travel vlogs. In doing so, I can create a virtuous cycle of work and leisure.

Therefore, even though I’ve chosen AI as my primary theme, I still need to dedicate myself to learning Google SEO for websites. This constitutes the fundamental bedrock of running a website, and it is not an area where I can afford to cut corners.

Learning Content

Prioritize HTTPS: (Ensures website security and builds trust. If I see a site using HTTP, I will almost never visit it, as I fear it might steal my information.)

Prioritize Mobile-Friendliness: (Younger generations rarely use desktop PCs anymore. If a site doesn’t even support mobile devices, its SEO performance won’t be very good either; therefore, establishing a solid framework from the very beginning is crucial.)

Website Loading Speed ​​Must Be Under 3 Seconds: (If it exceeds this limit, the user experience suffers significantly. Not only are users more likely to “bounce” away, but Google’s spiders will also be reluctant to crawl the site. You can check this using the Chrome Developer Console or by running a test via Google Webmaster Tools.)

Proactively Submit Your Sitemap and Individual URLs: (This is a fundamental SEO practice required by every search engine; it helps accelerate the indexing and inclusion of your content. I personally overlooked this step, which resulted in my articles remaining unindexed for a long time—until I manually submitted the individual URLs, at which point they were indexed almost immediately.)

Spiders

Search Engine Spiders (Crawlers): These automated bots crawl and collect the content from your website.

Crawlers Determine Your Website’s Indexing and Rankings:

Indexing: Once your content is indexed (i.e., “included”) by a search engine, it becomes eligible to appear in search results.

Ranking: Indexed articles are assigned a specific position within the search results—for instance, appearing as the third result on the second page. This position is known as its “ranking.” Generally, we aim to secure a spot within the top three results on the first page, as this significantly increases the likelihood of receiving clicks.

So, how exactly do search engine spiders discover and crawl your website? This topic is divided into two categories: external links and internal links.

A sitemap essentially represents the URL structure of your website; it allows search engine spiders to directly locate your web pages and crawl them according to their specific URLs.

If your articles contain links to your other articles—or even links to external websites—spiders will follow these links to crawl further. This enables them to gain a comprehensive understanding of your website and its content; this practice is known as internal linking.

For instance, imagine you have compiled a series of ten articles on SEO for the Google search engine, labeled as Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and so on. When a spider encounters your first article, and that article references the URL for the second article—and the second article, in turn, references the URL for the third—the spider will proceed to crawl through the series by following these links. (Similarly, users—attracted by the rich content—will navigate through the articles on your site, resulting in a positive user experience.)

The second category is external linking.

This refers to instances where links to your website are placed on other websites—for example, in the comments section of Reddit or within the video descriptions on YouTube.

The greater the number of external links pointing to your site, the more opportunities users have to click through and visit your website. Furthermore, a high volume of external links serves as an indicator of your website’s trustworthiness and authority.

However, there is a common misconception regarding this: not all external links are created equal. If your website is linked to by “spammy” or low-quality sites—such as gambling portals or adult websites—it can actually lower your site’s overall rating.

Conversely, if your website is linked to by reputable platforms—such as Reddit, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and other well-known sites—your external link rating will increase. Consequently, acquiring high-quality external links is often the most challenging aspect of SEO, as most social media platforms and websites do not make it easy for users to simply drop links.

Many SEO professionals focus their efforts on social media accounts, cultivating them over time before publishing external links. Others opt to directly purchase established accounts or buy external links outright. (Of course, these specific tactics fall outside the scope of my own operations.) My point here is simply that, in the commercial sphere, there is a significant market for external links; they can enable a blog or website to rapidly gain credibility and get indexed by search engines. Without the financial means to do so, one is left with no choice but to wait patiently for search engine crawlers to arrive, or to slowly build and test social media accounts on one’s own.

Original Content

Every platform constantly preaches the importance of “original content”—but take that advice with a grain of salt. Content that is plagiarized or generated by AI often thrives just as well, if not better; don’t feel compelled to be too scrupulously honest.

That said, I personally find plagiarism and AI-generated content to be rather uninspiring. I simply wish to casually document my own thoughts and ideas as they occur to me; from that specific perspective, creating original content is an absolute necessity.