GeekMBA360

Lately I have read several articles saying that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not that important any more. Google is becoming smarter and smarter. As long as you have excellent content, Google will find you and let the world know about your content.

I’m not so sure.

You might have noticed that I recently made some changes to this blog. When I started blogging 18 months ago, I made the rookie mistake of using the default Permalinks Setting of “http://www.GeekMBA360.com/?p=123″. In case you’re not familiar with Permalink, it’s the permanent URL to individual blog post or page.

For example, a very popular page on this blog is Great Depression 2.0 Layoff Tracker. Since I previously chose the default Permalinks setting, the URL for this page was “www.GeekMBA360.com?page_id=235″. Although Google scans the entire page, it puts a lot of emphasis on the URL. Since my default URL “page_id=235″ is not descriptive at all, it is really damaging from SEO standpoint.

I recently changed the default URL to “%postname%” which automatically inserts the blog post/page title to the URL. So, instead of “www.GeekMBA360.com/page_id=235″, I now have “http://www.geekmba360.com/great-depression-20-high-tech-layoff-tracker-updated-daily” as the URL for the same page.

Within a couple of days, I see 10% – 20% increase in daily traffic.

You might ask me why I didn’t make this change earlier. I was actually very nervous about making the change because I had to figure out a way to safely redirect the old URL to the new URL. I don’t want to have any broken link as a result of this change. And I don’t want to give search engine the impression that I have duplicated content in which case I’ll be penalized by search engine. Fortunately, I found the Permalink Redirect WordPress Plugin that worked brilliantly to address this issue.

At least from this example, I think Search Engine Optimization (SEO) still matters. Search Engine has not gotten to the point that they can figure out everything on their own. This reminds me of my college days of studying artificial intelligence — it’s a great vision, but we’re not there yet.

Related post:

• Is Amazon Kindle Publishing For Blogs Beta Program a good deal for bloggers?
• Why newspapers are dying and bloggers are winning
• My wish list of blogging software improvements

Recommended Search Engine Optimization books:

• The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization (Theory in Practice)
• SEO Warrior
• Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions