I've always thought that "SEO specialists" were a bunch of con artists - the real key is write stuff people want to read, and - if you are doing that for a business audience - have it connected to what you sell, That's why I do "Smalltalk Daily", for instance - real users of our products find it useful, and they come here to look for it. No tricks, no secret handshakes - just useful content,honestly produced.

Which introduces a great article on this subject, which I found via Tim Bray - Derek Powazek's post on the subject. If you don't like strong language, you might want to skip it, but I think it's well worth reading. This summarizes it well, I think:

Remember this: It's not your job to create content for Google. it's their job to find the best of the web for their results. Your audience is your readers, not Google's algorithm.

If you find an audience, the rest of it will take care of itself...

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