You are right: content is, and always will be, King….

I agree with building a good site early on: Matt Cutts and others think you should have 100 pages written before you even submit to the search engines…He may be right….

But, I think you need to put your most sellable stuff out there where people can see it…Ignoring SEO is a sure way to obscurity. I have helped a bunch of folks finally get visible on the net…Their only crime was a poorly optimized site….their writing or misison was superb….

I am glad everyone is enjoying the cat fight….I suspect the Laowai from the island province was just trying to generate a little traffic and a few more backlinks…You should charge him for the front page mention…

Great Video…I am teaching my kitty to answer the phone…..Might need Bluetooth…

It also gives the options of putting the tags in the url structure. But of course that can be done using the permalinks option in wordpress.

You can also put display the tags at the end of each post, but I choose not to do
that. I choose instead to display them in my feed, so that the feed has a “related posts” option.

There are a ton of other options as well. But those are the main ones related to SEO. Really, I only use a small percentage of the tool’s functions, but I think it’s still worth using.

There’s a lot that can be said about SEO. But I think if you follow the basics, it’s really not necessary to pain yourself obsessing about it. Pagerank and all those metrics are all well and good, but in the end it comes down to the end product.

Don’t waste time try to market a site, if you haven’t first invested the time to make sure it’s a good site. As I said in my post, I think your pinyin tool is awesome. And even though I didn’t bookmark your site in the past, google could always direct me back. That’s a quality tool that markets itself, and your google rankings reflect that.

Keep up the good work!

I couldn’t agree more. I think you are also using Alex King’s Popularity Contest Plugin. on your page. Incidentally, I think this is a kick-ass tool for showing your most popular posts on your main page (ideally above the fold). You should consider turning on that feature, in order to accentuate your “Best-of” posts.

Give your readers your best stuff up front. That’s not really SEO related, but it does make for a better overall site layout, in my mind.

That is how I started blogging.
A lot of bloggers would like to do nothing but blogging.

Using SEO and the tools for monetizing a blog is necessary.

Some bloggers do very well, others try to find their niche market.

There was a point where I was really trying hard to monetize my blog. But since I moved to Taiwan, I am taking another approach.

Part of it is moving my blog to a hosted service, which I did in February.

Seriously, everybody should take a step back and relax a bit.

There is no need for getting all upset about the matter.

We all have our own opinions, and most of the time they are different.

You’re definitely right, there’s no need to get worked over something like this.

Different opinions lead to different ideas, which might lead to different neato ways of doing things.

Brainstorming is always great, and wouldn’t we all want to quit our day jobs and blog/write full time?

Currently, I am no longer sure of this, since my day job has gotten a lot more interesting since I moved to Taiwan, but still, back when I was a financial adviser in Montreal, Canada, it was a dream.

I enjoy writing stuff here, and I learn a lot in the process - and that’s enough for me.

Get to meet lots of cool people too.

Either way, you have to provide something. The only ways of getting wealth are to take it from others, or to create it.

What you said just now was exactly what I was hinting at when I asked the question “Does your voice have value?” Is it something that someone would actually pay for?

In 99% of the cases, I’d say the answer is no. But yeah, Steve Pavlina is definitely one of the exceptions.

Chinesepod is creating amazing value for their users. And I hope they get every bit as rich off it as they deserve.

No one has commented on the abusive and inaccurate Enquirer style headline he used to begin this debate that has brought him several back-links and unique visitors…

Range,
I am not sure a Rodney King type answer is called for here….The guy doesn’t add much to the blogsphere…

His asinine and TRULY superficial behavior probably doesn’t deserve a retort, but…

Take it easy man! I’m not the one who was making personal attacks, and I really don’t have interest in SEO or other “asinine or superficial behavior”… like cursing people out or editing comments in an attempt to cover it up. I already told you I didn’t mean anything personal by what I wrote, I already said “no worries” on HHR, and I’d forgotten about the whole thing until I learned you’d gone back and altered the comments on your blog. I had thought everything was cool, and hadn’t realized you’d gone ape-sh#t on my dislike of anti-Japanese prejudice, either. Just chill out! In my mind that whole SEO thing was ages ago. If you’re ever in town, I’ll buy you a beer of your choice as a peace offering.

As for my headline, I agree with you completely, Lonnie. I specifically chose that headline to illustrate what I don’t like about self-promotion. I said so in the original post, too:

The title of this post was completely unfair, but it caught your attention. And that’s what promotion is all about.

It was intended as a self-referential jab. Peace.

Interesting, but I’m not of the same mind on that one.
I may be biased, but I’m sure my bias is well founded in facts.