The Head

This is going to be a blog about SEO. I don’t plan on writing a lot about my personal life, or my musings about politics, school, or society. If you’re looking for that, you can check out Towering Intellect. This blog is going to be pure SEO.

I used to play jazz trumpet, and I learned a few things about what it takes to play jazz. You come into it with a plan. Are you going to play the blues? Bop? Maybe some fusion, if you’re real edgy. Then you have to pick the key. The key will determine the sound, but it also determines the difficulty. Then you throw down a melody, whether it’s one you’ve heard a million times like “Take The ‘A’ Train” or something you come up with right before the session. At this point, you’re free to let creativity fly. Arrange the piece. Solo on the changes. Play with the rhythm and changes. Create spontaneously and create something new, that’s never been heard before and will never be heard again. Ultimately, once you’ve had your time to lay out your soul in the music, you’ve left an indelible impression upon your audience that they’ll reflect upon for years to come.

It seems to me that brilliant SEO is a lot like jazz. You come to a project or site with specific needs, and you make specific plans to address those needs. Do you go white hat? Black hat? Or maybe you bust out your gray hat. Also, at some point, you have to determine the keywords you’re going to use. The right keywords will create great traffic, but the right keyword could also be highly competitive. The keyword determines success as well as difficulty. At this point, you let creativity fly. You can focus on creating link-worthy content. You can refine the site’s ideas and design to better appeal to the engines and to the site’s visitors. Do they need some linkbuilding and SEO-friendly URLs? And how do you combine them? Every site’s different, and you’ll never approach an identical situation again. And in the end, hopefully, you’ll be able to create a solid site that will appear in the tops of the SERPs for a long time to come.

Picking up jazz took a lot of effort and dedication, and I don’t see why really good SEO should be any different. This blog will chronicle my journey to become a true top-notch SEO. I hope you enjoy the ride along with me, and maybe we’ll both come away with something as a result of this blog.