SEO, it’s all you hear about these days and it’s all centered around the almighty Google. What works, what doesn’t?  Will I be banned if I do this?  Will I make it to the top if I do that? The list of questions can go on forever, and with no clear answers.  It’s enough to drive any webmaster crazy.

In my opinion, it is important to do the things that make it easier for the search engines to determine what your site is about and to include it in the search results for appropriate keywords. Google spells it all out quite clearly.  Follow the recommendations posted on their site at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/ and then… RELAX. If you focus exclusively on Google, then you’re really shooting yourself in the foot.  In all the research I’ve done over the years, I have yet to encounter any site that claims more than 20% of their traffic coming from organic Google search results and many of these sites claim to have over 1 million unique visits per month.

Let’s put things in perspective. 200,000 visitors from Google is pretty significant, but if you eliminate that then there’s still 800,000 visitors from other sources. If you’re currently receiving just a handful of visits each month, you’d probably be quite happy with an increase to 800,000… even with nothing coming from Google.

But here’s a little secret. If you do build up your traffic to 800,000 visitors from sources other than Google then in all probability you will receive up to 200,000 visitors from Google. Why? Google’s algorithms are designed to follow people. Their entire business model for search services is to provide results that people will consider to be relevant to the search term entered, and of reasonable quality. The best way to do that is to FOLLOW the traffic as opposed to PROVIDING the traffic.

Don’t lose any sleep over SEO. Stop giving money to e-book authors and consultants who promise a first page result for whatever keywords you choose (think about it, how on earth can anyone guarantee to provide something they have no direct control over?). Stop giving the power to Google and then wondering why you have no traffic. The power to create the traffic is yours. Create useful, interesting, and unique content. Update your content frequently, and then take the initiative to directly let people know it exists. In other words, incorporate a blog into your site and then… you guessed it… BLOG.

You’ve probably heard this advice numerous times before, but if you’re still not receiving the traffic you’d like then perhaps it’s time for you to actually act on this advice. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll have results… it does take time so don’t waste a second. Think about all the time you could have been developing your blog content, and building relationships with other bloggers who can actually send you traffic that Google would follow… but instead wasted that time (and probably a lot of money) chasing after a shortcut that doesn’t exist.

How much should you care about SEO? Not much if you want traffic. Instead, care about the people you want to have visiting your site… and show you care by creating something of value to attract them. They’ll come, they’ll bring others, and Google will follow.