SEO Wordsmith

Here’s an interlude from the normal programming.  The games I’ve always liked the best are the ones where you can gradually improve on your character.  One time long ago I spent an embarrassing amount of time playing a game called Realmz, by Fantasoft, basically a Dungeons and Dragons clone where you go around trying to complete quests with a wizard, cleric, fighter, etc., building up a better arsenal, more magic power, and more money, whereupon you can buy better weapons to defeat bigger monsters thereby getting a better arsenal, more magic power, and more money.  A screenshot:

Take a look at that.  The Juice of Safu, Longsword of Protection +2, Cloak of the Outcasts, what’s not to like about playing this game?  Right….right?  It has occurred to me as I obsessively try to promote this blog that running a website is pretty much the same experience - building up inbound links, traffic, content, it really feels like the same process as improving a cast of characters in one of these games.  And now I’m going to nerd out to an extreme degree.

So you’ve got your basic character traits: Armor Class, Hit Points, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, and Constitution.

So here it goes:

Armor Class: How are your backlinks: are they broken, going to a bad neighborhood?  Can spiders navigate through your site?  Don’t forget site security.  Are affiliate links cloaked?  That’s like a Cloak of Invisibility +1.  And you can’t forget Wordpress plugins: each new plugin is like going from leather armor to plate mail.

Hit Points: Your traffic, of course.

Experience Points: Page Rank.

Strength: How many backlinks do you have?  What’s your viral reach?  Are link farms bringing you down?  Is nofollow causing you pain?  There’s no mercy for the weak online.  You’ve heard of Internet Trolls, but there are also Internet Orcs and Internet Hobgoblins as well.  +18 strength is important.

Wisdom: What you’ve got to say in your content compared to the million other people all writing about the exact same thing. This post is, perhaps, not wise.

Intelligence: Putting that something to say to good use through a smart use of keyphrases, title tags, categories, interlinking, and the rest.

Dexterity: How many posts can you write a day/week and still retain your intelligence and wisdom – both on the blog itself and in real life.  Thinking constantly about things to post has been known to melt minds.

Charisma: This was always the lonely-one in D&D, didn’t amount to much.  But online it may be the most important thing and lead to precious backlinks and conversions.

Constitution: The blinding light of the computer is not very good for the eyes when you’re writing a blog post about D&D in the middle of the night.  Meanwhile adding friends on a social network, commenting on dofollow blogs and forums, searching for Commentluvvers.  This thing takes stamina.

So what am I?  A thief, a cleric, a fighter, a palladin, a wizard, a ranger?  I was always partial to palladins - they could fight and cast spells.  If I can take this post viral, then maybe there’s something to that.

Another game I’ve obsessed about in my life is Arkanoid.  Sort of the same premise: you can improve your paddle throughout the game: it becomes a laser, the ball slows down/speeds up, etc.  Perhaps that’s why I’m a blogger – I’m not much for static content.

But enough about that.  Click the picture and go play Arkanoid: