A few weeks ago a friend introduced a new SEO widget for blogging involving green dots at our blog group meeting. (SEO stands for search engine optimization which is just a fancy name for ways to get the search engines, like Google, to pick up your blog easier.)
I’ve never been one to be particularly interested in the optimization part because I always felt that if I write something that people want to read, the work will optimize itself. Conversely, if I write stuff that nobody is interested in reading, it doesn’t matter how much optimization I boost it with – no one’s going to read it.
I was all set to just listen and if it was too complicated, I just wouldn’t do it. But this SEO widget had green dots. And they weren’t giving them out for free. You had to work for them. Given my fascination for things that measure and calculate a skill, I was suddenly sitting up and interested. My friend demonstrated how the dot starts out as gray. Then you do a few things to your blog and it will turn yellow. But yellow is only good. It isn’t excellent. If you do almost everything on the list to your blog, you are rewarded with a green dot, which signals excellent. By getting a green dot you have just boosted the percentage of people finding your blog when they Google things.
Now I’m still not real interested in the optimization part, but I AM captivated by those green dots. My dots started out as gray for the first two days, until I figured out you have to update the blog before the SEO will “read” it. Then, with a little work, I eventually got a yellow. After studying the list further and figuring out how to change a few things, I finally had my first green dot. Never mind that I just boosted my optimization, I got a green dot. Hence, it’s been five days with green dots. I have this down now. Totally mesmerized with consistently earning green dots.
After yesterday’s post, it occurred to me that trying for the green dots lead me to think about my writing in a different way. It gave me a framework to write the post within. Something two weeks ago I would’ve adamantly opposed. I wouldn’t bend and shape my words for any SEO widget. But the green dots won out and lead me to do just that. It wasn’t as painful or as hard as I anticipated it would be, and I actually think the writing is better within the guise of the framework. I think this is because the framework causes me to think out the post in a less random manner before I even write it.
I have learned, in this writing journey of mine, to stop putting up my hands and saying no, I’m not trying that. Why not just try? We seem to forget that we always have a choice whether to continue or not, but if we refuse to try new things or explore new ideas, we rob ourselves of that choice.
The green dots now remind me to be a little more open-minded. Listen to my children. Listen to my husband. Listen to my friends. Hear them out. Not make up my mind in advance that I won’t venture into new territory. Give things a try, even if they require a bit of work.
And so, as another day goes by, it’s important to keep those choices in our lives, and …I have written.
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