I think SEO should be simple

I’ve written and taught a lot about SEO over the years. One thing that I’ve always stressed is simplicity. That SEO needn’t be hard to work. I used to use All in One SEO Pack for all my WordPress-SEO needs, well that was until I discovered that Twenty Ten (the new default theme for WordPress and the basis of this site’s theme) didn’t really need the plugin at all. That’s fine, fewer plugins the better.

Still, I know may friends swear by Headspace2 so this morning I thought I’d give it a look. I figured since it was pretty popular it would be good…

Holy crap there are a lot of options.

I’m not saying that this is a good thing. I think it’s intense and potentially confusing at best, off putting at worse. Which got me thinking about SEO. I wonder if we could do without most of the plugins we use. I don’t think abandoning something like Google XML Sitemaps is a good idea, since I think it adds a lot of value by making a sitemap of a site quickly and easily, but I wonder if we could do without the rest…

As long as the theme you’re using plays ball.

Twenty Ten plays ball with Google and SEO (as far as I can tell)…maybe it could play better. And maybe I gave up on Headspace2 too quickly (I need convincing that a huge screen of potential options is something novice users are ready for), but I think one of the keys to SEO is that it should be simple.

Write good content that is keyword rich (and natural), write titles that describe the post, use link text that describes the link, use categories, use tags. These are pretty simple steps. Are they enough?

I’m beginning to think and wonder if perhaps they are…

Or am I missing out on an extra SEO boost by skipping extra SEO plugins?

What say you?