Let’s look at blogs from an SEO perspective. Think about it – a blog is one of the most effective ways to publish and organize content online.
Not only can a business blog be a great way to lay content out for visitors without having to clutter the main product or service pages of the site with articles and walls of text, but it’s also an excellent way for search engines to see just how active and relevant your website is.
Why blogs are the best?!
Blogs are easy for search engines to recognize
Some people think that search engines still can’t distinguish between a blog and a static website!
I disagree. Most blogs share common factors that make them stand out like a fox in a chicken coop to both users and search engines. Many blogs share a common elements:
- An archive
- Individual posts
- A title
- A date
- An author
- Tags
- Categories
- The body
- Dated comments
- A blogging platform specified in a meta tag and/or in the footer of the blog
And these are jus a few! When a search engine spider visits a blog, all of these elements and more give away the fact that it’s a blog. Search engines like blogs – blogging platforms are created for the purpose of publishing content on a recurring basis. Without new, up to date content to present to their users search engines would fall out of favour very quickly. They rely on it. Sure, spiders can still detect the page creation date and other information they need with a regular static website – but the very structure of a blog presents this information and more in an easily readable way. Detecting topics, dates, authors, and more is made simple within a blog structure. Blogs help search engines organize and present new, up to date content to their users.
Blogs can be predictable to search engines
Search engines can then look at your blog content, post recency, inbound links, mentions, and posting patterns to see how active you are, how popular and relevant you are, how much content you’re contributing, etc. Show search engines that you post on a regular basis (and post more than just some spam as filler) and they will predict and eventually trust that you will continue generating high quality content. Don’t let them down. Trust is everything.
Blogs are crawled often
Regularly updated blogs tend to be crawled more often than static websites or stagnant blogs. Search engines know that a blog is updated on a regular basis and come back more frequently to index the new content there. I often see the content of my blogs indexed within seconds or minutes of publishing. Compare indexation rates between one of your static websites and your well maintained blog.
New blog content gets a ranking boost
If a search engine spider comes to a blog and sees a post from just minutes ago about a particular topic, that post can end up ranking at the top of the first page for a competitive keyword on the subject – within seconds or minutes of being published. Search engines want to deliver the most up to date content to visitors – your one post can get a temporary ranking boost (and the traffic that comes with it) until it’s replaced by someone else’s more recent piece. You can use this pattern to get a nice boost of traffic by ranking for popular current event and trending search terms. The search engine position for these terms may be temporary, but if you hook your readers you can turn traffic from short term organic rankings into long term followers. Find trending topics to write useful, optimised posts about.
Blogs help search engines determine your link neighborhood
A big aspect of blogs is community and the interaction you get with other bloggers. Links in and out of your site make up your link neighborhood. Get yourself into a good neighborhood and you find yourself at an SEO advantage. Bloggers interact – they comment on each others’ posts, leaving links to their own sites, and write about each other. This is the nature of blogging. These inbound and outbound links make it all the easier for search engines to detect your link neighborhood and incorporate it into how much authority and trust your own blog has. Get yourself into a good link neighborhood by interacting with reputable, trusted bloggers.
Blogs can sabotage your SEO and your visitor base
Or rather, you can sabotage your SEO and your visitor base through your blog. Search engines need new content. Visitors expect new content from blogs. If you start a blog, make a few posts, and then let it fizzle out into a stagnant pool of old posts you will not look good to search engines or visitors. A blog is useless without a blogger – you. Or your copywriter, if that’s how you roll. Launching an empty ship out to sea is a recipe for disaster and disappointment. Make sure you have the crew to support and maintain your vessel. Don’t start a business blog if you aren’t dedicated to updating it on a regular basis
Article by Liza Shulyayeva
Liza Shulyayeva runs Techalite Web Consulting in Perth, Western Australia. She provides custom web solutions to small and startup businesses, specialising in SEO, blogging, and web design.
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{ 44 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Lisa,
Thanks for an older but still up to date article, I found many new things I had miss in my SEO work with my blog and web site.
Blogs is also easy to manage that you don’t have to learn all those script and coding to have your blog publish online unlike the website that it needs really time and knowledge on computer coding before you can launch your own site.
Kirsty recently posted..High Converting Ecommerce Sites – Wireframes
Informative post that reaffirms what I’ve long-suspected about my blog’s effect on our law firm’s SEO results. We try to post three times each week on average; that’s a very difficult pace to do right for fully-engaged practicing lawyers with families. But it’s what we try to do. Sometimes we are rewarded by being listed first or second in a hyper-local search; other times we sink to the middle or bottom of the page. We never stay in the same place at the top. Suppose that’s normal for a search result.
Plus, a blog, unlike a standard static webpage, is part of an RSS feed. Once a blog entry is published, there are automatically scores of links pointing at the blog entry. Granted, a rss feed link might not be the best link, but it is better than no link at all.
Colleen recently posted..West Pasco Washington Homes For Sale
Twitter: CoachNotesBlog
August 18, 2010 at 9:44 pm
Liza, You sure are right about getting indexed in Google right away when you submit blog postings. I’ve seen one of my blog posts show up within just a few minutes and could only conclude that it had to do with using one of the WordPress platforms. This happens ocassionally on both the standalone version and the WP .com site.
Vernessa Taylor recently posted..Are You Looking for eCommerce Solutions For Your Offline Business
I always say that google love blogs. It is because of blog update frequently and google love fresh content. Even google show the new blog post on their search results within a few hours.
Hi Liza
One important thing with SEO which you have forget, is the links between all your own blog posts, in the post text should you have 2-4 links to other similarly posts and also go back to older post and put a link to the new post, ect. The search engine spiders love it.
Twitter: ediscuss
August 12, 2010 at 9:49 am
I’ve really struggled with updating my blog daily. But when I created my new forum for entrepreneurs, I saw the need of adding content daily which is bring great traffic to the forum now.
Each website should also have a blog due to the freshness factor, if the regular website content is not updated often. Apart from blog for SEO purposes, a blog is also a successful tool to display news about products and services to website visitors and customers in an organised manner.
Liza,
Thanks for the great post on SEO. It will prove to be a valuable resource and reference and will defiantly make the Delicious list. Look forward to checking out some of your other posts. Make it a great day.
Dennis
Lead, Follow and Share!
Dennis recently posted..“Book ‘em Danno!” or What was that link?
Twitter: mani0993
August 12, 2010 at 1:09 am
I agree with all your points. But I have a question in my mind.
When a single blog post can boost rankings, get indexed faster. Then why does a forum with 10-20 articles/day does not generate the same type of rankings ?
Note: I’m talking about an SEO friendly forum. Though not powerful SEO like wp.
Mani Viswanathan recently posted..Apple Peel allows you to convert your iPod into an iPhone
Thanks for the great insight on how important blogs are even for statics sites. It sure is a surefire way of keeping your site on the top list. I’m preparing on how I could incorporate a blog for a static site, probably when I update my site. Thanks again!
Gino Dizon recently posted..A change of pace
Twitter: indblog
August 11, 2010 at 8:06 am
Being an absolute newbie when it ocmes to SEO I don’t really write my posts to gain high rankings in search engines because I don’t know how to. All I know is that it is important to put keywords into the title of your post and the content of your post.
Dean Saliba recently posted..Infinity Ads – Bringing An Infinite Amount of Malware &38 Spyware
Nice article, thank you for sharing it. I think the biggest challenge for a blogger is to write helpful and interesting articles over a long time.
Christopher recently posted..Blueprint Media Design
Can we make it obligatory for anyone considering starting a blog read your final point at least three times? Please? Pretty please? I kid you not. I’m so sick of finding something really exciting looking via a Google search only to find that the author has long since given up and moved on to pastures new. I read the other day that there are over 1 trillion (?!!) websites. How many are gathering dust and wasting space on this information super-highway of ours? Last time I checked, they were towing abandoned cars off the motorway. It would cool if the same could be done online.
El Edwards recently posted..An open letter to a teenage me
Stagnant blogs are a problem these days and posting frequent content, even if it’s every other day, is a must for the search engines to love your blog even more, got to feed them so they can come back for more tasty treats
Blazing Minds recently posted..Sherlock Will Be Back For A Second Series!
Hi,
Excellent points. You are right. Search engines love blogs. And Wordpress blogs are even more optimised for search engines.
The biggest source of traffic on most blogs is search engine traffic. So that shows how much search engines love updated blogs and blogs with regular content.
Kindest,
Nabeel
We are definitely using our blog for search. We target longtail phrase that drive traffic to our site, that ultimately will lead to a new client.
Colleen recently posted..Yakima Nation Legends Casino’s 8th Annual Rodeo Tri Cities Washington
Blogs are crawled often…This is so true and so important. I am working with some clients that have a static eCommerce store that ranks pretty well and has about 1,500 indexed pages, the problem is that their content gets crawled every few days and indexed every week or so. My first response to them was that they needed to get a blog up and running so they could link to their static pages and help their site get crawled and indexed more often. The difference is enormous. These days, if you have an online business you must have a solid blog to go with it.
Great article.
PS: I see that your site is focuses on SEO “Optimisation” which I am assuming is how you spell it in UK/Australia. However, I was wondering if you chose this spelling strategically based on the fact that it is a term searched less and easier to rank for.
AJ recently posted..What To Blog About
Hi AJ,
I use “optimisation” purely due to the spelling here in Australia. I spent 6 years in the U.S. and was used to the “optimization” spelling, but when I came over here I found that the proper spelling here was with an S and conformed to the Australian version.
Liza Shulyayeva recently posted..Elevator Pitch – I Need One
Twitter: CoachNotesBlog
August 18, 2010 at 9:39 pm
I’m no SEO expert so I appreciate being reminded that linking from a blog to individual product pages contained within an ecommerce application is very pleasing to the search engines (and therefore good for business).
*smacks forehead
Thanks, AJ for the reminder.
Vernessa Taylor recently posted..Are You Looking for eCommerce Solutions For Your Offline Business
Twitter: z3olyte
August 10, 2010 at 8:22 pm
I didnt realize having an indication on the fotter of what blogging platform is used is that important… looks like I might throw that link back in.
Nice points, Liza. Google will surely get to your site first of you update regularly with the latest trending topics. People usually search “what’s new” or “what’s in” so they always get ahead.
Cindy recently posted..Earn Money With Games From Mochimedia
Cindy, having that indication in the footer is only one of the things that Google can use when crawling your site – it certainly isn’t crucial and I’m sure if you choose to remove it your rankings won’t plummet. I prefer to keep it in both to give spiders an even easier way to detect what they’re looking at and out of respect for the developers of the platform
Liza Shulyayeva recently posted..Elevator Pitch – I Need One
Twitter: azblogtips
August 10, 2010 at 8:04 pm
Blog is everything to me. The most important thing is that blog is friendly to search engines especially those are with WordPress
Wordpress good for search engine. Joomla, drupal..i think this is some opensouce you can try
Hieu Martin recently posted..5 Ways to Make Money Blogging
Twitter: azblogtips
August 11, 2010 at 9:37 am
Thanks @Hieu. We all love WP
And i’m one fan of WP
)
Hieu Martin recently posted..5 Ways to Make Money Blogging
I absolutely love the title of this post and agree with much of the content too.
Regularly updated blogs get lots of Google love. Fresh content all the time and the better ones are all generally well integrated with various social media networks. With blogs, it’s pretty clear to tell which are “people-friendly” and which have only been put together for SEO purposes based on how active a community there is around them etc.
Google say the recent caffeine rollout offers “50% fresher” content… what can be fresher than a blog updated one or even more times a day?
Twitter: azblogtips
August 10, 2010 at 8:06 pm
Agree with you too, regular update would get more love from Google with fast indexing and more traffic too
Twitter: TJ_McDowell
August 10, 2010 at 4:30 pm
So would you say then that it’s worse to start and not finish than to have ever started a blog at all?
TJ, in the case of a small business blog, I would say that it’s worse to have a stagnant blog with no posts than no blog at all, yes. An abandoned blog sends a horrible message. There’s always the option of starting a blog and then removing it or archiving the useful posts on the site to keep as much of that indexed content as possible if you decide that you can’t keep up with updating anymore, but the owner should be prepared for a negative effect on rankings when removing content like this.
Liza Shulyayeva recently posted..Elevator Pitch – I Need One
Great advice especially about raking highly for trending topics. Google Trends is a nice tool to help keep an ear to the ground about what people are looking for. Thanks for the informative post!
Twitter: ditesco
August 10, 2010 at 4:16 pm
A great title and a great article is indeed the path for making search engines “fall in love”
I will not even try to discuss anything you pointed out as I fully agree that search engines look constantly for fresh content and while many debate about “the right” posting frequency, I am of the opinion that regular posting is just about right. The other thing that I particularly concur with you is: Don’t start a business blog if you aren’t dedicated to updating it on a regular basis: “Don’t start a business blog if you aren’t dedicated to updating it on a regular basis”.. so true
Twitter: sweetsfoods
August 10, 2010 at 3:41 pm
Full agree; blogs are predictable and organized ideal for search engines.
Blogs without fresh content frequently end like an outdated website.
Important point: Blog contents should be important for SEO and Humans too, but at the same time
Cheers,
Gera
Gera recently posted..11 Mistakes and Ways Why Your Social Media Fails
Hi Liza,
Personally do I say – learn what SEO and Google are first before you starting a blog.
Famousbloggers have many good articles about it, look at the SEO-tag in the top of the homepage.
My blog is my business. I’m trying to incorporate the SEO information written for businesses to my blog. Thanks for all the tips.
Ashley recently posted..Top 10 Things I Need to Submit to God
Twitter: BabyBoyKharim
August 10, 2010 at 2:40 pm
This is a really great post. Thanks for the tips mentioned here in this post.
We must also bear in mind that our blog post is targeted to our readers and not only search engines. So we should not only write for search engine ranking but write with our readers in mind
Kharim recently posted..How To Make Money With Twitter & Facebook
I totally agree with blogs being as much for visitors as search engines. Glad you enjoyed the post!
Liza Shulyayeva recently posted..Elevator Pitch – I Need One
The problem that most people have is that they don’t think like Google does. Google is the strictest search engine authority out there. They are looking for constantly updated sites, with keywords matching the search terms, that receive lots of traffic. Once people figure out that simple little formula, they can start to optimize themselves for Google. There’s no quick fixes, just steady work to a goal.
Laura Davis recently posted..What You Didnt Know About Wall Street Reform
Great article! Thanks for sharing. I loved your blog design. Could you put me in touch with your designer? Thanks. Lyudmila
Hi Lyudmila, do you mean my Techalite blog design? If so, I it was originally a premium theme which I’m currently customizing. You can see the link to the designer in the footer of my blog
If you mean the Famous Bloggers design, I agree, it’s great! I believe they use the Thesis theme…?
Liza Shulyayeva recently posted..Elevator Pitch – I Need One
Thanks, Lisa. I liked your design as well.
Lisa, if any of your articles relate to work behavior or business etiquette — would you like to share your blog post on our site? Please let me know. I hope that I’m not breaking any rules by asking you? Let me know. All the best, Lyudmila
Hi Lyudmila,
Definitely, I’ll keep you in mind if I write something about business etiquette. Thanks for the invitation!
Liza Shulyayeva recently posted..Elevator Pitch – I Need One
Lisa,
I will delighted if you decide to contribute. 200-300 words is plenty. Looking forward. Email me directly at: milabloch@gmail.com
Have a great day!
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