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