Blogs for ranking

[Wayne Miller]

I was reading a website blog this morning. To the site’s credit, they actually make entries every now and again. Nothing worse than actively promoting a blog you haven’t posted to sixteen months. What really astounded me, though, was how cumbersome the writing was for the sake of ranking.

Two posts out of a handful I read, one for Lewistown, one for another area, were kinda like this.

“Before you hire a Lewistown window installation company you should ask the Lewistown window installation firm if they have the proper Lewistown window installation tools so you know that the Lewistown window installation installer is a qualified Lewistown window installation installer when doing Lewistown window installations in the Lewistown window installation organization's Lewistown window installation area.”

Not quite that bad but you get the idea.

I'm not sure but I it looks like they might be paying a blog service to create this poetry.

 

[ACE]

Blog service?

 

[Wayne Miller]

It looks like they might pay someone who sets up blogs to create those repetitive little jewels. But, that's just a guess based on the name of the author. Could be they post under the name "administrator" as well as "Tom." Haven't gotten into blogs so I don't know much about them.

 

[billyeadon]

Everything that I read states that blogs (as long as they have decent content) are about the best thing you can do for your ranking. I would like to hear from Mark as he is the expert in that field.

 

[MarkCermak]

Wayne I agree, those are probably posted by a hired "SEO" service (or the website owner is copying what he saw on another website). They are using a black hat technique, keyword stuffing. Eventually the search engines will catch it and the websites ranking results will suffer or the website be blacklisted altogether.

Its also not the best way to sell a prospect on your services.

The best websites are those written for the viewer. Keywords should generate organically in your writing if you're putting relevant content in your blog post / pages / content. That's not to say you don't have to balance your website content with SEO.

If done correctly, Blogs are a great addition to your website. Although, just putting up a blog will not automatically rocket you to the top of the search engines. It needs to be set up and optimized properly as well as quality content added regularly. As with any website, onsite and off site marketing efforts are still needed. Read: If you build a Website, Will Customers Visit?

Blogs are naturally search engine friendly because they are text-rich, link-rich, and (hopefully) frequently-updated. The more you update your blog, the more often Search Engines will send their crawlers to your website to re-index it. This will mean your new articles, pages, content could appear in the Search Engine Results within days or even hours rather than weeks. This is a natural benefit of blogging.

Quantity of content is also important and easy to build over time with a Blog. While its possible to rank high with a small website, bigger websites tend to rank better. More pages = better odds at being found in the Search Engine results. Work at building quality content. (Copying posts from another blog (Mikeys) does not count!) Build your blog to over 100 pages of content and you’ll increase your chances of ranking well, as Search Engines will see you as an authority on the topic. You are much more likely to rank well if you have a substantial amount of content, pages, posts on a similar theme. ie a niche topic blog will rank higher than a general blog that covers many topics.

Proper SEO can take time, be patient. This is especially true for more popular keywords in more competitive areas.

 

[Newman]

Mark, am I correct in assuming that to get the best results from the blog it must be a part of your own website, ie- http://www.mycompany/blog. VS having the blog @ icleanyourcarpets.com/myblog?

 

[MarkCermak]

Mark, am I correct in assuming that to get the best results from the blog it must be a part of your own website, ie- http://www.mycompany/blog. VS having the blog @ icleanyourcarpets.com/myblog?

Actually, it depends on how you plan to use the blog. Having another domain blogging about your website can be a great thing (Example: you can use iCleanYourCarpet blog posts to build incoming links to your main website.)

Another note, why have only 1 blog? (or 1 website for that matter)
Multiple blogs can be used for getting increased traffic and dominating page ranking results.

The more blogs and websites you have, the more likely people will be able to find you. This is the "multiple fishing pole" theory of Internet marketing.

iCleanYourCarpet blogs are free. Set up one for each of your targets! Use your target area as your blog name ...
icleanyourcarpet.com/YourTargetCITY