Got a brand new website you want to promote? Wondering how to get traffic and improve Google rankings? Google’s webmaster Svengali Matt Cutts clued us in at the recent Pubcon in Las Vegas: start a blog. (You were expecting, maybe, “buy a bunch of links?”
) Matt pointed out that Wordpress was mostly pre-optimized for search
engines - the latest versions reduce duplicate content issues, page
structure, titles, etc., fit Google’s recommendations, and keyword URLs
are easy to generate. We’ve been blog advocates for years, but Matt’s
blunt recommendations was still a bit of a surprise. Let’s look at why
adding a blog to a new (or even old) site can be a good idea.Content Freshness. Depending on a site’s technology, adding new content can be difficult. It may require a tech-savvy employee or even a Web developer/designer. By comparison, a blog can be a very easy way to get new content onto a site. Even non-technical staffers can put up posts by simply filling in a web form. There’s almost no barrier to adding fresh content, and the content appears immediately. Search engines like fresh content and, more importantly, so do site visitors.
Inbound Linkage. We all know that links drive traffic and also improve search rankings. Bloggers tend to be far more generous than other webmsters in linking to things they find interesting, and often those links go to other blogs. While simply adding a blog to a site won’t guarantee new links, creating a body of quality posts will almost certainly result in many more links.
Blog Search Traffic. Getting to the top of Google is difficult and time consuming for all but the most obscure words and phrases. The Google sandbox can further delay progress. By comparison, blog searches are often sorted by date and time, with the most recent posts shown first. Technorati blog search is set up this way by default, and Google blog search has a toggle to let a user sort by date/time or “relevance”. This means that even your brand new blog can be at the top of search results, even if that position lasts only until some other blogger publishes a post containing the same term. If you are posting about Britney Spears or Barack Obama, your post will get pushed into oblivion quickly; but if you are posting about a more obscure topic, it may remain visible for days.
Feed Readers. Blogs can also be consumed by those with feed readers. While this doesn’t have any direct impact on your search traffic, it may keep readers engaged and result in additional site visits.
Community. Another way visitors can be engaged with a blog is comment functionality. Not all blogs develop a real community of commenters, but some do. If a blog succeeds in developing a robust community, that benefits both the commenters themselves (who enjoy the interaction) and even new visitors (who enjoy reading the dialog). In addition, this user generated content can impact search traffic by adding new keywords to a page and increasing the amount of topical text.
Why don’t companies or
webmasters add a blog to their site? The biggest reasons I’ve
encountered (at least among my corporate clients) have been fear of
negative commentary and a reluctance to commit to regular posting.
These are weak arguments in the face of the benefits of blogging. If
you don’t believe me, believe Matt Cutts. The video is a bit shaky, but
you aren’t subject to motion sickness you can view some of his comments
below. Matt has also posted links to his various Pubcon interviews.
Original Post: http://www.rogerd.net/articles/matt-cutts-blogging
I agree with all of the points you are making. What I love about this newly emerging democratization of the net is that vast vertical markets that present themselves are innumerable. My firm is working specifically to that end and are anticipating spectacular results. Blogs are really the word of mouth marketing of the future.