To blog or not to blog?

Added 07.03.11
by SUKHBIR

It’s no surprise that regularly redesigning your website to update content, indexing and page structure can have a tremendous positive impact on the continued success of your business. The reason that the design and structure of your website can increase traffic is because the changes are likely to result in search engine optimisation. Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is the process of modifying a website to enhance its chances of appearing in the top search results when relevant keywords are entered into a search engine. In other words, it’s one of the most effective ways of increasing the volume of traffic and incidental visitors to your website, which at the end of the day means more new customers or clients for you.

SEO is a huge area of knowledge which can make a big difference to the online profile and real world results of your business, and blogging is one of the key tools for businesses looking to up their rank in search engine listings and generate a greater amount of traffic to their websites.

Why, because blogs naturally and efficiently attract the attention of search engines through their very structure. The navigation system of blogs is optimised for search engine traffic because every page is automatically linked back to other main pages. Blogs also have the inherent capacity to attract interactivity through comment boxes and cross posting which is another top seo boosting tactic.

Well-written text and an individual blog style will take you a long way in terms of seo. Starting a blog on your company website and contributing guest posts and comments on existing blog forums relevant to your industry may actually make a huge difference in your campaign to increase seo—so long as you remember to include keywords and provide links back to your website.

Think laterally about which keywords you target in your blogs for seo. Include combinations of two, three and four word phrases that include your keywords and try to devise two or three unique word phrases that have the least amount of competition but are still likely to generate a lot of attention.

Place your keywords strategically yet naturally within your blogs. Keywords can be placed in blog titles, within category names, and in the URL of the page for example. While all of these keyword placements will boost seo, it is important not to exceed four or five percent in keyword density as any higher percentage may be considered keyword ‘stuffing’ and earn penalties.

Once you have identified the least competitive and most attention-grabbing keyword or keyword phrases, make sure that these are included in the permanent links that appear below each blog post as well as your title and subtitle or description. These elements of the blog are most often noticed by search engine spiders as they follow the links back to your website.

I could provide arguments against using blogs for search engine optimisation… but, even for the smallest company or one-person business, as long as you’re doing it right, or at least having a try, there are no good reasons not to blog. So long as your entries are clearly written, deal with hot topics and include well-placed keywords, even posting the occasional blog will do something for the seo of your website.