How does my blog help in SEO
-
Hi
I have recently put a wordpress blog on my site and have employed a few blog writers, each putting 2 or 3 posts per week up. There brief so far has been to write interesting, humorous and topical articles.
Stupid as it may seem I have done this only because the general consensus seemed to be "you must have a blog for SEO"
Does it help?
Assuming it does:
Should I post the same articles to my facebook page and or anywhere else?
Should the articles have anchor text linking back to my site?
What should I do to make it work well?
Thanks in advance
Andy
-
Hi Andy,
This is what I did one site that seemed to work very well - 350% increase (over previous year) in traffic 7 months after adding image galleries and blog for a tile company.
Lots of descriptive content with keywords on each image on page.
Images in blog posts 2-3 per week. Share posts and images out to interior design bloggers and print media with online presence.
Generate lots of posts (several per week) by external bloggers and media that link back to the tile company site images and image collection galleries, home page, and blog posts.
I repost their posts on the tile company's blog that "so and so design blogger" did this great post with excerpt and link to them. These are all follow links in WordPress. Link out generously.
Tweet out from blog the post with URL 3-5/day 5 days a week amid general conversation on twitter. Credit the great blogger who shared your content. Share post with URL on Facebook.
Pin like crazy.
GIve out, give credit to others, and watch it come back.
Have fun!
-
It's not so much that you have to have a blog, but you do have to have content on your website.
Awesome content that is link-able = Good for SEO
Also, don't make your blog a stand alone thing. If a post is relevant to a page on your website, make sure to link over to it!
-
I heard on the grapevine, that google would soon be looking at penalising content that is put up for purely SEO reasons i.e. put up for the sake of putting it up, and my thoughts are one of the big things they would use to filter out thsi sort of stuff would be social signals, so my view is as others have already said to put only link worthy and shareable content. I think content purely on its quality and topic is not going to cut it without these social signals. I would forget simply using good writers and look at the more creative and social media savvy writers instead. Try to get discussion around your posts instead of shouting it out at people by social.
-
Relevant anchor text back to your site is a good thing, as you want people to be able to make the connection and get the SEO benefit. Yes, blogs are presented as "you need" but keep in mind there's a lot of hype with this stuff. How you do it is more important than doing it - as Alan mentioned, you need to have a blog people will want to link it for it to really benefit.
-
"you must have a blog for SEO"
ha... those are blog evangelists talking... now everyone is saying that "you must have a FB presence"... and that isn't correct 100% of the time either.
In my opinion, most of the blogs on the web "for SEO purposes" are weak efforts that have negative ROI.
I agree with Alan in that you need a blog that is enjoyed, shared, liked, linked.
So, ask youself if you are publishing trash just to have a blog? Is it attracting any links, likes, shares. Is it pulling any traffic. If those things are not happening then you need to change your authors, your topics or just close the blog down.
-
A blog can help, but often does not. you need to have a blog that people want top link to, it much be relevant and link back to your landing pages
make sure content is relevant, try to attract links.
dont post the same artciles anywhere else, this will lead to duplicate content.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does Coverage impact on SEO
Does the coverage issues on google search console ( Google Webmaster) has an impact on SEO ( CTR or impressions). How much of a difference or impact will fixing these have on Search results and average
Algorithm Updates | | Rishardg0 -
More pages or less pages for best SEO practices?
Hi all, I would like to know the community's opinion on this. A website with more pages or less pages will rank better? Websites with more pages have an advantage of more landing pages for targeted keywords. Less pages will have advantage of holding up page rank with limited pages which might impact in better ranking of pages. I know this is highly dependent. I mean to get answers for an ideal website. Thanks,
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Do Explainer Videos Help SEO?
My company makes explainer videos. I often come across a lot of (seemingly) inflated & unprovable stats, pertaining to explainer videos, from other companies. This article claims that "Having an explainer video on your web page makes it 53% more likely to show up on the first page of Google search results" Is there any real data to back up such a claim? Do explainer videos really help SEO? How?
Algorithm Updates | | WickVideo0 -
Timeline for 301 Redirects to Take Full Effect in SEO Rankings?
Hey, I am working on transitioning a website and all of my current URL's will be slightly changed (moving to dynamic pages). I understand that I will need to 301 redirect all the old pages to their new counterparts but I would like to know how long it will take for the 301 redirects to take full effect in the search rankings. I ask because my site is an e-commerce site that receives 90% of it's business in January and the transition would take place December 15th. If my search rankings are not back up to par by January 1st then I will take a drastic hit to revenue. Please help this SEO noob out!
Algorithm Updates | | Stew2221 -
Struggling with Google Bot Blocks - Please help!
I own a site called www.wheretobuybeauty.com.au After months and months we still have a serious issue with all pages having blocked URLs according to Google Webmaster Tools. The 404 errors are returning a 200 header code according to the email below. Do you agree that the 404.php code should be changed? Can you do that please ? The current state: Google webmaster tools Index Status shows: 26,000 pages indexed 44,000 pages blocked by robots. In late March, we implemented a change recommended by an SEO expert and he provided a new robots.txt file, advised that we should amend sitemap.xml and other changes. We implemented those changes and then setup a re-index of the site by google. The no of blocked URLs eventually reduced in May and June to 1,000 for a few days – but now the problem has rapidly returned. The no of pages that are displayed in a google search request of www.google.com.au where the query was ‘site:wheretobuybeauty.com.au’ is 37,000: This new site has been re-crawled over last 4 weeks. About the site This is a Linux php site and has the following: 55,000 URLs in sitemap.xml submitted successfully to webmaster tools robots.txt file has been modified several times: Firstly we had none Then we created one but were advised that it needed to have this current content: User-agent: * Disallow: Sitemap: http://www.wheretobuybeauty.com.au/sitemap.xml
Algorithm Updates | | socialgrowth0 -
Shared Hosting - Bad for SEO? (exp. Godaddy)
There were a lot of questions and data on this a few years back and nothing terribly recent so i wanted to get the discussion going again and see if any new data has been published. Is hosting your website on a shared host like Godaddy or Network Solutions going to hurt your rankings because their holds a chance that you could be on the same IP as spammy websites? My gut feeling is no primarily because almost 90% of the worldwide web is on shared hosting but i do not have a lot of data to back it up. Id love to hear some feedback. Cheers - Kyle
Algorithm Updates | | kchandler0 -
What are the good strategies using satellite sites in SEO??
Hello to everybody, We'are thinking about launching a massive amount of satellite websites in order to promote our website. Is it really efficient in terms of link building? Or is the ROI really small due to the amount of time and money needed to create and manage these websites? Thanks a lot!!! Update: Thanks to all of you for all these interesting answers!
Algorithm Updates | | sarenausa1 -
Local SEO url format & structure: ".com/albany-tummy-tuck" vs ".com/tummy-tuck" vs ".com/procedures/tummy-tuck-albany-ny" etc."
We have a relatively new site (re: August '10) for a plastic surgeon who opened his own solo practice after 25+ years with a large group. Our current url structure goes 3 folders deep to arrive at our tummy tuck procedure landing page. The site architecture is solid and each plastic surgery procedure page (e.g. rhinoplasty, liposuction, facelift, etc.) is no more than a couple clicks away. So far, so good - but given all that is known about local seo (which is a very different beast than national seo) quite a bit of on-page/architecture work can still be done to further improve our local rank. So here a a couple big questions facing us at present: First, regarding format, is it a given that using geo keywords within the url indispustibly and dramatically impacts a site's local rank for the better (e.g. the #2 result for "tummy tuck" and its SHENANIGANS level use of "NYC", "Manhattan", "newyorkcity" etc.)? Assuming that it is, would we be better off updating our cosmetic procedure landing page urls to "/albany-tummy-tuck" or "/albany-ny-tummy-tuck" or "/tummy-tuck-albany" etc.? Second, regarding structure, would we be better off locating every procedure page within the root directory (re: "/rhinoplasty-albany-ny/") or within each procedure's proper parent category (re: "/facial-rejuvenation/rhinoplasty-albany-ny/")? From what I've read within the SEOmoz Q&A, adding that parent category (e.g. "/breast-enhancement/breast-lift") is better than having every link in the root (i.e. completely flat). Third, how long before google updates their algorithm so that geo-optimized urls like http://www.kolkermd.com/newyorkplasticsurgeon/tummytucknewyorkcity.htm don't beat other sites who do not optimize so aggressively or local? Fourth, assuming that each cosmetic procedure page will eventually have strong link profiles (via diligent, long term link building efforts), is it possible that geo-targeted urls will negatively impact our ability to rank for regional or less geo-specific searches? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | WDeLuca0