Mon 24 Nov 2008
Blogs are not for SEO
Posted by Mark White, Blog Consultant in Marketing with Blogs , SEO in Blogs , Writing your Business Blog
It really is a total waste of effort setting up a business blog if your sole intention is to use it to enhance your Search Engine rankings. If you do, then you’re not just missing out on the important benefits that blogs offer, you’re also missing the point of blogs altogether. Oh, and in the process, you’ll also be jeopardising the success of your own, right from the word “Go”.
“But I thought a business blog would help my Search Engine rankings!”, I hear you cry. “Absolutely”, I reply, “it will. Enormously so!”
The thing is, that’s not the point.
Running a blog will give you the chance to do so much more, whether you are looking to use it to initiate dialogue with your readers, build trust and foster new connections with customers and prospects, carry out market research or customer service, or indeed any of 101 different business uses that blogs can be put to.
And that’s where your focus, effort and attention should be directed - your readers - not simply on helping your SEO efforts!
However, if you do spend the time to keep the content of your blog focused on what your target audience wants then, believe me, the much lauded “Google Juice” will flow naturally because of what you write and the way that you write and structure it. However, it will do so as an automatic by-product rather than the sole aim.
The same values hold good in all areas of social media - concentrate on the people you are talking to and what you are talking about and you’ll go far. Social networking sites, for example, are called that rather than Google Ranking sites for a reason. If Google is your main reason for being there then the networking activity will ultimately die, killing your presence on the site along with it.
I might add that if you use these tools to do nothing more than sell, then you’re also missing the point and once again you’ll find that this comes back to bite you. Using social media to employ the same “old school” marketing tactics that we, as consumers, are rejecting en masse shows a lack of understanding in my book … not only of the medium but of people.
Anyway, enough ranting about this - back to my main point. Business blogs are great in providing enhanced Search Engine opportunities but try not to focus on this to the exclusion of everything else or you risk losing everything. Focus instead on your readers and I guarantee that your SEO desires and requirements will follow.
November 28th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Excellent point, well made Mark. Many people appear to forget that a blog is really a conversation with your readers. It is not a dialogue with a search engine robot. Far too many people in my view are focusing their efforts on search engines, yet it is their readers who will spend money with them. So, as you say, focusing on the reader is the sure-fire way to success. In fact, it’s what Google says we should do in its advice to webmasters where it says that if you write for human readers, the Google robots will follow and index appropriately. Write for those robots and you risk losing the human readers.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Great post. I was struggling with this very concept. This just solidified some things in my mind.
November 30th, 2008 at 8:13 am
@Graham Wise words as ever, Graham, thanks for your comment. At the end of the day, it’s a case of remembering who pays the bills and that’s not going to be Google.
@ Randy Glad that it helped
December 1st, 2008 at 5:41 am
You made an excellent point, Mark.
Ultimately, the blog should be built for reader first and search spiders second. Its useful to have a seo friendly blog, but its more important to have a community of readers and great content!
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:52 am
Well put, Mark.
We started blogging for our startup when we launched. Posting was a bit shy in the beginning, but I discovered that as soon as we set up a posting frequency, it got more fun.
Now, we’re mainly spending time trying to come up with new ideas that will grow into consistent posts and sometimes we almost forget about traffic. If you keep the posting to a steady frequency and the quality of the posts to as high as possible, the readers come. It’s a nice surprise to check google analytics from time to time and see how the traffic went up.
I think that some business blogs gravitate too much around the business they’re promoting that they become boring to read. It’s good to keep close to what people would want to read on your blog and, why not, even ask them what they want to read from time to time. I did it in this post and I got quite a few interesting answers.
In my opinion, the business blog must be a rich resource that people will find interesting to read, and this will drive them to your product, fulfilling the mission of the blog.
December 2nd, 2008 at 8:50 pm
@ Kian Ann Absolutely agree and thanks for your comment
@ Paul Good idea, there’s no one who knows better what your readers want to see than your readers themselves. So ask them! Mix these in and you’ll soon find a balance that will help continually develop both your blog and your readership. Thanks for leaving your comment and thoughts!
December 7th, 2008 at 1:47 am
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