Blogging and SEO - A Beginner's Guide

The vast majority of threads at SEOChat are started by new users with a specific question, and very frequently that question is one that has been asked dozens of times. This thread is meant to offer answers to common questions about blogging and the role it plays in search engine optimization. If you have anything to add to it, by all means post below. If I am factually incorrect anywhere in this post, let me know and I will make the appropriate edits.

I figured I would finally step up and start a post where I offer information instead of simply respond to the questions of others. I hope this is up to par. Here goes...

Does blogging help my rankings?

Yes and no. Blogs are not inherently any different from any other webpage. In fact, they may even be worse than other webpages because chronological navigation is subpar. Blogs do have significant value in many respects, however.

• Blogs offer a place on your website to add fresh content. Moreover, they encourage keeping your site fresh, because nobody wants to see that the most recent post was 3 months ago.
• Blogs sometimes offer you the mobility required to create effective linkbait. For example, if you work for a large company with an extensive marketing department, it is very difficult to get new content on your website that is not very closely aligned with your targeted "image". This can severely limit your opportunities for linkbait creation. Blogs open this door up, and allow you to create the types of articles that people like to read and love to link to (top 10 lists, for example).
• Blogs foster a community around your website and let you interact with other people in your industry - this is useful for networking, finding places to attain links from, and building a following of people that will always link to (or tweet, facebook, digg, etc.) your latest post.
• RSS feeds can increase your exposure as well. Added exposure generally equals more links. It never hurts.

So does blogging help your rankings? No, Google does not have a little checklist, see that you have a blog, and add +20. It doesn't work like that. But blogs do create opportunities for you to create content that will get links and rank well.

Should my blog be on my site or hosted on another domain (like Blogspot)?

Your blog should always be on your own domain. If you are blogging to have people be able to find your website, then it makes sense for the blog to be on your website.

Think about it: your whole mission is to create great blog posts that attract links. If all these links are to yourcompany.blogspot.com, what's the point? You get no "link juice", no website recognition, no opportunity for people to subscribe to your RSS feed or e-mail address, and everybody that looks at the blog post is several clicks away from being able to purchase something (or do whatever it is that your website is for).

Should my blog be organized as a separate subdomain or in a folder?

This question is about the organization of your blog on your server. There are two common choices:

http://www.mysite.com/blog

OR

http://www.blog.mysite.com

It is generally accepted here that the FORMER is the best choice. Your blog should be in a folder off of your domain (http://www.mysite.com/blog), not as a subdomain. This has been reserached by several SEOs, as well as suggested by Matt Cutts (a Google employee) as the proper method. There is evidence that Google is beginning to look at the two options similarly, but the folder option is definitely your best bet.

What blogging software should I use for best SEO results?

This is a very common question. The truth is, it really doesn't matter. Proprietary blogs (coding your own, that is) are just as good as specialty blog software or fancy content management systems. This is true with one caveat - whatever route you choose, you need to make sure that a few common things are under your control - we'll get into that a little bit later into this post.

I am partial to Wordpress for a few reasons.

• There are great SEO resources in place for Wordpress blogs. Many SEO plugins exist that make life alot easier, and there are two fantastic Wordpress SEO guides written by very famous SEOs in the industry:
  Jim Westergren's SEO for Wordpress post
  Joost de Valk's Wordpress SEO Guide
• There are many good-looking, free themes available. There are even more great-looking, cheap themes available. I'm not a designer, I'm an internet marketer. But that's just me...
• I like the user interface. This is your blog - you'll be dealing with it (hopefully) every day - make sure you pick an option that has a user interface that you like and are comfortable working with.

What on-site optimization factors are important?

Glad you asked! It is important that you can (and do) control the following aspects of your blog:

• URLs / Permalinks - Make sure you can customize the URLs of your blog posts. A good URL structure might look something like http://www.domain.com/blog/post-name/ - separate spaces in your post name with dashes (not underscores or periods) - some people like to have the category in there too - that's okay.
• Canonical URLs - make sure that your blog does not have any canonicalization problems - that's a whole separate blog post - do a search on this forum or Google for more information - there are a few Wordpress plugins that will help you correct this if you don't know what you're doing
• Customizable META information - not extremely important, but it's a good idea to optimize your META descriptions, just in case
• Optimizeable Title Tags - be sure that you can customize your title tags - the post name may not always be the best title - stop words (ones that Google ignores) should generally be removed, at the very least
• Alt Tags on Images - fairly self-explanatory
• Breadcrumb Navigation - always helps - not only is it good for SEO, but it is good for usability
• Headers - Post title should be an H1, subtitles in H2s and H3s and so on
• Create a Sitemap - obviously. Most blog systems have plugins for this.
• Pagination - instead of having "previous" and "next" links for navigation, it is suggested that you should have links to each page on your blog
• Your best articles... deserve their own links from your blog's main page
• Social Media Links - should be available - perhaps have them provided by AddThis or a related service.
• Plenty more - in general, optimizing a blog is not very different from optimizing any other page. The above are a bare minimum of things you should be concerned with when it comes to the on-page optimization of your blog

What should I be doing to promote my blog?

• Convert readers into subscribers - treat this exactly like conversion optimization on an e-commerce website
• Comment optimization - same as above - encourage people to get involved and comment
• Promote your blog on social networks - get involved on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc. - this doesn't mean just announcing new blog posts - have two-way conversations, foster a community around your blog, and links will follow
• Find related blogs, get involved - for the same reasons as above, and because it will give you ideas for your own blog
• Directory Submission, Article Submission, Forum Posting, Blog Comment Spamming...wait, just kidding. None of that works - try some real linkbuilding strategies:
  131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies
  Link Building Strategies: 69 Solid Tactics for 2009
  101 Ways to Build Link Popularity
  Link Building 101
  Creating Linkbait - A Starting Point

That's all I got right now folks - if you think of anything else or disagree with anything here...just say so! I'm all about making this as good a resource as we possibly can.

Awesome post Aignam...and I am totally not commenting just to mark this thread and consider turning this post into an article for SEO Chat if you give me permission...honest...

Hah, thank you everybody, glad to help. Terriwells - go right ahead, sir. That would be great.

Thanks Aignam! Finished, uploaded, and will go live on SEO Chat on Monday, complete with the name you wanted me to use. I hope y'all like it.

say....not A's agent here...but dont they "pay" for articles here....

if not, then my bad...but if so this one should be a HEAVY number, eh!

<just a canuck pov...eh!>

Jim

We do pay for articles...but for that, Aignam would have to be under contract with us, and whatever he submits to us can't have appeared anywhere else (either before or after it's published; we're big on original content). I adapted it, with his permission. Plus, he'd have to go through James, our editor-in-chief, for the contract...and I know that James is heavily backlogged right now. :-(

Put it this way: if it was a paid piece, it might be a month or more before it sees the light of day. This way, it'll go live on Monday...and he didn't have to do any reformatting or rewriting or anything. In a sense, he was already providing the content for free, to the members of this forum; now, with his permission, it'll reach a wider audience. (And it has his name in it, properly credited).

Thanks, Terri, and good looks Jim, but I'll gladly have the article published for free - I'm 20 years old and still in school...this is something that can go on my resume.

SEO firms everywhere - I'm entering the job market in May 2010 Best offer wins, although I do like NYC...

Very nice work Aignam, Thank You

Coincidentally Joost de Valk also created one of my top 3 Wordpress Plug-ins - The "Robots Meta" Plug-in

(My other top 2 are Google XML Sitemaps and - although not related to SEO - the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade).

I have "stickied" this post/thread for now (hope nobody minds but we didn't previously have one in this forum)... @Aignam I can't guarantee it will stay "stuck", but - until it becomes "outdated" it will be most helpful

Thanks, ClickyB - in this industry, is there anything that can/should stay stuck forever? Very little, I'd imagine.

Joost is the man - he has a great blog at yoast.com - his approach to SEO is very technical - extremely enlightening.

Thanks for the useful tips.
You didn't mention Social Bookmarking.It is not effective in Blog Promotion.

"fresh updated" content only gives you a better chance to be crawled more often. Having a blog in and of itself will not produce ranking, neither will just updating it regularly. It still has to be excellent content, and still needs to have some decent links.

Blogs are not black magic.

Hello..can you please tell me How RSS feeds can increase the exposure ?
Best
IntegratedS

What is an RSS Feed

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is used for distributing news and other web content. When you put content into RSS and send that content to other people or websites, it's called a feed.

* RSS feeds keep your audience constantly updated each time you upload new content to your website.
* Feeds are very powerful. They attract the interest of the search engines and they reach new audiences.
* They allow people to see your content without having to go to the website. Now that may sound like a bad idea, but in today's fast-paced world, anything that saves us time and frustration is valued. How many websites have you intended to go back to and then forgotten about them? Even those we bookmark don't get visited.
* Let's people subscribe to an electronic feed rather than block up their email account with information each time your website has been updated.

This is Very useful, Specially for someone whos just started in Seo Thanks for this

i agree. i've always heard that blogs are important for a website and i'm now just understanding why. i'm trying to blog every day get receive the benefits.