Learn how Blogs Are A Great Tool For Influencing The Search Engines. Blogs are becoming increasingly popular as a means of disseminating information on the internet. They can be used to convey general information or to promote products and services as a marketing tool. Despite the fact that the blog format has been around for a while, the way it is used is still changing.
The most distinguishing feature of a blog is its “content-rich” nature. Most blogs are made up of a series of posts that are updated on a regular basis. These posts can be short links to other web resources (connected by a link) or long posts that are essentially articles or essays on a specific topic with embedded links to other related web sources. This makes them ideal for writers, reporters, journalists, and marketers who want to systematically report on current events, breaking news, or product features.
Bloggers in China, for example, use blogs extensively to comment on the country’s political and economic situation. They are used by political activists in almost every country who want to promote a particular viewpoint. Journalists use them as a way to share their experiences and ideas without having to go through the vetting process of large publishers. Corporate communication professionals use blogs to keep in touch with employees and customers by posting corporate news and comments on company or industry developments.
Marketers who want to promote specific products or improve the search engine exposure of specific websites are increasingly using them. Planting references to a website in blog posts is a great way to bring it to the attention of search engines if you have one or are promoting one on behalf of a client.
Search Engines and Blogs
Because the major search engines pay close attention to blogs, they are effective marketing tools. Because blogs’ structure makes them easily spiderable, the major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN, regard them as sources of “news.” The more frequently a blog is spidered, the more active it is. If a blog has new posts every day, it will be spidered every day — and sometimes multiple times.
That means that changes made to an active blog will appear in search engine indexes much faster than changes made to static websites. Many people believe that making a simple change to their website, such as posting a news item on their home page, will increase their chances of being found by search engines. This, however, is not the case. Only after the site has been spidered can the search engines reflect the change. Search engines will only spider a site once in a while unless it has a history of being constantly updated.
As a result, blogs can serve two purposes when it comes to influencing search engines. For starters, as we’ve seen, an active blog is spidered on a regular basis. As long as it is active, a blogger can expect search engines to visit his blog on a regular basis to see what is being reported. New posts will be indexed almost immediately, and search engine results will begin to appear.
Two Significant Blog Conclusions
First and foremost, if you want something to appear quickly in search engine results, writing about it in a blog is the best way to do so.
Second, because search engines follow links, including links to other sites you want to draw attention to in your blog posts is a good way to get them spidered as well. Let’s say you’re launching a new product on your website. Making an announcement in an active blog is the best way to get the search engines to visit your site quickly and reindex the changed pages. The spiders will visit your blog, follow the links that lead to your website, and index the changes.
This is why including links in blog posts is usually the most effective way of directing traffic to other relevant websites.
Using Blogs to Your Advantage
There are two relatively simple ways to take advantage of these important blog features.
The first option is to start a blog of your own. It’s surprisingly simple to start a blog. Many websites provide free blogs that are part of a larger “community.” For example, go to blogger.com (owned by Google), sign up (for free), and your blog will be up and running in minutes.
The problem with this strategy is that you might not be a writer, or you might not be interested in posting on a regular basis, or you might simply lack something to say on a regular basis. In that case, you might try to find someone who will let you contribute to their blog on a regular basis, or at the very least create links to your website.
Another intriguing option is to pay someone to review your site or feature your products on their blog every couple of weeks. That way, you get all of the benefits of blogging in terms of marketing and search engine optimization without having to do any of the work yourself.
