Why Blogs Have Become the Search Engine Optimization Equalizer

ALEXA WEIGHS IN...

For those who are unaware of Alexa, it offers an interesting tool to webmasters. The service is designed to value websites based on the number of people who visit those sites and the activities of those people while they are on a site.

Keep in mind that their results are skewed to the activities of those who use the Alexa toolbar. If your website is Business-to- Business oriented, then the results may be useful to your needs. If your site is Business-to-Customer oriented, then the Alexa results are far from accurate in documenting the importance of your website.

The reason why the Alexa results are skewed to the Business-to- Business market is because most people using the Alexa toolbar are involved in Business-to-Business activities, either as an user or provider of B2B services.

On May 24, 2005, Alexa's ranking of the Top Ten English Language websites were as follows:

* http://www.yahoo.com

* http://www.msn.com

* http://www.google.com

* http://www.passport.net

* http://www.ebay.com

* http://www.microsoft.com

* http://www.amazon.com

* http://www.fastclick.com

* http://www.google.co.uk

* http://www.aol.com

( This info came from: http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500 )

WHAT EIGHT OF THE TOP TEN WEBSITES ALL HAVE IN COMMON

Sure, five of these top ten sites are search oriented sites, but that is not the answer.

Passport.net is owned by Microsoft and must be accessed when someone is logging into the msn.com network. Fastclick.com is a site that helps advertisers buy advertising across a huge network of sites. These two sites do not fit the profile.

The one thing that eight of our top ten sites have in common is that they are content driven destinations and they add new, original, and exclusive content on a daily basis.

BLOGS ARE THE GREAT EQUALIZER

Blogs are the great equalizer because they simplify the task of adding content to a website on a daily or weekly basis. They make it simple for the average joe to add content to their site on a daily basis with just a few clicks of the mouse.

What is more, the spider search engine companies recognize this and make it a point to spider the blog networks on a regular basis, sometimes a daily basis.

It may take a spider search engine up to three months to spider your site if you go directly to their submission page to add your domain to their database. On the other hand, with a blog, you can put a story about your domain on a blog with a link to your domain, and your website can generally get crawled within a week or so of putting your link on the blog.

BLOGS REQUIRE A COMMITMENT ON YOUR PART

Daily additions to your blog should be your goal. If you do not have time to do daily additions, you should at worst do a weekly addition to your blog.

Just like in the real world of websites, if you don't update your blog on a regular basis, the spiders will save their time and resources by not spidering your blog on a daily basis. If however you do update on a daily or near daily basis, then the spiders will visit your blog with the same fervor you bring to your blog.

Additionally, it sometimes seems like the search engine spiders are giving some addition weight to the results culled from the blogs. The point in this additional weighting is that blogs are filled with personal comments and recommendations rather than sales pitches.

BLOGS ARE EASY TO SET UP, EVEN FOR THE RANK AMATEUR

There are in fact several blog programs available that you can either load into your own domain or that you can use from a third-party, remotely-hosted server.

To see a list of the blogging programs that are available, check out this link:

http://keywordtext.com/redir/blog-list

My personal favorite is http://www.blogger.com which happens to be owned by Google. Blogger allows you the ability to use the software from their servers or to integrate the blog software into your own site with very little effort on your part.

I was able to integrate their software into our own site and to customize the display of the blogger to fit our domain's format, and I was able to pull that task off in just about 30 minutes --- with most of that time dedicated to the custom display of our blog.

Add to the simplicity of setting up the blog, the fact that since blogger.com is owned by Google.com, they will always be very keen to spider our blog on a regular basis.

>From launch of our website, to the spidering of our site by Google took just about ten days. Within three days of the launch of our site, Google had spidered the main page of our site. Within ten days, Google had already spidered the whole of our website.

Compared to other websites we have launched, this was the fastest turn-around time from new release to traffic from the search engines. We believe the difference in this case study had to do more with the addition of the blog on the day of our launch than anything else we may have done to promote our domain.

EQUALIZE YOUR SITE WITH THE SITES OF THE BIG BOYS

The big sites on the internet got to be that way because they consistently add new, original, and exclusive content to their websites.

While you and I may never have as much content on our sites as the big boys do, we can benefit from the lessons they teach to us.

Now that you have also learned this important lesson, it is time to put this knowledge into action. Make it part of your daily or weekly schedule to add fresh, interesting content to your website. Your banker will thank you.

Hunter Waterhouse is one of the editors at: KeywordText.com. "Keyword Text" managed to bring together several writers and editors to provide a few low-cost writing services for those who are working hard to become more profitable. They offer Content Creation Services which include: Exclusive WebPage Content and Reprint Articles. Keyword Text also offers very attractive Volume discounts. Compare us to our competition, you will be surprised. http://keywordtext.com/dir.pl/ktc/index.html

---

The Language of Blogs

I read over a lot of blogs each week, casually... Read More

If an RSS feed is the Yahoo Backdoor, is a Blog Googles?

Though the answer is in a book I wrote this... Read More

How Yahoos Recent Facelift Can Mean More Traffic To Your Site

It even surprised me. Yes, even though I have... Read More

A Person Is Known By the Blog He Keeps

Literature is the soul of the wit. The best source... Read More

Writing Quality Blogs

Writing?Blogs?Blogs are on-line journals where people express themselves through writing.... Read More

Building Backlinks With Blogs

The most boring part of getting traffic to a website... Read More

How To Make A Cool Xanga

A xanga is something akin to a blog. It all... Read More

How to Reel in Web Site Visitors by Building Your Own Blog

I know, I know, blog this...blog that. Seems like everyone... Read More

Blogging Communities Turn Faceless Strangers into Close Friends

I've been searching the Internet for blogging sites for a... Read More

How to Use RSS for Free Targeted Website Traffic

RSS (real simple syndication) is the new rage in communication.... Read More

7 Tips for Successful Blogging

So, you have a blog! Do you have traffic? Do... Read More

Easy RSS for Bloggers

Do you need help adding RSS feeds to your blogger?... Read More

Marketing With Blogs - Part 2

In part 1 of this article series on marketing with... Read More

How to Make Money with Your Blog

-- What Is A BlogA blog (or web log as... Read More

RSS as a Change Agent

To better understand how RSS is changing the way companies... Read More

Blood Test for Your Blog?

Are you contributing to one of the estimated 36.1 million... Read More

Why Use RSS?

So why use RSS? Well, I can find a whole... Read More

Internet Communication

Email, Instant Messaging, Blogs, RSS, Forums and Listservs: What's Next?How... Read More

Sales Marketing: Secrets To Using Blogs (Online Diaries) To Increase Your sales And Profits

These days, everybody is blogging.How about you?You can incorporate blogging... Read More

Blogging For Business - Great Reasons For Every Business To Start A Weblog

If Howard Dean's failed political campaign accomplished anything, I would... Read More

Starting Your Own Blog

I was sitting in my local Internet Cafe yesterday, I... Read More

Use RSS Feeds to Improve Search Engine Optimization and Ranking

RSS is rapidly becoming a "must have" for a proper... Read More

How to Use Blog Exchanges

Traffic exchanges and blog traffic exchanges are a way to... Read More

So You Have a Blog, Now What Do You Do With It? Blog Basics

(This article assumes that you have already set up a... Read More

Will The Real Spammer Please Stand Up!

If you have been using opt-in email marketing for sometime,... Read More

How Blogs Can Be An Excellent Promotional Tool

Blogs as an online promotional strategy if done right could... Read More

Blogging Is Not Important - Its Crucial

It has been established that having a 'blog' helps your... Read More

Your RSS Feed Might Look Like Spam

RSS feeds seem to be the breakout technology for the... Read More

The Right Blog Software Can Make A Blog Stand Out from the Crowd

Blogs are an easy way to get your voice out... Read More

Blog Your Affiliate Links

Blogging is a relatively new form of communication, closely related... Read More

Time Saving Uses For RSS

RSS is an underused and underappreciated technology by a majority... Read More

How Bloggers Are Making Thousands of Dollars From the Google Adsense Affiliate Program

There is no doubt that the Google Adsense program for... Read More

Top 10 Tips for Bloggers

Tips for creating a blog.There are no hard and fast... Read More