Sep
27

By

Why your blog is just perfect for SEO!

Category: Featured, SEO Tags: , ,

Blog platforms are quite simply built for SEO! If you didn’t realise it already, all blog software packages are simple content management systems. In fact they’re so good at CMS, that lots of commercial sites have migrated to blog platforms instead of building on a more traditional CMS platform. One of the reasons for this, is that blog platforms have lots of inbuilt SEO advantages. Just consider the following:

  • Ease of adding new pages which, in turn, are easily integrated into the site’s navigational structure. Blog software platforms positively encourage the use of categories and that means your content sits within hierarchical themes. This is a great advantage in SEO terms, because the search engines love themed silos (or sections). But just ensure you make your categories as relevant as possible to ensure you take full advantage of this!
  • Blogs (and blog posts) are very search friendly due to their nature – we’re talking lots of content and lots of links here! Create newsworthy content and people will want to read it and link to it.
  • Blogs are (ideally!) updated regularly – which encourages the search engine spiders to visit more often.
  • Again, because of their nature, blogs usually include far more outbound links in their content than more traditional sites. You’ll find using deep links in good optimised content will help you to target the longtail – always a good thing!
  • Keywords – good blogs with regularly updated content are usually already keyword rich, making it much easier for you to optimise your site and target the long tail. So make sure you’re using those crucial keywords in your blog’s name, in the meta tags, the description, categories and content. Everything counts!
  • The URL structure of blogs tends to be both simple and search friendly
  • RSS feeds – these can help build web traffic plus they also boost your visibility in the search engines too!
  • Encourage interaction on your blog via not just linking, but also by comments and trackbacks, because these are a great way to boost your blog’s visibility, both in search engine rankings and in relevant blog communities. The social nature of blogs is what gives them their edge over traditional sites!
  • The search engines will rank your blog based on how well other people trust it – so as your followers and links grow, so will the value of your site!
  • Last (but definitely not least!) don’t host your site as a sub-domain. It might seem tempting to go down the subdomain route if you’re on a limited budget but it’s a false economy because it can take months or years to build an audience to a sub-domain. Plus you can also find yourself limited by the features available within these services. Instead, use your own domain name and host your site with a reliable web host – don’t worry if you’re on a budget, because you can do both of these relatively inexpensively!

So taking into account all of the above, you’re already well on your way to having a great optimised blog before you even start to think about an SEO strategy!