Blogs provide search engine optimization (SEO) power by their very design. The blog strength lies in keyword rich content and in the abundance of inbound links.
Blogs can even become more SEO oriented by thinking in terms of relevance.
The most recent Google results, whether involving incoming links, Google PageRank levels, or positions in the search engine results pages (SERPs), there is one common denominator. That overarching similarity lies in the value that Google is placing on theme and topic related content. The watchword of the day in the land of Google, as already noted, is relevance.
The Google algorithm, which is the mathematical calculation that determines a site’s position in the search results for any given keyword or phrase, has been revised to stress the importance of relevance. That importance not only affects the search results that are found in the SERPs, but in Google’s PageRank and link valuation formulas as well.
With the need for more relevant content and linking partners, website owners are looking for a possible solution. The requirements for help include theme and topic relevant content and linking partners who are also theme and topic related. While there are several ways to achieve relevance, one such method is adding a blog component to your website.
Blogs are regularly updated postings of information, usually related to the theme of a website, and includes incoming and outgoing links on the same topics. Once thought to be merely online journals and diaries, blogs have moved far beyond the personal realm and into the world of business and information.
Blogs are becoming an important component in many business owners’ toolboxes for marketing, public relations, and search engine optimization. The benefits of blogs for increasing visitor traffic numbers are countless…or at least a very high number.
Businesses in almost every industry can benefit from the blog boost in the search engines. There is little doubt that all websites will receive a healthy injection of relevance, simply by posting regularly to a business blog.
Since the posts will be on topics, related to the overall website theme, and incoming links will arrive from similarly themed blogs, relevance is an obvious and natural result.
In the early days of the internet, it was thought that related sites would link naturally to one another. Little thought was given to placements in the various search engines at first. In fact, the early internet wasn’t really SEO oriented at all, and users cared about good content and natural links. Fortunately for everyone, those are still the keys to effective blogs and websites today.
It was generally agreed that good content would attract natural related incoming links, from similarly themed websites. In fact, what was being described was what is currently happening with blogs. People simply link to interesting and informative content. Bloggers are very free and generous linkers, especially to blog posts that are related to their own areas of interest. There’s that relevance factor in play again.
Blog posts are generally written on one, but just as often on two, three, or even more related topics. If the topics are not related, they become so by virtue of there being a large number of posts on those formerly unrelated topics.
On occasion, the unrelated topics will even appear in the same post. The important aspect of the blog is the overall development of powerful theme relevance. A blogger who writes on several topics can even make the blog theme relevant in more than one subject area. By adding several posts on alternate topics, expanded theme relevance is possible.
Bloggers are also free and generous linkers, and understand the value of relevant content instinctively. By regularly linking to interesting blog posts, bloggers provide value to their own readers, by offering them the best of other bloggers. These added incoming links provide additional Google PageRank, as well as boosts in the search engine rankings from the link.
The clickable links are often rich, in the receiving blog’s most important keywords, and are contextually surrounded by theme related content as well. This combination of strong link anchor text and theme relevant content gives the blog exactly what the search engines are seeking.
The Google algorithm could have easily been written with blogging in mind. The algorithm is even more blog powered with the additional emphasis on theme relevance. After all, bloggers sought and created relevant content from the very beginning, giving them a head start in the relevance arena.
Theme relevance in Google is just one more great reason to start a blog for your online or offline business.
Wayne Hurlbert provides insigtful information about marketing, promotions, search engine optimization and public relations for websites and business blogs on the popular Blog Business World.
Check out Blog Business World for yourself.
