How Can You Get High Search Engine Rankings Using Blogs?
As soon as blogs started popping up, SEO experts noticed that many blogs rank even higher than some websites (sites which sometimes have tens or even hundreds of inbound links). This “phenomenon” led to a conclusion that blogs are very SEO friendly and if anyone wants to rank highly in the search engines, they have to use blogs.
While blogs do have a tendency to get top rankings, blogs alone won’t bring you to the top of search engines.
As you may know, search engine ranking algorithms take many factors into consideration when ranking websites (links, content, relevancy, updates, visitors etc.). A theory is that even if a website has many inbound links, a blog having only few of them can outrank that site easily.
The reason might be that a blog has very quality link (PR5 – PR6) pointing back to it, or it might be because a blog is updated more often than a website. But it’s not the reason that it’s a blog.
Maybe in the beginning search engines valued blogs more, because they were mostly political or personal. They provided good information and had no intention to rank sky-high in the SERP’s. When SEO’s started creating blogs just for rankings, providing very little valuable content, blogs became not so valuable as before. So the point to realize is just because you have a blog, you won’t rank high in the search engines. A website can rank just as high as a blog. So there’s no reason to pop a blog for SEO.
But Why Blogs Still Rank High in Search Engines?
The reason why blogs rank high in the search engines is because they share some common pattern. Let’s look at each little closer.
- No Unnecessary Code – You already know that search engines don’t like messing with huge JavaScript codes, right. Blogs are designed the way that they don’t have a lot of code. Even CSS code is put into external style sheets. So blog pages are clean of messy code that sometimes appears on websites.
- SEO Friendly Layout – You have probably noticed that blogs have a navigation menu on right instead of left side. When search engines visit a blog, the first thing they notice and index is content and only later they scan the navigation menu. So the most important part of a page is presented first to a search engine spider.
- Frequently Updated Content – The last and one of the most important reasons why blogs rank high on the SERP’s is that they are usually updated very often. Some blogs that have top spots are updated every day. Search engines think that if it’s updated often, then it must provide up-to-date information and benefit its visitors. So they rank blogs higher.
- Inbound Links to a Blog – Incoming links to any blog or website are absolutely necessary to get to the search engines. So how come blogs get those links so easily then? It’s easier to get links to blog, because blogs are more personal than websites. People feel more comfortable giving a link to a person instead of a faceless website. And because blogs are so frequently updated, visitors gladly offer a link to it as a great resource.
These are the main reason why blogs sometimes rank higher than regular websites. But as you can see, there are no secrets. Any website can do the same. If a webmaster takes a little time to put larger scripts into external files, change the layout, update content with fresh and relevant information then any website can rank just as high as a blog.
However, you might want to get a blog not for SEO purposes, but because it doesn’t cost you anything, plus it’s very easy to update the content. If you would want to build and update a website easily, you’d have to spend some money on web development software. Blogs are free in many cases and are very easy to update.
Choose the Right Blog Software or Service
If you still want to make your blog as much SEO friendly as possible, then you should think about blog pages? It is important, because some blogs have dynamic URL’s:
(http://blog.com/?some_code_here)
They are not very preferred by search engines. Dynamic URL’s hardly pass Pagerank to other pages. A WordPress – popular blog software uses dynamic URL’s by default, but you can easily change that in admin panel.
There are other blogging software and services that allow you to have static pages:
(http://blog.com/page23.html)
It’s better for SEO. So before you start blogging for search engines, choose the right blog service or script that allows you to have static pages and have more chances to get high rankings.
Building SEO Friendly Blog Content
A few tips which you should already know, but in case you don’t, read them and apply when building your content.
When you include content into your blog, make sure that you write keyword-rich headlines. You shouldn’t stuff many keywords into your headlines, but be sure to write a headline that clearly represents the content and also includes the most important keyword there. You can also mention your keywords in the content several times. When you include images, write descriptive ALT tags so search engines know what the picture is all about. When you write content, include H1, H2, strong and emphasis tags in it, like this:
<H2>Sub Head</H2> <strong>keyword</strong> <em>keyword</em>
This will help emphasize more important keywords in your blog. But don’t overdo it. Make sure that it reads naturally, otherwise your visitors will not appreciate it.
In Conclusion
While blogs are SEO friendly and can easily achieve high search engine rankings, you shouldn’t create blogs just for SEO. Your blog should be natural and targeted to human visitors, not spiders and bots.
And just because blogs have tendency to rank high in the SERP’s, it doesn’t mean that you cannot rank high with a website. If you create quality content that is updated often, if you do correct on-page SEO, if you build quality incoming links to your site, it will rank just as high as any blog.
But if you’re on a shoestring budget and can’t afford expensive HTML tools, or if you don’t want to deal with designing and programming, then you may forget about website and create a blog that will rank high in the search engines and give your visitors what they want.
