I think not, however the world of blogs and SEO has definitely changed in a big way just this past several weeks.
It used to be that linking to your website by posting on other blogs in the blog comments was a great way to get quality inbound links. But not anymore! Blogger, WordPress and Typepad now automatically with no override control blog search engines from spidering links that you place in comments by including a no follow tag. Don’t confuse this with links in posts, it is just comments that are affected this way.
So what exactly does this mean, are blogs no longer great for SEO? No blogs are still great tools for SEO but the focus needs to change. Here are my top tips:
- Don’t waste time posting comments on other blogs to get links back to your site or blog. This strategy no longer works.
- Do blog on your own site. Use keyword dense posts and informational content to build the quality of your website and blog overall.
- Do heavily link your blog into your website and vice versa.
- Do include a site search engine on your website and use WordPress or Blogger custom FTP to allow your blog posts to be spidered as search result content for your website and blog.
- If you use WordPress make sure to add the module that allows you to have a meta description, keywords, and social bookmarking tags.
- Use social bookmarking tools to help push your site and encourage interaction and sharing. This may very well be the push that replaces commenting on other blogs and pointing back to your site and blog.
- Do create relationships with other bloggers in your field to do cross linking IN POSTS not comments to your site. You both will benefit as long as you are not competitors. The creation of some of these strategic partnerships will allow you to have guest authors and a network of interlinked sites for better overall performance.
So is blogging for SEO dead? Not hardly, it has just changed significantly.