Category: Search Engine Optimization

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Blogging Off-Domain Does It Work for SEO?

I used to feel that blogging anywhere was great, just get blogging. Now I have to say I really feel that blogging under your own domain name is the only workable SEO strategy.

First, let me explain a few things. When I say blogging off-domain I mean that your blog posts reside at Blogspot.com, WordPress.com or at a domain name you have set up separate from your website parent domain. The key is that the actual files that are your blog posts reside some where other than your real website.

Second, blogging on-domain means that you have WordPress installed in a directory that is part of your own website. The URL for your blog would be something like www.mydomain.com/blog. Here the actual files that are your blog posts are spiderable by search engine robots under your parent domain.

It is important to understand that subdirectory blog sites typically are not hosted at the parent domain, but are set up to look like they are, but the files do not typically reside at the parent domain. Blogspot allows you to do this with a bit of massaging of your domain name records. If your blog URL looks like this: blog.yourdomain.com most likely your website files do not reside at your parent location.

So, why is on-site domain blogging so important? There are a few reasons why you should only consider blogging on-domain.

  • You get search engine capital for blogging on-domain. That means each blog post is considered by search engines as if they were new pages in your parent domain.
  • Search engine spiders will index the blog posts that are created in on-domain blogging.
  • You will build “web authority” and create keyword density on your topic for your parent domain when you blog on-domain for your parent domain.
  • Links to your on-domain blog will help your parent domain place better on search engines and therefore help you place organically.

Don’t be confused if you have an off-domain blog and programmatically send the content in an iframe or with JavaScript to your parent domain pages, you do not get the search engine capital for your parent domain that you do with on-domain blogging.

Equally, if you have an off-domain blog and point to it in the navigation in your parent website, you get no search engine capital from it for your parent domain. You may get traffic, but not SEO juice.

Make sure to read Wednesday’s and Friday’s posts this week as I discuss more about on- and off-domain blogging and share with you a case study I have done for a company recently that illustrates these issues.

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Is Your Organic Position Dropping? What to Do About It

If your organic placement is dropping now’s the time to review what you can do to stop it. First, if you have not updated your home page content in a while and by that I mean in the last two to three months, now’s the time to make some updates. Second, if you don’t routinely add content to your website, by that I mean adding several new pages every month, now’s the time to get blogging.

For the last several clients who have called to find out why their placement on Google.com had changed dramatically, I found that both had not updated their websites in over one year. A website should be a work in progress. New content should be added on a regular basis and the home page should be changed at least once a month or once every two months, even if that only means moving things around. Keeping your website fresh is very important to getting and then keeping good organic placement.

If your website placement has significantly dropped, like from somewhere to nowhere, you may even need to review what keyword phrases you were targeting and see if maybe there are a better matches for your products and services that should be used. It could be that Google has simply arbitrarily decided that the phrase you optimized for is just not a good match to what people will actually be looking for. It could also be that the market place has changed and that a careful review of new possible keyword phrase targets should be done.

I have found that when I start to see my own site dip on my target phrases when I update my home page, change my meta title tag and meta description I can quickly pop back up in the search results. Sometimes as quickly as in seven days on Google.

If organic placement is important to your business, it is important to monitor on a monthly basis where you are on the search phrases on which you have optimized. If you don’t know where you place now, you can not create a plan to improve on your current results.

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No One Likes to Hear No, But We Aren’t a Good Match for Everyone

That’s right we do actually turn prospects away. We are simply not a good match for every prospect’s needs. What we do do, we do great. That being said in a nutshell, we have a passion for small to medium sized business owners who typically have a brick and mortar operation. We are typically also working with the business owner directly and not a corporate chain of command.

It bear repeating, but we do not work or provide any of our services for these business sectors:

Adult Content

Any site that has adult themes such as dating sites, soft core pornography, images of partially clothed women that are used to sell your products, lingerie, any sexual aids or products, we just do not provide services for regardless of whether it is blogging or even Google AdWords.

Stock Brokers, Day Traders, Forex Traders and Their Management Software

In this case we have simply found that the nature of your business is so complicated that the time it takes us to learn and be effective for you is just not cost effective for us. In many cases you are additionally governed by regulations making even blog writing a difficult operation.

E-Books and Products Sold by Squeeze Pages in Multi-Level Marketing Programs

We typically do not supply services for products that are e-books or online how to guides. Although you can still be successful with these approaches, we simply do not have a passion for working with products that are typically sold using these vehicles. This would cover e-books on how to make money in real estate, sell or trade stocks or use the forex, or how to sell multi-level marketing products.

No one likes to hear no, but it is by far better for you to find a supplier that has a true passion for what you do and what you sell. We can help many businesses, but just not all.

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Huge Change in Google Algorithm Coming in December/January

Not to worry, Google has said that they will hold this huge algorithm update until after the holidays, but except a new algorithm called Caffeine to roll out late December early January. Huge updates and strategic changes end up with names. The last really massive one that turned webmaster’s world upside down was called Florida and it was infamous. In fact the changes were so big that with all the squawking after the update Google actually tweaked it and softened the impact. But needless to say many sites had their organic placement take a huge nose dive.

I just read this article and I think it is the best one in regards to explaining in fairly simple terms what webmasters think will happen with this update. You can read the full article here. The author Titus Hoskins supposes what will be in the update, but I have to say I could not agree more.

One of the biggest takeaways from this is that we suspect Google is changing how they value links as a factor for organic search placement.

Hoskins says, “The major question here is this: has the importance of backlinking been downplayed in this new index in favor of the keyworded domain and onsite content and optimization? Has there been a major shift to listing more quality content rather than relying on the number of backlinks a site is receiving, even from important related themed sites? The major problem and question to Google is this: if links can be bought, how do you keep your organic results democratic and fair, which was the original intention of Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they started Google in 1998.”

This is a very valid point. Hoskins goes on to propose that the new update will more heavily weight social bookmarking which is much more difficult albeit nearly impossible to scam. Interesting supposition considering that not everyone is using social bookmarking tools.

We can predict some things as Google has rolled Caffeine out to one data center so far and allowed webmasters early sandbox review of the new algorithm in an unprecedented rollout several months ago.

1. Links are devalued but to what extent we are not sure.

2. Content is again king and now becomes even more important.

3. Load speed of your website may now be a factor. Google has rolled out several speed clocking tools and has really put the word out on the Matt Cutts blog that speed is Queen next to content being King.

4. It appears that keyword domains will rank better in the new update.

5. On page factors will be more important than previously, Hoskins states, “‘OnPage Factors’ to play a much greater role in Google Caffeine. Quality unique content, page design, good navigation, title, meta tags, description, keyword density, alt tags, page views, bounce rate, traffic numbers, time spent on page, and the number of social bookmarks may play an increased role in achieving high rankings.” I would agree several patent disclosures ago Google stated that it was watching these figures and I could see that in the long run click and traffic activity would be coming in to play and it appears that Caffeine is the update where these factors finally are being considered.

6. Social bookmarks may be considered key organic factors. Here, I am not sure, but it does make sense. Social bookmarking is like a vote for content or popularity. You cannot buy this kind of traffic it happens naturally. It makes sense that Google who likes to level the playing field and reward performance not scamming would consider this important.

Take some time to read this excellent article so you will have a good understanding of what will be happening with your website most likely in late December to early January.