How do blog’s affect a website’s rankings? What is their relationship with SEO?
We all know that the main goal of SEO is to reach the number one spot on various search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo etc.
Blogging is an activity that can make a huge difference to a website’s rankings. It provides fresh content for various search engines to index and publish.
In order for search engine’s to produce a result, they use a program that is specifically designed to index web pages and collect data for future use. That program is called a “web crawler” – more commonly referred to as a “spider”. Spider’s love fresh content, therefore updating your website frequently through a blog is an effective ranking strategy.
Web Crawler’s/Spider’s
To better understand the co-relation between blogging and SEO, we need to understand how a “spider” actually works. Here is a step by step procedure:
- Spider’s will visit a list of web pages—called a ‘seed’, they will record all the visible text, hyperlinks, pictures and tags that are found within the website (basically all its content) then load it into the spider’s server, create a database and index the content accordingly.
- After completing the process in the ‘seed’ page, it will retrieve all the hyperlinks that have been found. It will then start following them one by one, repeating the whole collection and indexing process on each page.
- If a spider followed a link and the page returned an error e.g. the page doesn’t exist anymore (page 404 error), it will be marked for possible deletion from the index.
If the page has been indexed before and is already in the rankings, the spider would then proceed by checking for new content on the page. If there is new content found then it will assess this new content and subsequently place it within the index.
Blog’s
Blog’s can be a website (wordpress.com) or a section of a website (yourwebsite.com/blog/) etc. The content of the blog is written by a person called a “blogger”. The blogger can include any topic that he/she wishes—it can be a personal diary, general information, facts, events or news etc. This content can include text, images, infographics or even video.
SEO
By having a blog it is an integral part of any SEO strategy by providing fresh new content that can allow your website to rank for a number of new keywords. Blog’s can also benefit you by attracting inbound links to your website due to the quality of your content.
So there you have it… if your website does not have a blog put one in place today and watch your rankings grow. That said, there is a lot more to SEO than just having a blog. We have a number of seo marketing services that can assist you in increasing your online visibility. Get in touch today.
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