What SEO Advantages Does a Blog Have?
Search Engine Optimization is all about building a website or web resource (page, video, article, etc.) that gives the search engines what they are looking for. The better you do this, the better your chances of getting high search ranking for your pages.
The first thing you should understand is that “content is king” with the search engines. Not just any old content, but the content that is focused on the specific topics that people are looking for. A blog allows you to create hundreds of pages that each have a very specific focus.
These pages are self-reinforcing – which means that they all reinforce the main general theme of your blog. So as you are creating many individual pages you are also creating an “authoritative” body of material that the search engines view as a valuable resource. This results in better search engine rankings for the site as a whole.
Second, your chances of scoring well with the search engines are magnified even further because now each of your posts can be optimized for different search terms, and each of them has a chance of coming up high in search engine rankings for its own keywords. For example, your blog’s general theme may be “Memphis real estate”, but the focus of a specific post or series of posts might be “mortgages in Memphis”. Now you have a chance of scoring well for those search terms too.
Third, blogs are updated regularly. The search engines assume that a regularly updated resource has more value to viewers than one that is not updated regularly. So your site is given more priority when they are crawling the web – in other words, they visit your site more often and keep their indexes up to date with the changes and additions you make.
Fourth, the search engines look for interlinking with other authoritative sites that share your theme. For instance, if your site is about “dog training”, then links from other dog training sites and links to other dog training sites will strengthen the association of your site with all the other sites you link to. This will enhance your site’s prominence within the whole “neighborhood” of dog training sites. Obviously a blog gives you unlimited opportunities to create these associations. Each post can (and should) link out to other posts about similar topics. And each post also serves as “link bait” attracting inbound links from other bloggers and webmasters.
And fifth, the search engines look for other evidence that people value your content. Increased traffic to your pages, and interaction with them (comments and questions) are signs to the search engines that your site is a valuable resource within your niche. As traffic and interaction increase, your rankings within searches will go even higher.
So as you can see, having a blog that your add posts to on a regular basis, and one that focuses on a range of interesting topics within your main niche is a great way to build your credibility with the search engines. This can’t help but push your search rankings up for all the topics you discuss within your blog.