Gravit-e Guides: How to Blog

Adding a blog to your website is a great way to provide the kind of fresh, regularly updated content that search engines thrive on. In this Gravit-e Guide, we'll share with you some of the tips and tricks that "power bloggers" use to reach the top of the search engine rankings.

Blog Often

Blogging on a regular basis has a number of benefits.

Firstly, it ensures that your blog content is fresh and up to date. Visitors to your website will be wary if they see that you haven't updated for a while. Secondly, Google and other search engines are introducing more and more features that prioritise recent, and even real-time, content.

Most importantly, setting a regular schedule by which to blog, and making it part of your working week, ultimately makes blogging easier - you'll spend less time scrambling around for ideas once people around you understand that you need something new to talk about online every week.

Blog What You Know

Ensure that your blog has a theme. It may be company news, tips and tricks on software, or how to get the most out of eCommerce. Whatever you are blogging about, make sure that you understand the topic and are providing useful and accurate information to readers. With search engines hastily embedding social media tools, such as Google's +1, readers feedback on your blog will soon have a more direct impact on your search engine position than ever before and this means that writing quality content that readers, not search engines, will like is all important.

Take a look at this article about how "social signals" are shaping the web for more information.

Blog Long

A good blog post should be at least 500 words. Search engines love keyword rich content, but only if the keyword percentage is backed up by a decent sized piece of text. It's easy to achieve a keyword density of 10% in a ten word sentence! If your articles are too short, it can even have a negative impact on your overall search engine rankings.

Blog Originally

A recent well publicised update to Google heavily penalised sites that had large amounts of duplicate content.

Resist the temptation to blog just by copying and pasting someone else's article into your blog. Not only could you be accused of stealing someone else's copyright material, but you can also find your website spiralling down the search engine rankings.

If you find an article online that you like (perhaps this one), it is far more effective to leave a comment or to post your opinions to your own blog with a link across to the original article.

Blog Visually

Pictures and video attract users to your blog, keep readers interested, and are a prime target for linking on social media sites, such as Twitter. Try to accompany every blog post with an original, and appropriate picture.

Blog about Others

We've already talked about the power of links as a way of leveraging content from other sites, rather than copying their content, but the power of links does not end there.

Search engines love websites that "participate" in the wider web with outbound links. You may not want these cluttering up your homepage, but a blog post is a great way to share a useful, amusing, or important link with your readers and customers.

Don't be afraid to share something that isn't related to your main theme either, many blogs have a "Fun Friday" when they share something a little different with their readers.

Blog Collaboratively

Engaging in a conversation with your readers is one of the best ways to derive additional value from your blog. Consider implementing a commenting system on your blog, such as Disqus or ask for user feedback via email. Don't miss the opportunity to share links to your presence on social media outlets either - the more of these you offer, the more opportunities you are giving your reader to connect with you.

If you do open up comments, make sure that you respond to them, especially negative feedback or questions. Studies have shown that filtering out any negative feedback creates a lack of trust in readers, but publishing and responding to negative feedback has a significantly positive impact - assuming you respond fairly and rationally!

The final, and most important part of the collaboration process is ensuring that your readers have a quick and easy way of sharing your content with their connections online. Consider using a service such as Add This for a quick and easy way to provide social integration to your blog.