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KristineS
02-16-2012, 12:36 PM
O.k., somebody, I hope, can settle this question for me once and for all, because I started researching it and quickly got confused. I've always heard that blogs are better for seo and indexing purposes because they get crawled more frequently than websites. Blogs also tend to have more new content. Then, I saw a video from Google that said that blogs don't necessarily index better, and that Google Blog Search may index things, but not include the content in general Google search.

So, if any of you know, do blogs get index faster and are thus better for SEO, or is that not true?

C0ldf1re
02-16-2012, 12:45 PM
... I've always heard that blogs are better for seo and indexing purposes because they get crawled more frequently than websites...
This is a myth started by people selling courses on how to set up blogs!

The crawler bots schedule their next visit based upon whether your site has a history of adding new quality content. It doesn't matter whether you have a WordPress blog, or have hand-coded your site.

lucas.bowser
02-16-2012, 01:45 PM
Coldfire, That is not exactly true. If you have a static site that changes infrequently and you don't tell search engines otherwise, then you will only be crawled as often as the crawler bots get scheduled for your site. But you have the ability to tell search engines there is new content available to crawl by "pinging" them. Wordpress does this automatically with its pingomatic service, as do many other CMS systems. In the case of a hand-coded site, you will have to tell Google yourself that you have made updates or wait to get crawled. Additionally, some search engines like Google (via their Webmaster tools) also allow you to tell it how often to crawl your site, unless yours has been determined to be a "special case" site.

As far as whether or not you'll rank in the regular search engine rankings, that depends on the quality and index-ability of the content you provide. If it's good content that matches common search phrases and is being linked to, tweeted, liked, etc... then it will get picked up and ranked by Google (and other search engines) quicker. So long as you are telling search engines about your changes when you make them to your site, I'm not sure that it matters one lick if it's a blog or not.

C0ldf1re
02-16-2012, 04:32 PM
Coldfire, That is not exactly true...
You do have a point that you may need to remember to manually ping search engines in some circumstances.

But if a crawler has marked your site as unworthy of frequent crawls, then it won't crawl. It will ignore pings or your instructions about crawl frequency.

vangogh
02-16-2012, 04:36 PM
The crawler bots schedule their next visit based upon whether your site has a history of adding new quality content.

They general crawl more often and more deeply based on some kind of popularity/authority score. For example Google has said time and time again that more PR usually means more crawling. They do crawl more often when a site publishes more frequently too. Like Lucas said when you publish an rss feed it'll send a ping that Google picks up.

However the main reason a blog can be helpful is because without content today you're going to have trouble attracting attention in general. The more quality content you give people and search engines to consume the more likely they're coming back. With people that leads to social sharing, links, and a loyal audience. With search engines it's more crawling. More content also gives you great potential to pull search traffic for a variety of phrases and keyword themes and each page can help reinforce your site as a whole. You don't specifically need a blog for that, but some mechanism for publishing a feed helps as it allows your content to travel further and wider, attracting an even larger audience.

C0ldf1re
02-16-2012, 07:11 PM
... Google has said time and time again that more PR usually means more crawling...
Well, now I've learned something, VG, because I had never read that before. Most "experts" dismiss high PR as just a status symbol, nice to have, but of no practical use at all. Do you have a link to any of these Google statements? I would certainly like to pass it on to several people.

vangogh
02-16-2012, 11:30 PM
You've been listening to the wrong "experts" There are a lot of people at a forum we know who try to pass themselves off as experts by making fun and belittling another set of "experts."

The crawling and PR info has mainly come from Matt Cutts. Granted, just because he said it doesn't make it true, but he's been very consistent over the years tying PR and crawling rate and depth together. I think this post, Indexing Timeline (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/indexing-timeline/), was when I first came across this. I'm looking through it now and not finding exactly what I thought.

Ok found a very clear statement in a video from a couple months ago. It's about 45 seconds in. The whole video is worth watching though. And the sound quality is only poor for the first 10 or 15 seconds.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9p1ji4EFLc

Matt Cutts explicitly says the higher your PageRank the faster you're likely to be found, the deeper Google will crawl, the more often they'll visit your pages if they've been refreshed.

vangogh
02-16-2012, 11:46 PM
Most "experts" dismiss high PR as just a status symbol, nice to have, but of no practical use at all

I can tell you how this thought comes about. Once upon a time PR did mean a lot in ranking well. More links meant higher rank. So people did anything they could to get links. As Google saw people manipulating ranking by getting as many links as possible through any means they added more signals for which pages should rank. All the information about PR being the end all and be all of ranking is still online though.

Another group of people wanting to learn how to rank web pages discover the information about increasing PR and getting more links. These people start asking questions about how to get more links and which directories give the best PR. They start looking to exchange links with everyone. Of course seo has changed by this time. The only PR any of us can see is the Toolbar PR (TBPR), which doesn't work quite the same way as real PR behind the scenes. TBPR is only updated a few times a year where real PR is updated in real time. You get people saying how TBPR isn't useful because it's out of date and because it's not on the same scale and because a PR of 4 could mean anything from PR 3.5 to 4.49. None of that discounts the value of real PR. It only points out the flaws in TBPR.

Over time Google continues to place less emphasis on PR from being everything about ranking to being one of many different signals, though still likely a very significant signal. All PR is, is a measure of the quality of links pointing to a page. Google still sees it as a measure of popularity and authority. That's still important in Google's algorithms. They use more and different signals to determine quality though.

As more people ask the same questions about PR and link exchanges and all the other things some start equating it with spam, and only spam. The anti PR crowd gets more vocal about the PR being worthless. They continue to knock TBPR and they talk about how PR isn't the end goal and on and on. The truth is simply a matter of PR not being as valuable as it once was, but you now have two opposing sides both spitting out misinformation. One side still looks to PR as everything and the other side counters by suggesting PR is completely worthless. Few people, especially on forums, ever want to talk about the reality though.

The same two groups now argue about "dofollow" links. One side seeks them out like nothing else matters and the other side likes to shout how there's no such thing as "dofollow" even though all they mean is there's no "dofollow" value for the rel attribute on a link.

One of the best things you can do is ignore both groups. Ignore the people who say X is the most important thing in seo and also ignore the people who say X is completely worthless. Neither side is interested in the truth. One seeks the quickest and easiest path to fortune and the other sees anything connected with seo as spam and pushes an agenda of it being useless.

billbenson
02-17-2012, 12:51 AM
An addition to your "once upon a time" statement VG - back in the recip link trading days people only wanted to trade with sites with high pr. PR is no longer used as a measure of site quality by the good webmasters. They look at other things such as content, SERP placement, use of black hat techniques etc in evaluating a site. Of course even then the competent webmasters won't do recip's.

C0ldf1re
02-17-2012, 11:12 AM
You've been listening to the wrong "experts"...
:) I rather suspect that there are more "wrong" experts than "right" experts offering opinions on some forums :)

Many thanks for the video link, VG!

vangogh
02-17-2012, 06:19 PM
PR is no longer used as a measure of site quality by the good webmasters.

I'm not sure that's entirely true. I think it's more that some people now better understand what PR really is and so can better judge it's value. I completely agree with you on all the other things that might also be used in the judgement. You're right. Once upon a time people looked at PR as the end all and be all. Now some have gotten smarter and understand it as one piece of the pie instead of the whole pie.


I rather suspect that there are more "wrong" experts than "right" experts offering opinions on some forums

I rather suspect your suspicion is right. :)

Glad to provide the link. I was afraid I was going to have to watch a lot of videos to find that, but fortunately I found it on the first try. Guess the title of the video was accurate.

markbell
03-14-2012, 05:39 PM
Lots of good advice...personally think it is easier to rank a blog. Maybe it is all the plugins and comments from other wordpress users which help simplify the SEO.

Harold Mansfield
03-14-2012, 09:20 PM
The benefits of a blog are actually pretty simple:


10. New content gets crawled. Static content does nothing but sit there.
9. More articles/posts mean more chances to rank and/be seen. And more gateways into your website.
8. More content is more chances of someone linking to you naturally.
7. Many websites use RSS to pick up related content. No Blog? Probably no RSS. What's the point?
6. You can submit a blog post to many places. Most of those places don't want static website content.
5. You can write a blog post about anything and optimize it as a separate page, about a completely different subject , than your main site.
4. People don't comment on static websites, therefore no chance for engagement or sharing your article with others.
3. People search for updated information. Many times searching within a certain date or time period. Blog posts are date stamped.
2. A static website with 10 pages, only has 10 links indexed in the SE's. A blog with 10 pages and 50 posts, has (at least) 60 individual links in the SE's. Not counting any category links, tags and so on.


And the #1 reason blogs are good for SEO (Drum roll please!) . Blogs are the fuel that drive Social Media. If you use Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, and so on..what are people linking to and sharing? Static websites? No. They are sharing recent blog posts on the topic of the day or the interest of your peer group. NYTimes? Washington Post? HuffPo? Politico? Speaker of the House? The White House? CNN? LOL Cats? I Can Has Cheeseburger? ..all blogs.

vangogh
03-15-2012, 02:08 AM
Can't disagree with anything you said Harold. I'd add that blogs will usually send out a ping as soon as new content appears to alert any and all devices and applications listening. That includes search engines.

There's no secret to blogging. It's simply no longer enough to put up a brochure style website and expect it's going to bring in a lot of traffic unless you're wiling to throw a lot of money at gaining traffic. No matter what you do it's unlikely there isn't anyone else doing the same thing. People visit sites that engage them more. They visit sites that continue to produce content, whether that content is written, video, audio, images, etc. Successful websites today are those producing the best content consistently.

You don't have to place all that content on a blog, however you'll be at a significant disadvantage if you aren't at least publishing some kind of rss feed.

MostHeather
05-18-2012, 02:37 PM
Don't forget that having a Sitemap submitted in your Webmaster Tools will also alert Google to the addition of new pages at your website - whether it's a static website or a frequently updating blog.

JunkDawgs
06-20-2012, 04:17 PM
Pertaining to blog entries, can you post too many entries in a day and should you post daily? Also, within blog entries, is it okay to insert hyperlinks back to your home page, url?

KristineS
06-20-2012, 04:52 PM
Some people prefer to do two or three short entries a day. Other people prefer to do one longer post. It's really depends on what your comfort level is. I think more than three posts a day is a little spammy, but that's just me. As to posting daily, I used to be a huge advocate of that, and I still am for blogs that are just starting out. Once you're established, I think at least once a week is a must. I do know, however, from experience, that an established blog can hold readers even if it doesn't get updated for a couple of weeks.

Regarding hyperlinks, sure it's o.k. to insert them as long as they make sense in the context of the post. I link back to pages on our website in many of the blog posts I write. If you're doing it just to create a link, however, and it has no relevance to the text, then you're just being spammy.

rbianchi007
06-20-2012, 05:36 PM
Pagerank is one of many, many factors when gaining in the SERPs first of all and it is not updated often. Another thing is, while initially wordpress and other blog software got an initial hike in update time because Google a few years ago saw it as a blogging solution more than a website CMS and hence was informative content rather than commercial, they later made blog search and stuffed most blogs in there first and foremost. Therefore Wordpress's blogging functionality was actually seperated from the page functionality. Now we have a very well tuned CMS which was built with ranking in mind and is a great content building engine but holds no other real advantage unless you consider hundreds of thousands if not millions of free and premium plugins (some of which will do more harm than good believe me).

The point is, no that is a false concept now, but there was a time when blogs ranked higher because they were considered informative rather than commercial and because Google never wanted to empower countless profiteers who sell biased information rather than facts thereby lowering the quality of their search engine.

There is the factor however of the tree branch method of content building where we add long tail and other relevant keywords/urls to the SERPs to rank using those for a time. It allows you to enter more niches and provides many landing points for potential clients, I wouldn't really use a blog as a link building method in a link wheel or take advantage of comment links as that is still a bit of a questionable method for link building or it is no-follow.

Elabusiness
07-30-2012, 12:58 PM
Thank for Matt Cutts video, the Backlink obsession is something that really help us to pay attention in details that are more important like being relevance versus reputable . Also the Google Rank explanation tells a lot about how to choose sources better for your backlinks while working in your linkbuilding process.

vangogh
07-31-2012, 12:12 PM
The main thing is creating content that your audience, customers, visitors to your site will enjoy. Whether that content is the written word, audio, video, some kind of application, create it to inform, entertain, and interact with the people who visit your site. If you can do though you've taken care of much of what search engines want to rank.

KristineS
07-31-2012, 01:17 PM
Content is definitely king. I think people are getting more choosy as more outlets become available. If you don't produce useful and helpful stuff for your readers/followers/friends you won't sustain the interest level you need. I should say this is primarily business blogging and social media I'm discussing here. Personal blogging and social media is a completely different thing.

vangogh
08-01-2012, 12:17 AM
If you don't produce useful and helpful stuff for your readers/followers/friends you won't sustain the interest level you need.

Yep. I think businesses are going to have a harder time succeeding if they don't create great content. Maybe not all industries at the moment, but soon enough. People are looking first online more and more for most everything and they can easily window shop from the comfort of home. If there's a choice between someone who just lists products or services and another who's site provides information and keeps the visitor there, I know which one is more likely to get the business.

A-E
08-08-2012, 10:29 AM
This thread is very informative even though it kind deviated a bit from the original question. I have seen first hand how blogs have helped in a site's position. People often can't understand a product by looking at a description and price. They do need to get the feel of what value the product will bring to them. Blogs do serve a double purpose.

KristineS
08-08-2012, 11:25 AM
Blogs definitely do help a site's position for certain products. We've seen blog posts be indexed in as little as an hour after they are written and posted. You can also target specific keywords, which can be a great help. I definitely think blogs can help with SEO, but I don't think they should be written solely for that reason.

vangogh
08-08-2012, 03:51 PM
It's not so much that a blog ranks better, but rather that blogs will generally publish an rss feed and ping search engines when a new post is published. That will lead to the search engines crawling the page and often ranking it quickly. Over time the page will rise or fall based on the usual stuff in the algorithms. When I say that I'm specifically referring to the technology behind a blog.

What's really helping long term is you're creating content. More content means more opportunities to rank and pull search traffic. Plus blog posts tend to be informational content which tends to get shared more and attracts more links, both helping the content rank better in search engines.

I don't think the content necessarily has to be on a blog, but we're reaching or have reached the point where if your site doesn't have good content outside of sales pages it's going to be hard to rank for anything. And even if you do your customers will likely by from your competitors who are providing the information. We're past the days where you can launch a simple brochure site and expect it'll do much for your business. For most industries there's too much competition now.

Matt121
10-17-2012, 12:55 AM
I guess the myth started because blogs are the more frequently updated than main sites. Therefore, Google takes notice of these sites faster than main sites. This is what I think :)

HireLogoDesign
10-22-2012, 04:58 PM
Hey Vangough

Do you by chance have a link to the next video in progression if there is one? I couldn't find it and it stops right before the next section.

vangogh
10-22-2012, 11:17 PM
I'm not sure there's a specific progression to them. If there is I'm sorry, but I don't know which is next. Odds are if you search for Matt Cutts, video, and whatever topic you want you'll be able to find a lot. It may not be a follow up to this one, but Matt usually talks about the same topics more than once.

Revend
03-07-2013, 11:30 PM
This is true that blog is best for SEO because blog gives power to site and improves ranking and traffic on site. This is my personal observation and trust me it works. Anyway i like this thread. Thank you all for sharing your ides.

dianecoleen
03-12-2013, 06:08 PM
Is Blogging still works for SEO this year 2013? I have seen that this thread was created a year ago. Do the techniques provided in this thread still worth the read and may still be apply on our blogs? Does Pinging blog, RSS feed, Linking back to the main site still matters by today? I've been puzzled about this ideas since the unpredictable update of search engines.

Just want to clear some thoughts in here. Thank you.

Harold Mansfield
03-12-2013, 06:22 PM
Of course it still works. Pinging isn't as big as it used to be since almost everyone who crawls for content has spiders, but the concept of publishing fresh content on your website will be good for quite some time. It's what Google thrives on.

Think of it like this:

If your website has 10 pages, you only 10 possible ways for someone to find you in the search engine.
If your website has 50 related blog posts/articles, along with the 10 pages, you now have 60 ways to be found.

Not to mention any additional help you get from people sharing your articles across high traffic social media and related industry sites, as content on your profiles, and any RSS followers you may get. Your static pages will only get shared once if that. Problably not at all. However, your articles are a new opportunity everytime.

It doesn't work the same as 3 years ago, it actually works better because there are more possible avenues.

KristineS
03-13-2013, 03:17 PM
Blogging works better than ever now because more and more people are becoming familiar with blogs, even if they only read a few. When I first started saying I was blogging, which was some years ago, I had to explain to almost everyone what I meant. Now, even if they don't read them, almost everyone knows what a blog is and how they work.

Plus, it's updated content that search engines can crawl. Our blog posts get indexed really quickly and help expand our keyword possibilities exponentially.

Roundcone
03-13-2013, 06:12 PM
On-page SEO is a long term solution and should be incorporated in the (re)development of any website. Creating blogs and posting on a regular basis works fine. The more content you create the more gets indexed. Blog posts also feed the social media marketing machine.

dianecoleen
03-15-2013, 06:02 PM
Alright! I guess, that answers my question. I would still be glad to hear more from the members of this forum.

Zerocool7
03-18-2013, 09:11 PM
I've always heard that blogs are better for seo and indexing purposes
I don't see what the difference between a blog and website would be to Google. I add new content to my website every 3 or 4 days just as you would a Blog.

Harold Mansfield
03-18-2013, 09:34 PM
I don't see what the difference between a blog and website would be to Google. I add new content to my website every 3 or 4 days just as you would a Blog.

New, relavent content is good no matter what platform you are using.
Blogs do have a structural and organizational advantage that you don't get just adding new HTML pages.
Syndication is probably the biggest one.

vangogh
03-27-2013, 12:21 AM
The syndication is a major benefit of a blog. If you publish a new page, you're counting on me to periodically check your site to see if you've published something new. That probably isn't happening unless I can't live without your content. If you publish a feed through a blog I can subscribe to it in any number of ways and get your content even if I never visit your site.

I have a feed reader and I'm subscribed to a few hundred blogs through it. I open up my feed reader a few times a day and scan through the headlines and read those articles I'm interested in. It's basically my daily newspaper, except I get to decide who writes all the articles. Not every uses a dedicated feed reader. Most people probably don't. However, they do have home pages that pull in feeds and they use Facebook which pulls in feeds and then find content people post to Twitter, which generally was found on a feed somewhere.

Me subscribing to your feed in my feed reader doesn't do anything to improve where your pages rank in Google, but me seeing them probably does, because it means I can share it on social sites or link to your content in something I write. If you don't reach me neither of those things likely happens. Syndicating your content gives you a much better chance of reaching me. And by me, I don't literally mean only me. You're going to reach more people publishing content on something that also publishes an rss feed.

Also your blog still does send out pings (or should assuming it's set up correctly) and lets know search engines you've published something new. That typically brings a search engine spider to your site much quicker than if you don't let them know.

Marcomguy
03-30-2013, 09:50 AM
One reason to have a blog - especially if it's not on your site - is that with every post, you can get an incoming link to your site.

vangogh
04-01-2013, 11:43 PM
It definitely provides more opportunity for links and social shares and the like. It has to be good content and not just any content, but if you're willing to put in the time and effort a blog can be one of the best ways to market your business.

omid
04-03-2013, 02:42 AM
I think it doesn't matter if it is a blog or website as long as the content is updated frequently. It is also very important to have reputable backlinks rather than backlinks alone!

semaphore.v
04-06-2013, 05:23 AM
Blog or any micro blog will help you if you have do proper internal linking. It will help you to improve ranking

vangogh
04-08-2013, 07:07 PM
Internal links are good to add, but I wouldn't say they're the reason to blog. Blogging creates more content, which means more opportunities to rank. Done well it provides content that people want to share and link to. Not specifically an seo benefit it gives people a reason to keep coming back to your site and it gives you a voice outside of sales pages, which allows you to prove you know about your industry and to let potential customers and clients get to know and trust you.

billbenson
04-08-2013, 07:31 PM
Internal links are good to add, but I wouldn't say they're the reason to blog. Blogging creates more content, which means more opportunities to rank. Done well it provides content that people want to share and link to. Not specifically an seo benefit it gives people a reason to keep coming back to your site and it gives you a voice outside of sales pages, which allows you to prove you know about your industry and to let potential customers and clients get to know and trust you.

I'm a little confused here. If you are using WP in a paginated form and add a page a week, how would this be less beneficial than using WP in a blog format and adding a page a week?

dianecoleen
04-10-2013, 02:51 PM
Blog or any micro blog will help you if you have do proper internal linking. It will help you to improve ranking

Not just proper internal linking, but also with an extraordinary piece of content. One should have the purpose of linking to another website to help your reader cope with additional information and not only for the sake of getting back links/higher rankings.

KristineS
04-11-2013, 01:22 PM
Not just proper internal linking, but also with an extraordinary piece of content. One should have the purpose of linking to another website to help your reader cope with additional information and not only for the sake of getting back links/higher rankings.

Definitely agree with this. I hate to see links for the sake of links. Only link to and include things in your blog posts that are relevant and helpful. If you're just linking to try to establish contact with a more popular blogger or to generate backlinks people will figure that out pretty quick.

vangogh
04-18-2013, 12:06 AM
I'm a little confused here. If you are using WP in a paginated form and add a page a week, how would this be less beneficial than using WP in a blog format and adding a page a week?

Bill I'm not sure I understand the question. Are you asking about pages vs posts? If so there doesn't really have to be any difference, but you'd have to do a little work for their to be no difference. By default WordPress will only include posts in the rss feed and not pages. You can change that with a little code.

If you're wondering about how search engines view the two the only real difference I can think of is posts are more likely to include dates and so any algorithmic thing that takes dates into account would look more at a post than a page. Posts and pages can always be coded to be more alike, though if you want them to be the same I'm not sure why you wouldn't just use one or the other.

The main thing to me is that people might subscribe to your blog posts. They probably aren't subscribing to your new pages because those pages probably aren't included in your rss feed. More people viewing your content is what leads to your content being shared and attracting links.

Is that what you meant?

billbenson
04-18-2013, 02:36 PM
Kinda sorta: On my new site I want to start writing a few product line informational pages a month. This is for the purpose of having a content rich site. Since this would be by product line a blog format doesn't make sense to me. My question really was whether it is a page or a blog post, I'm assuming its going to ping the network.

Your reply leads to another question though. Does it make sense to date informational pages. The pages would be on how to select the proper configurations and piece parts of particular products etc.

vangogh
04-19-2013, 02:03 AM
I was kind of thinking that's what you were looking to know. No worries. I just installed WordPress SEO by Yoast. The plugin creates an XML Sitemap which can include pages that will update when you create something new. I don't think pages will send out pings by default since that's more an rss thing. The XML Sitemap will help let search engines know about your content. Assuming everything is linked well, they'll also follow the links to the new pages.

I usually wouldn't date pages. A page presumably has content that isn't time sensitive so it doesn't need a date. You're not going to see a rankings benefit to a page just because it has a date on it.

level3
04-24-2013, 01:59 PM
You should consider a "best of both worlds" solution and have a blog on your website. A website with a blog and a content management system gives you control over what appears on your website, and a steady stream of new, high quality, relevant content will be rewarded with higher rankings in search engine results pages.

Harold Mansfield
04-27-2013, 11:01 AM
Kinda sorta: On my new site I want to start writing a few product line informational pages a month. This is for the purpose of having a content rich site. Since this would be by product line a blog format doesn't make sense to me. My question really was whether it is a page or a blog post, I'm assuming its going to ping the network.

Your reply leads to another question though. Does it make sense to date informational pages. The pages would be on how to select the proper configurations and piece parts of particular products etc.

I'd make your informational content, pages. You can still share them the same way across your social media profiles, and if they are optimized and linked to they will still get search traffic.

Related content pages are good for SEO. If you sell red cars and blue cars, it's much better to have 2 different pages, than to make one page about both colors. Provided, that is, that you can come up with at least 300 original words about each.


You may also want to make them PDFs for download, optimize the PDF's and upload them onto your site. Links to PDF's do get indexed if you do it correctly.

vangogh
05-01-2013, 02:42 PM
a steady stream of new, high quality, relevant content will be rewarded with higher rankings in search engine results pages.

To me that steady stream of content is more about getting real people to come back to the site and engage with it. No doubt it can help how much traffic you get from search engines, but the main benefit is still the people who come back again.

robinmark
05-02-2013, 06:32 AM
In my opinion blog submissions are still benefit for SEO because these blogs daily update with some new and informative content that really good for user and their website as well.