A. CasalenaSEO Friendly Blogging
The good news about blogging is that it has a distinct advantage in search engines. That said, there are always steps you can take to ensure that you come up a little higher in search results and therefore snag a little more traffic. Use the natural advantages that blogging offers and play off of these strengths to do even better. All it takes is knowing what to look for.
First of all, you will have the advantage of speed just by blogging or using a content management system (CMS) instead of manually developing webpages and having to upload files or worry about maintaining links. Having a friction-free publishing environment is important because Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask take the frequency of website updates into account. You will find that results for a blog tend to show up in search results faster than a static page. The downside is that these posts may disappear from the results after a while, especially on competitive terms — because most blogs only show the most recent posts on their front page. The advantage of Squarespace is that our platform is like both blogging and a CMS, whereby you can also create categories and static pages that link back to your favorite posts. This helps you build your own niche subject when you post fairly regularly.
Second, pay special attention to your titles (i.e., headlines). This is really the most important part of your post and it can be a very careful balancing act. You want to make the title interesting enough that people are interested in clicking the link and reading your thoughts, but it must also include the kind of generic terms people will search under to find information about your topic. What keywords do you want to work in? It may help to make a list of these important terms and keep them on hand when you are blogging.
Just taking these two easy steps in mind, search engine results can increase dramatically. It just takes a little planning. Fortunately, with Squarespace, most of the work is done for you. All you need to concentrate on is the writing and you can quickly make your blog very SEO friendly.
Reader Comments (6)
Although I have chosen not to use my blog as my home page, I do highlight all new blog posts with a headline on my home page under a "Latest News" banner, which links to the new post - in this way, it keeps my home page fresh, and containing the key words from my blog post titles.
To answer your question, the "optimal" solution entirely on the situation. If you need to rank for broader, more generic search terms, opt for an always-on, site-wide site title that includes three or four of your main keywords. This way, every single page of content serves to reinforce your site's preeminence in the search engines for those terms. For narrower verticals, where you might have less competition, pare your site title down to one or two words. The only case I can think of for turning site titles off is when you don't need to rank for a specific umbrella term, or your site has no unifying theme. In theory, disabling site titles might be called for in special situations where a page completely stands on its own, *must* rank for a given phrase, and a generic site title would dilute its relevance. However, I have yet to personally experience a situation where turning off site-wide titles produces a more desirable effect on my rankings.
Joseph Estes
Estes Enterprises