Should Your Business Have a Blog?

My friend and super communications consultant Mary Mayotte has said she doesn't like blogs because it is all "Blah, blah, blah, blahging".  She is right about that.  Think of internet search engines as small children.  In order for them to understand something you need to tell them over and over.  Blogging is one way to do that. 

You can write the same idea with five different angles. Each of those angles might appeal to a different group of readers.  Even though your are "Blah, blah, blahging" as Mary says, you are also writing to several different groups of readers.  For some this is fun, others theraputic and some people juse despise it and should pay to have it done for them. 

The other nice thing about a blog is your readers don't have to read your whole blog, just the part they were looking for.  Some blogs like the blog the movie Julie and Julia was based on might be read in their entirety, I doubt it though.  The internet isn't for readers, it is for skimmers, surfers and people with a specific topic they want to "browse".  That is why you are reading this in a "browser".


When Larry Page of Google first had the idea to organize all of the data in the world, he created the "page rank" algorithm. The page rank algorithm gave websites more credit when other websites linked to them or referenced them.

Today more and more Search Engine Optimization or SEO companies (which Rustic Creek is) have linking programs for the websites they manage and the search engines are getting wise to it. Google specifically has made several changes over the last few years to increase the validity of the page rank algorithm.

At some point if they can figure out a way to record how often a link is used, the search engines may be able to completely invalidate most linking programs. There is already a term called "link spamming" that refers to websites that buy links and just add them to "link lists". These are already recognized as false links and may get your website banned from Google or the other search engines for a violation of their link policy.

Think of this like the harbor picture here.  If you toss out moorings but don't have any boats to hook up to them, why are they there?  Until a boat is moored, they don't really serve a purpose do they.  Link spamming is the same thing, a place to connect without anything connected to it. 

One of the areas that has changed in how websites are ranked is quality. There are several areas that the search engines are getting better at measuring quality.  The quality of the website will help as will the quality of the links. Quality isn't what most people would normally think of in a website. Quality refers to how well the information is formatted. Search Engines can't see images or fancy graphics. All they can see is text and the color of the text. If you have a bunch of keywords the same color as your background, you might not get credit for those keywords.

How does all of this relate to a blog? Most blogs are fully indexed by the search engines and even a few directories. This means every word you type is recorded by the search engines.  And remember search engines only can read text.  A blog should be just about all text.  As long as you update your blog somewhat regularly, the search engines will see this as an increase in the "quality" of the link from the blog to the main website.

A blog also offers a place to answer frequently asked questions or FAQ's. Since search engines can "see" when people enter your website and when they leave as well as how often they come from a certain location. Your blog can be a great way to build your quality score as your customers go between your blog and your website.

I once misspelled Scottsdale Arizona as Scotsdale in a e-zine-blog article referencing a Ferrari – Aston Martin dealer in Scottsdale.  I had a great visit there and wanted to say so. The funny thing is since a lot of people also make that error, our blog moved up in ranking. We didn’t realize this was the factor until a friend pointed it out and we corrected the spelling from Scotsdale to Scottsdale. The blog lost readers that day.

To get the ranking back, I changed the sentence to read “….Ferrari in Scottsdale Arizona (or Scotsdale we spelled it wrong the first time too) …… “

This moved the blog back up until someone else figured out the trick. The internet changes every day, so you have to keep up with it. This is why advertising and website management is so difficult. It isn’t hard to do per se, it is difficult because success means hitting a constantly moving target which takes patience, time and practice. No pro ever wants to say this but even we make some mistakes trying to keep up and we do this every day.

Website ranking is a race of time and attrition. Everything you do helps your ranking if you do it right. Blog postings, getting links from other valid high quality sites, keeping your site up to date and optimized all add up to a better "organic" or free ranking.  Remember, the point of the search engine is to help people find what they are searching for the first time.  With 100,000 new websites popping up every hour, it is your job or your SEO's job to make sure you help the search engines know what your business does so when someone is searching for your business, they find your business.