To me blogs are a strategic business communication tool. I usually consider the fact that blogs rank high in search engines to be a positive side effect. But I also recognize that for some people search engine optimization, SEO, is a major reason for blogging - and I have found it to be a good reason for others to start thinking about blogging at all. Here’s a list of explanations to why your blog probably will rank high in search engines. And it’s more to it than just the links.

Blogs are continuing to become a standard for Internet users. Readership continues to climb. However, what causes them to rank well in search engines? Discuss at WebProWorld.

The links are important, though. Especially to Google. Yahoo and the MSN Beta seems to give content related factors more weight in my experience. But even with Google the key to your success doesn’t lie in links alone. If you want traffic through search engines you must get the basics right too.

So, here’s my take on why blogs rank high in search engines.

• Keywords, key phrases
• Straight to the point
• Each post’s page structure
• Coding
• One subject per post
• The blog site’s information structure
• Links then…?

Keywords, key phrases
If I wanted to pick one single reason I would actually choose this one: In a blog you talk. You engage in conversations. You think out loud, in a way. The things you say are (hopefully) everything but the standard corporate bullxxxx. This means you are filling the engines’ databases with relevant keywords - relevant because most of us search for the words or phrases we use daily. The same words you use in the blog because you talk instead of sending messages to the target audience.

Straight to the point
How many blog posts have you seen with this kind of headline: “Our software system solution for world-wide data quality”? How many corporate sites have you seen…? This point is related to the first one but it adds one extra dimension. Not only do we in blogs speak like real, living people in the words we use - we say it directly. Straight to the point. There are certainly exceptions to this, I admit that. But generally speaking I have found it to be true in many business blogs. To say what you want to say as fast as possible is important, which leads me to my next reason.

Each post’s page structure
It’s more or less standard in blog design to use the post’s title/headline as the page’s title (together with the blog name). With my two previous reasons in mind you now see how the html title is filled with tasty keywords. And that’s the most important place to have them. That’s where search engines expect to find the best clue to what your page is about, and they rank the words there high in comparison to other positions in the code. Speaking about code…

Coding
If you use blog templates they will probably be an example of good coding. Most I’ve seen has been at least. It’s often a table-less design, an extensive use of style sheets, correct coding where headlines not only are larger and bold but actual H1’s, H2’s and so on. It’s a clean code - good for browser compatibility, good for visitors with disabilities. Good for search engine spiders. Here you have a potential risk. If you just use the old CMS templates for your regular site, you may loose this advantage. The solution is of course to redesign all of it in line with this “modern” web design.

Finally, some reasons relating to information structure.

One subject per post
This is all about keyword density, which is the ratio of the word someone searches for against the total numbers of words on the web page. Most blog posts are rather short, and they’re often about one subject. That means a good chance of a high keyword density - especially if you compare it to a standard corporate web site where you try to tell about all your products on one page, or very few pages.

The blog site’s information structure
Blogs are “flat” sites. They have a first page (level 1), current posts (level 2), about page (level 2), archive pages (level 2) and archived posts (level 3). That’s it. It’s not clear exactly how important this is. Some claim spiders don’t regularly index very deep sites and that low-level pages are given lower ranking, others say this is not a factor to care about.

Links then?
Well, they will do you good too. A high Google PageRank is obviously better than a low. But if you don’t get the above things right, the PageRank won’t mean as much to you as it otherwise would have.

By Fredrik Wacka

Your site gets great traffic from search engines, and yet it needs a new design. How can you freshen up a site without risking a decline in rankings and a loss of traffic from search engines?

If a site ranks well in the search engines and gain plenty of traffic that converts, site owners are concerned about losing top positioning and qualified leads. Yet sites obviously must redesign from time-to-time. This session examined strategies to come through a site redesign and successfully retain or increase search-related traffic.

If a site already has good search engine rankings, why redesign?
“First and foremost, redesign is important when evolving from a static HTML site to a dynamic web site,” said Matt Bailey, Web Marketing Director at The Karcher Group. “With the addition of more content, products, shopping carts, etc., site owners might need to move to a dynamic web site with more administrative capabilities.

“Another reason is just to update the web site,” he continued, “freshen up the design and layout. Maybe the site looks like it was designed in 1998. And maybe you want to improve the layout, navigation, or user experience.”

“Another goal of a redesign is to change brand identity to be a little higher end without losing the traffic,” said Amanda Vega, Director of Marketing at Rhino Internet.

Regardless of the reasons for a site redesign, all site owners should plan their search engine marketing strategies before they launch the updated site.

Before the redesign
All speakers recommended gathering data about the current site before creating an updated site. Places to gather data are web analytics tools, market segment analyses, and personas.

“We apply persuasive solution architecture to web sites,” said Jen Weeks, Director of Website Assessments, at Future Now. “There are a few steps that we use in this methodology. Our first step was to create persona. Our personas are based on how people behave on a web site.”

“Second, we did keyword research based on the persona that we developed, and that was specifically to optimize their rankings and conversions,” she continued. “And then we develop wiring frames, storyboards, prototypes based on this data.”

Once the persona is determined, every click-thru possibility is represented in wire frames, and how visitors might navigate a web site. “That is something you might want to do so that you can meet each of your different customer segment needs and where they are in the buying process,” said Weeks.

Both Bailey and Vega recommended using log file analysis to determine site updates.
“Review the history of the current web site, using your logs or other statistics programs,” said Bailey. “Find out what people are currently doing on your site. What pages do they tend to visit? What conversion points to they typically go towards? Look at your entry pages - where are people coming in other than the home page?”

“Identify the user paths towards conversion, because you want to measure those to see how effective they are currently and how you can improve those in the new web site,” he continued.

In addition, Vega recommended carefully reviewing visitor and target audience demographics. In one situation, a client was completely wrong about who made up their chief demographic, which was mostly female. “We used demographic information to drive the page layout and redesign, especially the psychology of an online user,” she said. “What does a woman do on a web site vs. a man? What layout tendencies do they have?” Gender preferences can have a considerable impact on conversion rates, especially on non-U.S. sites.

Launching the redesigned site
Bailey recommended creating a new 404 (Page Not Found) page during the changeover plan. “I can’t stress the importance of this enough,” he said, “because if you create a new URL structure, you are going to need to capture visitors who arrive from old page links Some search engines will not clean out their indices for a number of months so you will continue to get referrals.”

To communicate to the spider-based search engines that URLs have been modified, speakers recommend using a 301 redirect for permanent changes, and a 302 redirect for temporary changes.

“To ensure that we did not lose traffic during a redesign,” said Vega, “we purchase PPC keywords for the highest converting keywords. We kept those ads active until the site converted organically for those words as well. When you are doing a redesign, it becomes especially important to invest in PPC advertising.”

Link development is also part of the redesign equation. “Take a good look at inbound link opportunities and make sure you notify your current inbound links of the changes in your site,” Vega recommended.

Managing client expectations
“If you are a search engine marketer, stay involved with the client make they know what is going on,” said Bailey. “Let clients know that Google rankings are changing daily, so whether or not you put up a new site or not, rankings are going to change regardless.”

“The fact is that any change to your web pages is going to have an impact on your ranking, and there may be a slightly delayed effect,” said Danny Sullivan. By planning ahead, site owners can minimize the effects of a site redesign on traffic and conversions.

By Grant Crowell