Forum Moderators: rogerd
Not sure blogs are are an asset to the general SEO sector, though they may well help the individual SEO...
For example, I wouldn't expect a magician's blog to give away his secrets, but many seem to think that's what SEO's should be doing, from dawn to dusk (I'm not suggesting that was your expectation!).
What gets to me isn't what's missing - but what's there; Google bashing, ODP bashing - and not forgetting the paper tigers; I'm bored rigid with SEOs telling me about SEO myths, usually ones they've just made up, in order to have something to drone on about.
Of course there are ignorant, stupid and out-of-date SEOs, just as there are amazingly bright and incisive SEOs; but that does not make the ignorance a 'myth'. It's just plain ignorance, and glorifying it doesn't help anyone.
There are a handful of ignorances that approach mythical proportions - such as the blind faith in domain name, folder and file name value or the 1998 classic that Will Not Die, keyword stuffing.
In the main, if a blog is well written, and has something to say (beyond bitterness and spite), then the visit wasn't wasted. An SEO with a sense of humor is always worth a revisit, too!
Quadrille, I'd like to get your input on the differences between the two.
barf.
Then there are the noobs whose thoughts may impress their pals at the internet cafe/International Headquarters of their dollar a day empire, but out in the real world it's pure drivel.
That said, the service fills a need and does it fairly well.
We know that a regularly updated blog can show quickly in the serps, giving the blogger - and his more gullible readers - the delusion that the blog is, in some way, important. And, in SEO terms at least, successful.
But is that really the case? Or am I spreading another 'seo myth'? ;)
I believe that the circumstantial evidence is almost overwhelming that in SE eyes, blogs are utterly ephemeral; as good, as they say, as the most recent post.
And blog links are either nofollow or nearly worthless.
So I'd always go for plain old fashioned 'proper' websites, rather than blog - for two reasons:
1. SEO is nothing if not long-term, and only a 'proper' site can serve the content best in the longer term.
2. I'm too lazy and disorganized to maintain a blog for more than three days (yes, I've tried!)
But seriously, in the bigger picture, blogs just don't have staying power.
Bloggers are happily free of any such constraints, and for most of them, it shows...
Of course there are the handful of people we all know who ARE cutting edge professionals, but in general its a topic that any content desperate blogger can copy and paste. Similar to "Make money from Adsense" blogs.
I am with Marcia over the potential of blogs. Their inherent structure makes them untenable for long term blogging as income generators and community building.
The problem with blogs as I see it is that people only read the last couple of entries, old entries are lost, and stop producing income, let alone readers.
So a reader only looks at the first couple of entries, and the adverts around them are the only income producers.
These top articles need to be continually refreshed to attract and maintain readers, so you are effectivly running on the spot creating articles that quickly lose appeal.
Also having many articles on a blog interface diffuses the keywword density of the posts making the adverts more wishy washy and less on topic.
Also comments by readers don't carry any weight or help in advertising, unlike a messageboard structure, so all the serious input is left to the blogger, and commenters are not rewarded for their posts.
I see blogs as a niche system that will quickly run out of steam, people will soon grow tired of the treadmill approach. Smart bloggers will realise that their hard work is not rewarded finacially or in a community building method.
What is scary is that anyone can be an SEO expert, One such person asked for help in better targeting adverts on their website and when I investigated, their website had no Heading tags, and they had know knowledge of how to use them for SEO. These people were called 'experts' with a list of sites they had 'fixed'.
I'm not going to go into the poor standards of content on many SEO blogs. 90% of everything is crap, and that applies to all forms of website.
I agree that the blog format tends to bury older posts. This is sometimes down to the way blogs are written: making longer posts which are more spaced out means this is less likely to happen, although it depends on how many posts show up on the front page as well. But it's all geared towards displaying a couple of paragraphs and a picture, rather than any kind of in-depth discussion of anything.
If you are going to adopt the short post and a link format, you need to post quickly, find off-the-beaten-track stuff, and in general be a consistently good source of new content.
These are blogs I visit multiple times a day, and I use this blog constantly for research of older content.
Blogs nothing more than a CMS, A fully functional wordpress blog should not be pideon-holed into some of the definitions I see here.
Most local newspaper sites are Blogs, I am not even sure I know what a Blog is anymore. Blogs have changed the political landscape in this country...
Blogs are great tools and websites when used properly.
[edited by: rogerd at 9:41 pm (utc) on Dec. 7, 2007]
[edit reason] no URLs or specifics, please [/edit]
But I think the issue here is not so much the 'general' value of blogs ... more their SEO/sem value ... which is virtually zero, though there maybe 6 or 7 exceptions to that.
