Implementing blogs for SEO: a Blog (weB log) is an excellent way to steadily increase the depth of content on your site in an easy and efficient manner.
Utilising a Blog as a business messaging enhancement tool is arguably better than a newsletter as it can be automated in terms of distribution. There is minimal effort needed to get a blog up and running on a WordPress website.
There are numerous benefits that a business SEO consultant can help you achieve. A Blog, if properly used, will enable you to;
- Distribute new information to clients and prospective clients
- Efficiently increase site content by rapidly adding new material.
- Increase links to your site as your Blog contents are disseminated across other sites on the ‘net.
- Build a “deep link” count to internal pages e.g. www.yoursite.co.nz/your-blog/archives/articles/Your_Tips
- Grow traffic as people find extracts from your Blog, and come looking for the source
- Enhance your credibility as people find lots of useful, up-to-date information on your site
You have the choice of establishing a “hosted’ blog on www.WordPress.org and other Blog software services, but the greatest benefits will be accrued if you get it up and running at www.yoursite.co.nz/your-blog/
Software
Without question, WordPress is the de facto standard for blogging. It’s an Open Source application that not only has all the required “bells and whistles” but is easy to install, set up, and manage. It has an excellent “web browser” interface that means you can add new material from your desk, or from home. Hell, you can even configure it to accept and post incoming emails from yourself!
There are some basic system requirements – your (Apache) server must support PHP and MySQL databases. These days, that level of technology is available on most “basic” level hosting packages.
Installation
If you’ve got cPanel hosting with Fantastico, you can do the WordPress installation in a few minutes because the installation scripts are probably pre-installed already for you! If not, it might take a little longer, but the WordPress guys take pride in the “5-minute install” concept. It is really easy – even if you’ve got to download the application, unzip it, upload it to your site into its own directory, add a new MySQL database, add a user, start the configuration file and insert the database/user /password details into the configuration file, it should be up and running inside 30 minutes. It would be a good idea to read through the “Read Me ” file before you start… the instructions are clear, concise, and in a logical and coherent order! Pity all documentation was not like that! 🙂
Blogs for SEO Configuration
With WordPress, there are a handful of system settings to consider once you’ve got your Blog operational. Of these, I’d say the three most important are as follows;
1.) Options / Writing / Update Services
The setting for the automatic update services, where blog search engines, directories and news feed services are “pinged” each time you add new content. By default, WordPress includes a few services, some of which will in turn update other services. However, you will probably want the widest coverage possible, and to extend that list to include all known services! Takes a little longer to process a new posting, but means you get the best overall result… and that’s what its all about! There is a list of possibilities you can copy at www.theseoguy.co.nz/ping-page.htm
Copy and paste the ones you want to use into the “Update Services” panel at the bottom of this page; www.yoursite.co.nz/yourblog/wp-admin/options-writing.php and choose Update Settings to add them permanently.
2.) Options / Permalinks
As they put it; “By default, WordPress uses web URLs which have question marks and lots of numbers in them – however WordPress offers you the ability to create a custom URL structure for your permalinks and archives. This can improve the aesthetics, usability, and forward compatibility of your links.“
From an SEO point of view, the “post name” option ensures that our URLs not only look sensible, but the Search Engines will also be able to navigate them. However, getting this arcane bit of trickery to work requires you to implement the supplied “mod_rewrite” in your .htaccess file… if you are developing a glazed look about now, just bear with me a little longer! 🙂
The .htaccess file is a dangerous area to be playing in, as a mistake in this file can render your site inaccessible – until the Host Company’s support guy sorts it out for you – usually by renaming it! How do I know so much about this shit? Well, it happened to ME! 🙂
You should have installed your blog into its own directory, which minimises the potential problems substantially! WordPress provides the correct “mod_rewrite” code and will write that to the .htaccess file all by itself. Usually… unless there is some kind of file permissions issue.
If WordPress cannot write to your .htaccess file
Sometimes it has to be added manually.
www.yoursite.co.nz/yourblog/wp-admin/options-permalink.php – its nasty looking stuff, as you can see below;
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /yourblog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /yourblog/index.php [L]
- So choosing the Custom Option /%postname% is good…
- Copy it into a text file – e.g. open Notepad, and paste the code in.
- Save it as htaccess.txt in your local copy of your site
- Choose Update Settings in WordPress Options / Permalinks
- Use FTP to upload htaccess.txt into your BLOG directory – Please, NOT your root directory!
- Using your FTP application, rename the htacces.txt file to .htaccess
Open your Blog, browse around it and (hopefully) not only will everything be working, but the URLs will now not have any of those dreadful &, ? or = thingys embedded in them. If it’s not working… a technical SEO consultant can quickly fix such teething problems. 🙂 However, you should at least be able to access the Blog directory with your FTP client and then rename .htaccess back to htaccess.txt and bring it back to life while you await a response from the WordPress forum.
3.) Categories
From an SEO perspective, it’s important to develop a good Category Structure, because the category names are going to be embedded as “tags” in all your Blog posts, a little like the concept of the “keyword meta-tag” and this will help define and describe your content, especially in and
4.) Tags
Don’t use them. For most websites, Tags are a threat, not an asset. Rarely does anyone have any understanding of how to employ them well. In 20 years, I’ve never once seen Tags employed correctly to generate pages that rank well. All I’ve ever seen is a “shotgun” approach that generates masses of duplicate content.
Categories vs Tags
Overall, you should use either Categories or Tags but rarely ever both. If you don’t know how to use Tags as a cross-referencing Index, avoid them like the plague. Tags can have value on a large website with hundreds of posts.
Blogs for SEO Content
Now that you’ve got the Blog basics sorted out, start populating it with some quality content. I recommend making sure it’s spell-checked as you go. Write articles that solve real-world challenges for your current and future clients. Write helpful content for real people, not for search engines. Once you’ve got it formatted the way you want, add the Title, select your Category/s from the right menu, and click the “Save and Continue Editing” button. Double-check the content and formatting, and when you are happy with it, choose “Publish.” If you need some help optimising Blog content, the best option is a website audit that assesses the options for improvement.
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Page last updated on Wednesday, October 11, 2023 by the author Ben Kemp