Blogging can easily generate thin content without care…
A potential thin content penalty threat exists if your Blog design does not consider duplicate content issues. You can easily do more harm than good to your rankings. A blog implementation may be an excellent way to steadily increase the depth of content on your site in a relatively easy and efficient manner.
But only if it is done right! Getting it wrong will damage your rankings and reputation at Google HQ, which is why I have a page on “How to Fix Google Panda penalties”
Utilising a Blog as a business enhancement tool is as good or better than a conventional “mailing list” email newsletter or article marketing and can actually serve that purpose too, in a fully automated manner. There is a minimal challenge in getting a blog up and running, but make sure you host it on YOUR site. You have the choice of establishing a “hosted’ blog on www.wordpress.com, Blogger, Tumblr and other Blog software services. However, you will only derive benefits (and avoid penalties) if the blog runs on your own website (self-hosted).
There are sundry cumulative benefits and, implemented properly, a Blog enables you to;
- distribute news information to clients and prospective clients
- efficiently increase site content by regularly adding new material
- increase return traffic and “stickiness”
- increase your credibility as people find lots of useful, up-to-date information on your site
Note: my SEO services rates are modest, and I have a range of business SEO packages available.
Blog SEO Tools
Recommended Blog Software
Use WordPress (www.Wordpress.org) which is 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 allows you to 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 hosting system requirements – your web server must support PHP and MySQL databases. These days, that level of technology is available on even the most “basic” level hosting packages.
The big advantage of using WordPress is that there are many “plugins” that allow you to extend the basic functionality. Foremost among those are features and plugins to;
- Dynamically generate unique Titles
- Dynamically generate unique Description meta-tags
- Dynamically generate HTML and XML sitemaps
- Solicit newsletter subscriptions and automatically distribute newsletters based on recent posts’ content
There are a bewildering array of plugins but we will install and configure a set of tested plugins that will automate the processes for you. My WordPress SEO package can take care of that for you.
How a thin content penalty can occur
Many people use an external Blog to artificially boost rankings on their main site by creating lots of links from the Blog. This was often done using a hosted WordPress.com, Blogspot or Tumblr blog. The effectiveness of that was significant for a time.
In the wake of the Penguin algorithm, this became a breach of Google’s terms of service and webmaster guidelines – labelled as a manipulative link-building scheme… and a well-deserved thin content penalty could be yours! If that is what YOU did, the best way forward is to request an SEO audit and get your site properly assessed.
Using an externally hosted Blog to artificially boost the rankings on your main site is certain to attract a ranking penalty!
You have the option of transferring any valuable content across to a newly installed Blog on your main site and using it to drive traffic with fresh new content. We’ve had lots of practice at doing just that for many clients…
In many cases, it’s been a key element of our Penguin penalty reversal efforts.
References:
Guest Blogging Is also a High-Risk Strategy!
Farming out blog posts onto other sites with links back to you is risky. Accepting offers for other people to write content and post on your blog is also risky!
References:
Content Penalty Solutions
Page last updated on Thursday, October 12, 2023 by the author Ben Kemp