One of the biggest challenges facing an SEO marketer is the regular provision
of high quality website content. Good content not only works to improve conversion
rates but is also known to help with search engine optimisation. More pages
means more targeted keywords and stronger intra-linking while the regular addition
of content attracts search engine spiders more frequently. As such, adding
a blog to your online portfolio enables you to leverage all of these benefits
in your own search engine optimisation.

Regular Content Addition

Good SEO means attracting search engine spiders. Initially this is done by
directing the spider to a web page using a link from another page. However,
spiders are known to more regularly visit those sites that update more often.
Because a blog naturally encourages the regular addition of fresh content,
this will encourage the spiders back more frequently and ensures that any new
pages you add to your site will be indexed and ranked quicker.

Increased Keywords

Updating a blog that is based on the same, or a similar topic, to your main
website enables you to target a greater number of keywords. Long tail search
terms are those that are almost impossible to specifically target and while
they are only searched for very infrequently, they combine to offer an excellent
number of sales or conversions. Natural blog writing as part of an SEO campaign
will offer pages that organically include these terms.

Linkbait

A major aspect of the blogging and online social community is linking. Blogs
regularly link to one another’s posts providing a flow of traffic and also
helping improve the search engine ranking for the target blog posts. Blog posts
are usually incisive and contain informational content making them highly linkable
for other website and blog owners. This will improve search engine optimization
by increasing the strength of your link profile.

Intra-Linking To Deep Pages

Within the content of some blog posts, it is possible to include deep links
to pages of your main website. A deep link can point to a service page or product
page by way of offering supporting information. Not only will visitors be inclined
to follow these links but it will help to share the benefit of inbound links
between a blog and the main website. Accurate intra-linking is an important
facet of search engine optimisation.

Non-SEO Benefits Of Blogging

As well as being of huge benefit to SEO, blogging provides a number of benefits.
Blogs encourage users to bookmark your website and visit more often, or to
sign up for RSS feeds. Either way you are able to keep in regular contact with
many visitors that you would otherwise lose. It also adds a personable face
to a business website and builds trust between you and your readers. Well written
and on-point posts also improve your image as an authoritative figure on your
chosen topic.

The Blogging Craze

Blogging is one of the biggest phenomenon to hit the Internet and, in part,
signalled the beginning of the web 2.0 evolution. It encourages social networking
and provides businesses and individuals with an opportunity to post regular
content online for others to read. By adding a blog to a website, it can be
used to greatly improve SEO efforts, improve conversion, and generally give
your main website greater appeal to visitors.

The duplicate content debate is one that has been waged for a long period of time although, in reality, the debate is over specifics rather than the general fact that duplicate content is devalued by search engines. The use of the term duplicate content penalty often leads to confusion, however, because a page isn’t strictly penalised for the use of duplicate content. It won’t, though, gain the same SEO benefit as if the page used original content instead.

What Exactly Is Considered Duplicate Content?

A page is said to use duplicate content when a significant proportion of that page is duplicated from another indexed page. When this is found to have occurred, Google in particular, does not rank the page highly, if at all. When a page uses unique content they gain the full SEO advantage of offering fresh content containing keywords and offering genuine value to visitors.

Supplemental Search Results

When a person conducts a search on Google they are usually presented with a mass of results. By navigating to the end of those results there is also usually a link that states there are other pages that contain similar results and to click the link in order to view these results. If a page is indexed as being in those supplemental results then it obviously won’t gain the same kind of search engine traffic as the main results. This can cause a problem for your SEO efforts and may require either a rewriting of the page so that it is considered unique or the gaining of a number of quality inbound links.

Duplicate Content And SEO Link Building

Where duplicate content can cause problems for your own SEO efforts is in such practices as article marketing and other link building methods. Link building is a vital part of search engine optimisation and helps to improve search engine rankings. Article marketing is seen as a viable method of building links but when you submit a single article to numerous directories, and that article is subsequently picked up by other websites and online publications, only one of those pages will appear in the main index. This also means that only that your search engine optimisation campaign is only gaining the full benefit of that one link.

Submitting To Single Directories Or Single Sites

It is possible to help beat this by either submitting an article to only one directory – you will gain the benefit of the article as it appears within the directory and you will gain the traffic from any other websites that use that link. Alternatively, offer articles directly to the high profile websites that will benefit your search engine optimisation efforts.

Duplicate Content And Your Search Engine Optimisation Campaign

If you offer your own content to others, then you should try to ensure that your page is the one that is indexed and ranked first. This ensures that you get the benefit of the well written, search engine optimised content. You should also rest assured that once your page is indexed, even if others choose to copy it completely without or without a link to your page it will be your page that appears in the search results.