past articles

Since May 2007 Google has been undertaking a radical change to its search results. It has introduced a "Universal Search" system that will blend listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines among those it gathers from crawling web pages.

For example, in the past you needed to go to the "video" link on the Google home page to search for a video...

..now you will find these types of searches along with the websites in the organic search results.

Below is a Google search for "Polymer Processing". Notice that the blue bar says Web (for web pages) and Books for (book references) and you'll see the book results a the the top of the page in the organic listings.

What does this have to do with blogging? The search engine competition is going to get stiffer because more types of searches will now all be within the organic results. However, the good news is that if you have the time to utilize video, blogs, news, etc. you may improve your activity.

Blogging has lots of advantages for small business and best of all, its FREE! Just a few of the advantages are:

1. Search Engine Marketing and Optimization.
2. Position yourself as an Expert in your Field.
3. Differentiate yourself from the Competition
4. Communicate Directly with your Market.
5. And did I mention...it's FREE!

If you would like to try blogging, I have been using Wordpress for my MVP Visuals blog and find it very easy to use. It is amazing how quickly your new blog will get indexed by the search engines. Once you sign up, it takes very little time for you to create your own blog. Wordpress also has many different templates so you can select a design you like.

Just a few tips on how to get the search engine optimzation benefit from your blog:

1. When you are writing your blog be sure to link back to your website pages. Backlinks are critical to increasing your website's page ranking. For example if you are writing about marine hinges then use marine hinges as your "anchor text" and link back to your webpage on marine hinges on your website. This counts as a "backlink" to your site and will help increase your page rank.

2. Be sure to include your web address and contact information in your by line.

3. Link your Blog to your site and email it to your friends and customers.

If you don't have time to blog, then another way you can get some "link love" is by commenting on other blogs and putting your URL in your signature. If you want to try it out, feel free to comment on my MVP Visuals blog and type in your URL and you'll see your backlink by checking your Google Backlinks generally in a day or two.

So to answer the question To Blog or Not To Blog... YES BLOG ON!

Would you like a free website evaluation? Just give me a call or send an email. I always appreciate your feed back. If you have any questions about this article or your ThomasNet program, feel free to contact me at mary@trconn.com or (860) 601-0150. This article was written by Mary Dykas MVP representing ThomasNet