Blogs 101: Part 1 of 3 Video

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Blogs 101: Part 1 of 3

Hello and welcome to Blogging 101 Part 1! So what exactly is a blog? Why try to reword what is already eloquently written? Here is the definition for blog from Columbia Encyclopedia. Blog, short for weblog, an online, regularly updated journal or newsletter that is readily accessible to the general public by virtue of being posted on a website. Blogs typically report and comment on topics of interest to the author, and are usually written and posted using software specifically designed to facilitate blogging. Just to give you a quick example here is an example of a blog that is dedicated to Search Engine Optimization. Now what is so great about blogs? The great is entirely in the eye of the beholder, but here are some distinct advantages that come to mind. Blogs are a great medium for your customers and prospects to get to know you and your services better. When you post information to a blog the blog software automates the process of updating your website with the new information and archiving old content, simplifying the chore of keeping your website fresh and relevant. Blogs can automatically announce or ping to the world whenever new content is added. Again, this automated process simplifies the all-important and normally time-consuming promotion process. Through the use of syndication methods your blog postings, your writings can be monitored easily by fans of your services in writing. Blogs provide a wonderful platform for readers to interact with you by leaving comments. Due to the highly social and interactive nature of blogs it's possible that links will begin to appear to your posts from other websites. This can increase your website's link popularity and will only happen if you write engaging and source-worthy content. So what blog software is available? Blog software, both free and commercial, is so plentiful, I couldn't possibly cover all of them. But that being said we have a summary of four of the most popular solutions. The first one we will talk about is Blogger by Google. Now I have always been impressed with some of the options available in this free solution. Unfortunately, Blogger is far from perfect and lacks much of the customization potential available in other solutions. There are two types of blogger. One is the hosted solution that uses Google's servers called BlogSpot and the other is a personally hosted solution where updates and archives are automatically posted within your own website. The BlogSpot solution is not recommended because, like TypePad which we will come to in a moment, all of the content and links will not be as influential because they are not hosted on your own website. There will be some benefit because your blog is likely to link to your main website profusely; however, it is best to integrate the Blogger blog within your own website. The second blogging solution we will discuss is WordPress. Now WordPress is a very impressive blogging solution that can be easily installed and offers myriad advanced options including simple-to-install plug-ins to extend the capabilities of the program. Personally I have installed News WordPress for a while now on personal websites and I highly recommend it. One concern about using WordPress is integrating your current website design with it as its templates are solely CSS driven. Number three is Movable Type. Movable Type is perhaps the most popular blogging tool available because it offers a great deal of flexibility and complexity. Unfortunately, these additional elements result in a tool that's not meant for the faint of heart. However, if you want an advanced blogging solution that is sure to stand the test of time then this is the tool for you. Pricing for personal licenses is free but commercial licenses start at $149.95 per year. Number four is TypePad. TypePad and Movable Type are made by the same company. The learning curve for TypePad is significantly lower while providing many of the advantages of Movable Type. Elise Bauer at learningmovabletype.com actually recommends between the two softwares TypePad over Movable Type for new users because it requires little or no HTML and CSS knowledge. The downside is that it is a hosted service so it's not an effective option from a search engine marketing standpoint because the content is not hosted on your own website but on another. As a result, the content does not directly offer weight and relevance to your own website except from the standpoint of backlinks. Now there are some things you should consider before creating your blog. Having your Webmaster install a blog solution is generally not a difficult task. Although you are going to have to put on your thinking cap and plan out the best method to integrate a blog within your website's existing structure. Some of the more important considerations that relate to usability and search engine rankings include carefully naming your blog. Your blog is an extension of your company's brand and its marketing goals. Consider this when researching the name of the blog. Start your research by noting the names of your competitor's blogs. You may find a pattern of keywords emerging. Also review the various search frequencies for blog related keywords in your industry. Use a tool like Keyword Discovery or Wordtracker and you can get some perspective on the popularity of various phrases. The next thing you are going to want to do is decide on a simple path. Your blog should be located at a space in your website, it's simple to remember and to navigate to. For example www.yourcompany.com/blog is often adopted because it's the easiest to remember. Next you are going to have to add the blog into your site's navigation. Planning on your blog being a large draw to the website? If so, you should consider where you are going to integrate links to your blog within the main navigation of your website. In some cases I see owners placing a link to their blog in the space that appears more of an afterthought than a prime location for viewers to access. Remember, your blog is meant to create readership overtime and providing easy access to that blog is a crucial step. The next thing to discuss is how to avoid duplicate content issues on blogs. When a new posting is created in your blog the system will automatically create two types of archives. One, will be an archive by date, by month, or by week; and the other will be a categorical archive. Categories or labels as they are called on Blogger allow visitors to find your postings under certain topics you specify. Now these automated archival options provide excellent options for users to find information; however, they also give the search engines far too many versions of the same article. Just consider how many versions will be available in the scenario noted above. First, you'll have one on the homepage where the article is originally posted. To give you an example of the article that this video is based upon it was categorized in the Social Marketing category, the SEO Tips category and the Ross Dunn category. Also it appears in the Date-Driven archive and the blog feed which will duplicate either a full copy or a snippet of the original article depending on certain settings. In this case you could see there is a potential for six identical copies of a single article within this blog. This is not good since search engines are not fond of duplicate content. It adds unnecessary bulk to their databases, drains valuable processing time and it can appear like spam. So how do you minimize duplicate content issues on a blog? Use your robots.txt file to block sections of your blog from search engine spiders so the same content is not indexed repeatedly through different arenas. Begin by cutting back the greatest defender either the date archives or the labels and categories. We have two different options for how to do this. The first option is to block spiders from the categories. Since they are the most duplicate-ridden sections to your blog. After all, if you apply three categories to a single posting you will end up with at least three versions of the same article within your blog. However if you choose to block categories and only enable date-driven archives then you only have a single version of your article located in the blog over the long-term, which is far more desirable. Once the categories have been blocked you're only going to have three duplicates of your article once the complete article is posted, and ultimately, only one, since the article leaves the blog home page and feed. Now the second option involves a different method of operating the blog and minimizing duplicate content. For this method, all articles should appear in a full format in an article section of your website that's separate from your blog. When you release a new article create a small teaser in the form of a snippet of text and post it in your blog with a link to the full article for continued reading. Next, use your site's robots.txt to block spiders from the data archives feed and other duplicate version of pages with the exception of labels and categories. When you categorize a blog posting do it sparingly to minimize the duplicates. Since the snippet is only a portion of the core article there is a little chance it will affect the main article negatively. The second option can be a great choice because the full versions of the articles are standing on their own in a portion of the website that serves as a library source. So why is it so important to be worried about duplicate content? Well, the more duplicates you have of a particular document the more you devalue it in the eyes of Google and other search engines. When content becomes particularly devalued Google tosses such content into a secondary database called Supplemental Index, where Content it considers the lesser quality is stored. Once in the Supplemental Index the content rarely sees the light of day. The simple fact is, duplicate content is rarely punished heavily, it's just ignored. Adam Lasnik from Google wrote an excellent article discussing the perils of duplicate content which I highly recommend if you want more information and this is sometimes confusing subject.

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Hello and welcome to Blogging 101 Part 1!

So what exactly is a blog? Why try to reword what is already eloquently written? Here is the definition for blog from Columbia Encyclopedia.

Blog, short for weblog, an online, regularly updated journal or newsletter that is readily accessible to the general public by virtue of being posted on a website. Blogs typically report and comment on topics of interest to the author, and are usually written and posted using software specifically designed to facilitate blogging.

Just to give you a quick example here is an example of a blog that is dedicated to Search Engine Optimization.

Now what is so great about blogs?

The great is entirely in the eye of the beholder, but here are some distinct advantages that come to mind. Blogs are a great medium for your customers and prospects to get to know you and your services better. When you post information to a blog the blog software automates the process of updating your website with the new information and archiving old content, simplifying the chore of keeping your website fresh and relevant.

Blogs can automatically announce or ping to the world whenever new content is added. Again, this automated process simplifies the all-important and normally time-consuming promotion process.

Through the use of syndication methods your blog postings, your writings can be monitored easily by fans of your services in writing. Blogs provide a wonderful platform for readers to interact with you by leaving comments. Due to the highly social and interactive nature of blogs it's possible that links will begin to appear to your posts from other websites. This can increase your website's link popularity and will only happen if you write engaging and source-worthy content.

So what blog software is available?

Blog software, both free and commercial, is so plentiful, I couldn't possibly cover all of them. But that being said we have a summary of four of the most popular solutions. The first one we will talk about is Blogger by Google.

Now I have always been impressed with some of the options available in this free solution. Unfortunately, Blogger is far from perfect and lacks much of the customization potential available in other solutions.

There are two types of blogger. One is the hosted solution that uses Google's servers called BlogSpot and the other is a personally hosted solution where updates and archives are automatically posted within your own website. The BlogSpot solution is not recommended because, like TypePad which we will come to in a moment, all of the content and links will not be as influential because they are not hosted on your own website. There will be some benefit because your blog is likely to link to your main website profusely; however, it is best to integrate the Blogger blog within your own website.

The second blogging solution we will discuss is WordPress. Now WordPress is a very impressive blogging solution that can be easily installed and offers myriad advanced options including simple-to-install plug-ins to extend the capabilities of the program.

Personally I have installed News WordPress for a while now on personal websites and I highly recommend it. One concern about using WordPress is integrating your current website design with it as its templates are solely CSS driven.

Number three is Movable Type. Movable Type is perhaps the most popular blogging tool available because it offers a great deal of flexibility and complexity. Unfortunately, these additional elements result in a tool that's not meant for the faint of heart. However, if you want an advanced blogging solution that is sure to stand the test of time then this is the tool for you. Pricing for personal licenses is free but commercial licenses start at $149.95 per year.

Number four is TypePad. TypePad and Movable Type are made by the same company. The learning curve for TypePad is significantly lower while providing many of the advantages of Movable Type.

Elise Bauer at learningmovabletype.com actually recommends between the two softwares TypePad over Movable Type for new users because it requires little or no HTML and CSS knowledge. The downside is that it is a hosted service so it's not an effective option from a search engine marketing standpoint because the content is not hosted on your own website but on another. As a result, the content does not directly offer weight and relevance to your own website except from the standpoint of backlinks.

Now there are some things you should consider before creating your blog. Having your Webmaster install a blog solution is generally not a difficult task. Although you are going to have to put on your thinking cap and plan out the best method to integrate a blog within your website's existing structure. Some of the more important considerations that relate to usability and search engine rankings include carefully naming your blog. Your blog is an extension of your company's brand and its marketing goals. Consider this when researching the name of the blog.

Start your research by noting the names of your competitor's blogs. You may find a pattern of keywords emerging. Also review the various search frequencies for blog related keywords in your industry. Use a tool like Keyword Discovery or Wordtracker and you can get some perspective on the popularity of various phrases.

The next thing you are going to want to do is decide on a simple path. Your blog should be located at a space in your website, it's simple to remember and to navigate to. For example www.yourcompany.com/blog is often adopted because it's the easiest to remember.

Next you are going to have to add the blog into your site's navigation. Planning on your blog being a large draw to the website? If so, you should consider where you are going to integrate links to your blog within the main navigation of your website. In some cases I see owners placing a link to their blog in the space that appears more of an afterthought than a prime location for viewers to access. Remember, your blog is meant to create readership overtime and providing easy access to that blog is a crucial step.

The next thing to discuss is how to avoid duplicate content issues on blogs. When a new posting is created in your blog the system will automatically create two types of archives. One, will be an archive by date, by month, or by week; and the other will be a categorical archive.

Categories or labels as they are called on Blogger allow visitors to find your postings under certain topics you specify. Now these automated archival options provide excellent options for users to find information; however, they also give the search engines far too many versions of the same article. Just consider how many versions will be available in the scenario noted above.

First, you'll have one on the homepage where the article is originally posted. To give you an example of the article that this video is based upon it was categorized in the Social Marketing category, the SEO Tips category and the Ross Dunn category.

Also it appears in the Date-Driven archive and the blog feed which will duplicate either a full copy or a snippet of the original article depending on certain settings.

In this case you could see there is a potential for six identical copies of a single article within this blog. This is not good since search engines are not fond of duplicate content. It adds unnecessary bulk to their databases, drains valuable processing time and it can appear like spam. So how do you minimize duplicate content issues on a blog?

Use your robots.txt file to block sections of your blog from search engine spiders so the same content is not indexed repeatedly through different arenas.

Begin by cutting back the greatest defender either the date archives or the labels and categories. We have two different options for how to do this. The first option is to block spiders from the categories. Since they are the most duplicate-ridden sections to your blog. After all, if you apply three categories to a single posting you will end up with at least three versions of the same article within your blog. However if you choose to block categories and only enable date-driven archives then you only have a single version of your article located in the blog over the long-term, which is far more desirable.

Once the categories have been blocked you're only going to have three duplicates of your article once the complete article is posted, and ultimately, only one, since the article leaves the blog home page and feed.

Now the second option involves a different method of operating the blog and minimizing duplicate content. For this method, all articles should appear in a full format in an article section of your website that's separate from your blog. When you release a new article create a small teaser in the form of a snippet of text and post it in your blog with a link to the full article for continued reading.

Next, use your site's robots.txt to block spiders from the data archives feed and other duplicate version of pages with the exception of labels and categories. When you categorize a blog posting do it sparingly to minimize the duplicates. Since the snippet is only a portion of the core article there is a little chance it will affect the main article negatively.

The second option can be a great choice because the full versions of the articles are standing on their own in a portion of the website that serves as a library source.

So why is it so important to be worried about duplicate content?

Well, the more duplicates you have of a particular document the more you devalue it in the eyes of Google and other search engines. When content becomes particularly devalued Google tosses such content into a secondary database called Supplemental Index, where Content it considers the lesser quality is stored. Once in the Supplemental Index the content rarely sees the light of day.

The simple fact is, duplicate content is rarely punished heavily, it's just ignored. Adam Lasnik from Google wrote an excellent article discussing the perils of duplicate content which I highly recommend if you want more information and this is sometimes confusing subject.

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