Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Blogging is dying - long live blogging
Blogs are fundamental to the Internet; without them Google would have little fresh content to index, other than brand new web sites. Existing web sites can help improve their indexing by Google (and other search engines) if they include a blog. The reason is simple. When we visit a search engine and look for something we expect to find the latest. What we hate is going back to search for something only to find the same set of results. We are creatures of "freshness".
The vast majority of web sites are not updated from the moment they are born. You can find millions of web pages whose last update was in the 1990s, let alone the hundreds of millions of pages that haven't been updated in the past year. Get those in your search results and you feel cheated.
Blogs, by their very nature are fresh and new - and hence they are manna to search engines. It means by indexing blog entries the search listings for each keyword phrase can always appear new - assuming, of course, that people are blogging about that keyword phrase.
And therein lies the problem; people used to blog, but now it is losing its popularity. Of all the world's 130 million blogs, only 1% of them post anything each week. More than this, according to Technorati, only around 6% of blogs have been updated in the past four months. In other words, almost all blogs which have been set up are largely being ignored by their founders - and therefore their audiences.
In fact, Technorati's statistics make grim reading. The amount of blogging is constantly falling - and that provides a problem for the search engines. It means their listings will not have as much of a "freshness" factor as they might like. And when search engines are not up-to-date, we don't like them.
It also means a problem for business. It suggests that certain blogs will dominate the search results - the ones that get updated more than once a week. Unless you are blogging, your business is going to find it even harder to get noticed.
So why do so many businesses give up blogging? Is it the effort? The time? The lack of ideas? It's none of these. The single biggest reason I have found with my coaching clients is not placing blogging at the centre of their business. It is seen as a "nice to have", rather than an essential. Changing your business thinking to making blogging essential will have dramatic impacts on visibility, reputation and search engine ranking.
So, don't be like the 99% of people who don't update their blogs at least weekly. Instead, blog more than once a week and it will put you in that tiny fraction of people who are going to get noticed online. And if you're wondering - my focus on blogging has placed this web site in the Top 0.28% of all blogs indexed by Technorati and this has led this site to being in the Top 1.63% of all web sites, as measured by traffic (check here). Before I started blogging, I was nowhere.
Labels: blogging, internet marketing, internet psychology
Readers' Comments:
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September 23, 2008 12:14 PM 
Ron Rosenhead said…
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September 23, 2008 12:28 PM 
Graham Jones said…
Ron, thanks for your comment. I'm glad blogging is working for you and thanks for using my coaching service. Glad to have been of some help.
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September 23, 2008 3:36 PM Louise Barnes-Johnston said…
What an interesting post Graham! I'd noticed that, over the last few months, the number of new blog posts arriving in my Google Reader were diminishing. At the same time, the number of tweets from twitterers I'm following have increased (could there be a correlation?).
I too recommend that my business owner coaching clients should blog - and usually receive the same answer as you, that they don't have time.
Having decided to use blogging as part of my overall marketing, I'm much encouraged by your post (even if my stats aren't as impressive as yours - yet!).
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September 23, 2008 4:33 PM Graham Jones said…
Louise, thanks for your comment. I'm not sure there is a direct relationship between increased use of Twitter and decreased use of Blogging, but there might be something. Perhaps the open-ended nature of blogging puts people off writing, whereas they can say something in 140 characters...!
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September 24, 2008 7:30 AM Denise Taylor said…
I do look forward to your posts and have them direct to my inbox so I don't miss any.
Have just used web site grader and have a ranking of 81 and am in the top 1.84% of blogs and an Alexa ranking of 2,664,993 which is in the top 8.68 % of all websites.
So looks like I'm doing some good things. I aim to write my blog 5 times a week - best go and do it now!
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September 24, 2008 3:37 PM Matt Ambrose said…
I'm finding that more businesses are becoming disillusioned with the return on pay-per-click advertising. Blogging can improve their natural listing as well as improve their conversion rate by building trust, credibility and answering the questions blocking a sale.
For years I've been hearing people harp on about the benefits of blogging for a very good reason: it works.
An interesting blog Graham
I can testify to:
putting blogging at the centre of my business strategy
improving my Alexa rankings by 50%
other blogs picking up my content
contacts from prospective clients
picked up in Google alerts
This is all in a 5 month period with one month of reduced blogging in the August holiday period. Yes, there is still a long way to go….
Oh, and thanks to you Graham for your help in coaching me showing the way forward.
Ron Rosenhead
www.ronrosenhead.co.uk