ORANGE COUNTY, CA – It’s our normal SEO practice to build a custom WordPress blog for our new clients and continually post on these blogs. However, recently we’ve come across new clients who are reluctant to have a blog hosted on their site. We tell these clients not to waste their time and money on SEO, and there are many reasons why blogs are vital to optimal SEO.

Let’s start with the basics of why search engines were built: because text existed on the Internet in an unorganized fashion. Search engine spiders indexed, organized and provided the text in an easy-to-use format for their users. Google rates and ranks sites based on three important factors: content, relevancy and popularity.

We have said before that content is king when it comes to SEO. After all, Google feeds and survives on content. Google also loves sites that feed it more quality content on a regular basis. As we explained before, a WordPress blog is the best platform for SEO.

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If you are competing with strong rivals, you can have an advantage over them by simply writing and posting articles on your site’s blog on a regular basis. “Regular basis” is a loose term – for some smaller businesses, writing once a month gives you that advantage. But the reality is that for most e-commerce sites, writing once a day may still not be enough. So, depending on your market, you need to decide how often you want to write.

No matter how often you post, always remember the most important factor for more SEO success: stick to your strategy and continue at it for at least six months to see the results. In the meantime, here are some of the most common areas of a blog that I am asked to explain to my clients.

Why Can’t I Use My Off-Site Blog?

You may have a blog that is hosted on blogger: example.blogger.com. Whatever you write and post on this blog will not affect your main site: www.example.com. Remember, your goal should be to show Google that www.example.com is being updated on a regular basis. Thus, your blog needs to be hosted on your site: www.example.com/blog/.

Why Do I Need A WordPress Blog?

There are many blog templates you can integrate with your site, but through our research and experience we have concluded that WordPress is the best for this purpose. Here are some reasons:

WordPress Easily Allows for Skin Changes

You can conveniently design and tweak the look of your blog with WordPress. You do need to know web-development to do so, but they provide you with all the tools you need. So, your blog will look like a page of your site.

Because WordPress is the most popular blog CMS, it has many users and many web developers behind it. Thus, you have a huge pool of free WordPress templates to use, as well as lots of plugins. Also, any time you get stuck on something, you can use the many forums on the topic to ask your question. It is also very likely that your question has already been answered by an expert, just look for your topic and search.

WordPress Allows for Permalinks

Permalinks are a great relevancy tool we use to optimize our clients’ sites. Keyword-rich permalinks help your page rank well for your intended keywords. WordPress allows you to easily edit your page’s URL using permalinks.

Here is an example of a keywords-rich permalink: http://www.mastergoogle.com/blog/facebook-and-seo-how-facebook-can-help-your-business.php.

WordPress Allows for Meta Tag Optimization

This is also important. You can write a separate title, description and keywords tags for each of your blog posts.

Google Loves WordPress “Tags”

You can give each post specific “tags” that are basically keywords related to the post (not to be confused with meta tags, which are part of the header code). WordPress creates a specific page for each tag and will group all the posts that have the same tags under it. The URL of this page also includes the tag: http://www.mastergoogle.com/blog/tag/google-seo.

Tag pages rank very well on Google search results because all the content under the tag page are related to the tag keyword.

Using the Blog Feed on Other Pages

Your WordPress Blog Feed could be used on any page of your site. That will help to freshen up your other site pages content since you’re updating your blog content on a regular basis.

Google Indexes WordPress Posts Immediately

When you post on your WordPress blog, Google is pinged and will immediately index your new post and place it in the search results. This eliminates the need for you to have to “submit” your new page to Google or “link” to it from other sites or just simply have to wait for Google to see the new post.

In general, Google loves WordPress sites and will rank sites with such blogs that are updated on a more regular basis better than the competition. If you have any questions, please leave a comment here or contact us directly.

TAMPA, FLORIDA — On Friday, we told you about why you might have lost your Google ranking after the Panda update in 2011.

Image Courtesy of GeekBlogOnline.com.

In the second installment of our two-part series, we’re sharing some helpful information on how you can tweak your site and hopefully restore your ranking. We’ll also discuss when to give in and hire a professional SEO web services company.

If any of the factors we outlined in our previous post describe your situation regarding lost Google rankings, fixing the problem is doable, says Ali Husayni, who develops SEO marketing plans for clients.

First of all, as we’ve said repeatedly through the years, you must write fresh, quality and unique content on a regular basis, as Husayni emphasizes. Search for your content online to make sure other sites are not stealing from your site. Simply copy a phrase, put it in quotes in your search box, and see what results you get. Let’s say you find that people have, in fact, copied your content. What then?

Mickie Kennedy, founder of the press release distribution company eReleases, offers some great tips:

Reach out to the blogger or the company that you feel has swiped your content. In a professional manner, explain that your material is copyrighted and they must remove it from their site or pay you for it.

Report a Digital Millennium Copyright Act violation. The DMCA outlines penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet. A simple Google search will provide you with a template to complete and sent to the offending party’s hosting provider.

Notify the offending party’s advertisers. Telling the advertisers about the offense could cause them to pull their advertisements and affect the blog’s revenue.

“Hitting someone in the pocketbook can be effective in getting your point across,” Husayni says.

Call in the Big Guns. You also should consider that at some point, you might need to hire a professional. SEO tactics and techniques change as often as Google changes its algorithms. Simply running your business likely keeps you busy enough, without also having to play “SEO expert” and trying to keep up with your website.

A business SEO specialist can monitor your site and work to get your site ranked so you can focus on your customers.

You always need writers who understand SEO and the overall SEO strategy, whether they come in the form of a consultant or are provided by a full-fledged SEO provider. Because content is important for a site, you need someone on your side generating that content for you if you don’t have time to handle it yourself.

At the end of the day, it is important to remember that your site must provide useful, helpful content if you expect Google to send visitors to it.