It is surprising that more companies do not use blogging software like WordPress to promote their sites. As discussed in my previous post, sites like Review Me sell advertising on blogs, yet very few companies seem to have caught onto the fact that they can very cheaply and easily set up a blog of their own.
In its own right WordPress is a very powerful SEO tool.
Blogs are considered to have a structural advantage over conventional sites in terms of SEO.
Consider the navigation of WordPress, you can find posts by:
Date / Month of the post
Category
Clicking the author to view posts
Hitting the “Feed” URL
Posts are often linked together / cross referenced
In addition to the above, WordPress itself has near perfect SEO properties using:
Valid XHTML markup
Correct use of header tags
Permalinks that ensure the page URL has keywords from the title in it
The page title is set to the name of the post
No JavaScript or flash in navigation
Furthermore, there are plug-ins available to automatically generate an XML sitemap which can be submitted automatically to search engines like google.
Typically:
A post made on a blog will appear in google within a few days
A blog will almost 100% index in google, i.e. almost, if not all pages get listed
Getting a Blog listed in google is effortless.
Also, generating content in a blog is very quick and easy. It is a very convenient means to pump out relevant, keyworded content meaning companies can write extensively about their own activities.
Strangely very few companies seem to take advantage of this, I can only think of two possible reasons for this
They are not aware of / do not understand the power of the technology
They believe it will damage their corporate image
I think the second reason is unlikely, a blog can be tucked behind a “News” link, which is a legitimate thing to do, i.e. there is nothing wrong with companies publishing information about their ongoing activities.
I think the first reason, awareness is the real reason companies are not exploiting this technology, particularly within the UK where blogging is less popular than in the US .
I anticipate a real change in attitudes toward bloggin in the next two years as companies begin using software like wordpress in an attempt to improve their SEO.
All this is bad news for bloggers who will have an increasing amount of spammy corporate sites cluttering up their community sites.