Many people are turning to creating blogs for their existing websites to increase traffic to their websites.
Major search engines such as Google, love blogs and rank them very highly for a number of reasons, but mainly because they are ‘keyword-rich’.
One of the ways to achieving a high placement on the search engines is through the use of the correct keywords in the right place on your websites. The search engines work very similar to a human in the fact that they usually read from the top left hand corner of the website, with the title description being one of the most important factors to achieving placement on the search engines for the correct search term you want to be found with.
So for instance, if your website focuses on holiday accommodation at the Palazzo Versace on the Gold Coast (http://www.palazzogoldcoast.com), and you have a blog either hosted on the same site, or have an external blog through blogspot which you link directly to the website, your blog post title should reflect your subject, your location, and your hotel accommodation name. Possibly something like this….
‘Budget Accommodation Deals on the Gold Coast at Palazzo Versace’.
Now, if your website and blog is located on the Gold Coast and you want to be found when people search for Gold Coast accommodation make sure your blog ONLY reflects the Gold Coast.
I have seen a number of accommodation web site developers add blogs to their clients websites in the attempt to improve their search engine rankings, but they add other accommodation listings for other hotels as well. While this may detract from bookings on their clients hotel, it will still get good search results for Gold Coast accommodation.
Now, I have seen a number of accommodation website developers attempt this, but instead of adding just related categories, they add Categories to the blog for other locations, and then also include other hotels for other locations.
This is a HUGE MISTAKE!!
The header of the blog now appears something like this:
‘Hotel Name | Port Douglas Accommodation | Gold Coast Accommodation’
I think even if you are not a web developer you can see the obvious mistake… For starters, the search engines don’t know whether the accommodation is in Port Douglas or on the Gold Coast, so it usually drops it from the search engines as it considers it spam. Search engines are smart and realize when you are trying to trick them!
The other problem is you are trying to get the keyword density up for ‘Gold Coast Accommodation’ but then you start adding reference to Port Douglas, this dilutes the keyword density for Gold Coast Accommodation, so while your website statistics on paper might appear good, it is only because people are finding your post for the wrong reasons, while actually pushing your Gold Coast Accommodation listing down the ranks of the search engine.
Download a free copy of WebCEO and run a basic report on your website and you will soon see the reason people are actually finding you. You may be surprised at the results. General website statistics provided by your hosting company can be misleading when the full details aren’t provided.
Whether done on purpose by your web developer to try and get you more hits to your website, it is actually going to damage your ranking on the search engines. I have seen many websites drop from the search engines by this technique by web developers.
Want to know the real secret to achieving top search engine listing with your blog?
Stay tuned.
I will reveal this very simply step that anyone can do in my next blog post, Blogging: Achieving first page results on Google.
Article by Chris Bourke of Devision Design Australia, and Web SEO Coach.
Devision Design specialise in Hotel Accommodation web sites, Accommodation blogs and Tourism website optimization.
Visit www.Devision.com.au
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Tags: blog seo, search engine optimisation, SEO, serch engine optimization
