Blogging is Not Important - It's
Crucial
BY GRAHAM
JONES
It has been established that
having a 'blog' helps your website gain visitors and higher
rankings in search engines. But a small study which I have
just completed shows that blogging is much more important than
this. Blogging appears to be absolutely essential to your
website success. If you are not blogging, your website will
fade into obscurity.
Since blogging took off in the
past year or so, there have been several 'theories' about its
importance. Some people have suggested that it will mean the
end of journalism, as we all become our own 'reporters'.
Others have predicted it will mean the end of civilization as
we know it. More practically, there have been several well
sourced articles which suggest that blogging is a significant
component in a website's success. Sites that include a blog,
the theory goes, will be rewarded by Google with higher
positioning on search engine results.
Like all theories, there is
only one way to find out if they are true and that is to put
them to the test. So, I decided to test the 'Google ranking
theory of blogging'.
My site,
Infoselling, has over 200 pages in it, most of which are
indexed by Google. Last week, one of those pages was
consistently number one (out of 42,300) for the term 'infoproduct'.
Two other pages in the site were ranked consistently at 12 and
13 (the top two slots on the second results page).
Up until this point I had been
writing a daily blog at the site and 'pinging' it to the
various weblog sites. To test the theory, I stopped writing my
blog and then re-checked the results. Five days without
blogging has had a significant impact. The page which was
number one, is now number six. The pages that were at the top
of page two are now at the bottom of page three.
It would appear that no other
webpages for the term 'infoproduct' have been added to the
Google list in the past five days since the number of pages in
the results is still 42,300. The only thing that I changed in
my site was the blogging.
Now, it's true that other
sites may have changed and that I have suffered as a result.
It may not be just the lack of blogging on my part. However,
the top two pages are from a site which adds pages on a daily
basis - and they were immediately below me while I was
blogging away! Hence, whether you add content using
traditional techniques, or you blog, the number one rule for
maintaining your website ranking in Google is add content -
every day, without fail. As I've discovered, even five days
can have a dramatic impact. If you are not adding content to
your website every day, you stand a very real chance of losing
your place in the Google search results.
Graham Jones is a psychologist
who has specialized in the way we use the Internet. He is an
expert on information products and runs
Infoselling where you can get a free report on how to sell
your own infoproducts.
 |
