Relevancy during Thanksgiving
Joseph Baker, who writes this article on behalf of Sears, enjoys writing about how to help deserving blogs reach to the top of lists. Read his work at professionalintern.com.
When creating and maintaining your WordPress blog, an important aspect to consider is how your blog fares with Google and its many algorithms. After all, what is the point of spending time and effort on a blog that no one will read? The higher you rank in Google searches, the greater the amount of traffic that will be diverted to your page through random or targeted searches.
The Google Panda Update, which was released earlier this year, was intended to demote websites with excessive spam and/or poor-quality content within search results. In essence, this algorithm allows the Google crawlers to read at a 10th grade level, and to therefore detect whether content is relevant, and whether tactics such as keyword stuffing, hidden text, doorway pages, and so forth are being used in order to boost a page’s rankings.
On the heels of this update, Google recently released its Fresh Update, which rewards sites that produce current, up-to-date content. “Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm, needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old,” wrote Google fellow Amit Singhal in a blog post.
With this in mind, it should be obvious that the blogs which are well-written with relevant, up-to-date content will fare better in Google searches, leaving the lesser-quality blogs to flounder in the page rankings. So how can this be translated into what to do with your own blog?
The word that should be resounding in your head as you create and maintain your blog is “relevant”. Is what you’re writing relevant to current events, or are you simply rehashing old news in an attempt to gain an audience? Is your content well-written and coherent, or do you just throw something on your page without much forethought or consideration for your readers?
An example: The holiday season is here. Thanksgiving will soon be followed by all of the festivities in December. Does your blog reflect this? If, for example, your blog is about cooking, now might be a good time to forego writing about topics that are less time-sensitive, and focus on subjects that are geared to the season, such as which gas ranges would cook a turkey more evenly, the best way to prepare stuffing for said turkey, or various cranberry desserts.
By taking the time to create content for your blog that is both timely and relevant, you can be assured that these (and any future) Google updates will not negatively impact your page. In fact, these algorithms may help your blog, rather than harm it. Google can and will recognize when you have made a genuine effort to create quality content for readers, and will reward you accordingly.
When you make the decision to start a blog, it is undoubtedly because you feel that you have something valuable to share with your readers. Otherwise, you wouldn’t take the time and effort to create something so labor-intensive. It’s much easier to read other people’s blogs rather than create your own, so take ownership and pride in your work! Your blog and your readers will thank you for it.
