A Nurtured Weblog and The Back Door Effect
Last week, I found myself involved in a very familiar
conversation. The owner of an online music download company
wanted to know more about "those weblog things" and if he should
try to incorporate one into his web site. Like many in his
position, when he first heard the term blog, he chalked it up to
a passing fad or something his thirteen-year-old daughter might
be interested in. But, soon even he could not ignore the buzz
and his curiosity peaked.
"I sort of know what a blog is," said the site owner; "But, I
don't see what an online journal can do for my music download
web site."
This site owner is not alone in his confusion over weblogs.
Most business people are still just learning the power of
weblogs and how vital they are becoming to online business.
There are many benefits to having and maintaining a weblog, and
if you want to know them all, you should have little trouble
finding resources to educate you.
Today, however, I would like to focus on a single often
overlooked beneficial aspect of having a weblog. It is what I
like to call the "back door effect," and it relates to the boost
a weblog can have on your site with pagerank and general overall
rankings in search engines.
The back door effect works like this: let's say your main web
site, the site where you want visitors to go, is mainsite.com.
Your ranking for your particular keyword or words in search
engines will depend on a great many variables. But, two of the
most important variables can be boosted by having a weblog that
links back to your main page. These two variables are pagerank
and quality related inbound links. If you're still in the dark
about pagerank, check out this article by Ian Rogers, article on PR.
The best way to use a weblog to boost your search engine
rankings is to nurture that weblog by updating it regularly with
information worthy of syndication (RSS Feeds) and by getting
your weblog listed in directories that rank high in pagerank,
like this one, focused on "cool stuff". It, like
many of the blog directories, contains several different
categories, so finding one that fits your particular site should
not be difficult.
Study up on how pagerank works and why quality related inbound
links are important to your search engine rankings. Once you
understand how important these facets are, you'll see how a
well-nurtured weblog can transfer ranking power to your main
site through the back door.