July 26th, 2006
3 Ways to Increase Search Engine Traffic, and the Importance of Blog Branding
I wasn’t going to blog here today given the amount of bug-squashing I have left to do on the new blogHelper theme and structure, but Nick Wilson’s post on 3 ways to increase search engine traffic at Performancing really jolted me from the menial chore of debugging.
He talks about writing more specific and more linkbait-ish content, helping your readers link to you, and building a network of contacts. While seemingly obvious, they are highly effective, and essentially bulletproof even as Google tweaks its search engine and AdWords algorithms.
There was one particular piece of advice resonated with me:
If your blog software writes titles like this: My Blog Title | My Post Title, you need to change them to this: My Post Title - My Blog Title. Many people will tell you it’s even better to ditch the “My Blog Title” bit all together, in order to not dillute the important keywords in the title, but they’re forgetting the importance of branding, and with blogs, establishing some brand recognition goes a long way toward gaining links and attention. (emphasis my own)
Most, if not all of us, have heard about this critical step in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Paul Stamatiou even wrote about this earlier this month. But as Nick says, I feel many forget the importance of branding when implementing this step. Even Darren Rowse completely strips out his Blog Title at ProBlogger - something I don’t completely agree with even though ProBlogger’s audience is already huge.
New subscribers come and go. Remembering where they were is important. While unique design and content does imprint your blog in their minds, how easily can they return without even knowing the name of your blog if you failed to get them to subscribe the first time round?
P.S.: The above could easily be an overstatement. A more relevant question would be: Will word-of-mouth advertising be negatively impacted if you don’t ensure that the name of your blog gets sufficient exposure?
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6 Comments
July 26th, 2006 at 11:57 am
[…] We just heard about link baiting. What about comment baiting? It may not make you blogger-gold, a.k.a. traffic, but it sure will increase your blog’s stickiness, and encourage greater interaction between blogger and reader. […]
July 26th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
I’d say that blog branding is of primary importance only to smaller blogs. More established ones like ProBlogger can effectively remove blog titles without (much) negative impact given that word-of-mouth traffic comes as much from the name of the blogger itself as from the name of the blog.
Besides, in cases where I have forgotten blog names, I’ve always remembered great post titles - which I’ve then Googled for. You could say then that content is as effective a marker as any name.
July 26th, 2006 at 10:57 pm
Hmm, you have a good points, but I can’t help but think that blog name branding will always be of critical importance - no matter how effective “content branding” and “blogger branding” already are.
If there was anything to attribute this line of thought to, it would be the pervasiveness and continuity of big company advertising despite the popularity of their products (think Coca-Cola).
There’s never harm in differentiating from your competitors a bit more - though admittedly, the effectiveness (SEO-wise) of removing blog names from Titles must first be considered. If removing your blog’s name from your title nets you 25%+ uniques, I’ll concede that branding might have to play second fiddle.
August 28th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
Branding means reputation. Reputation means clicks. Somebody seeing your site in a search engine result page (SERP) is much more willing to click on your link if he memorizes your branding. Remembering the site only from the URL is only for the web savvy.
A minimum page title on my site is “tag - site name”. Without the site name it would even look suspicious in a SERP.
I would never ever underestimate that effect
August 31st, 2006 at 10:40 pm
[…] It brings in quite a different perspective, which makes it a good complement to some other lists you might already have read. […]
September 19th, 2006 at 8:38 am
The think the branding part of this article is really most important to think about. Once you are first to brand a particular subject, you will always own it.
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