The Value of Blogging and Organic Search

I hear it all the time, “I don’t have time to write a blog. Is it really that important?”

It is only that important if you want brides to find you in today’s world of social media interaction.

“According to Chris Baggott Co-founder and CEO, Compendium Blogware, 44% off all web visits begin with a search as opposed to a specific URL or destination. And search will continue to grow as the most significant channel in new customer awareness and acquisition.

According to the Marketing Sherpa Search Benchmark Study for 2008 almost all of that comes from the organic results not the pay-per-click.

“To say that 99 people out of 100 click on the natural search results is probably and understatement”

What does that mean to the wedding professional? Two things, pay per click is not the Holy Grail you were told it is and you had better figure out a way to get your ranking up in the organic search.

That is where blogging comes in.

Search engines look for words, not just keywords but the context and relevance of those words. Search also looks very closely at your page titles. On a standard static website you have a limited number of pages and a limited amount of copy. That is as it should be; your target market isn’t looking for a book. They don’t want to have to read through page after page to get the information they need. But your potential client and the search engines are two very different animals. To get your clients to your site they have to be able to find you in search first. Please reread that last sentence.

Here is what a blog does differently. A well maintained blog posts at least three times a week, each time you post you add new copy (think keywords) and a new page title. This is making the search engines happy. Now, if your content is interesting and valuable to your potential clients that makes them happy.

Everytime you post to your blog, it stays there in your archives. Over time this builds up a tremendous amount of words, and because each post has its own title, it builds up a long list of these too. Take the Wedding Dish for example, I haven’t counted but some down and dirty math tells me that there are roughly 70,000 words and over 200 titles there. (231 posts at an average of 300 words=69,300 words.) That is a heck of a lot more chances for the search engines to find a word or phrase that corresponds to a term that a bride has typed in.

Bottom line: Brides find you through your website, they find that through search. Blogs are the single best way to raise your search ranking today. Now tomorrow might be different, but one thing I can guarantee you is that the team at Think and the Agency will be tracking it to keep you in the know.