Juan Tornoe tells the story of how his blog ranked higher than CNN for a search term and how amazing amounts of traffic ended up at his blog, where they followed a link through to CNN. The traffic permanently boosted his normal traffic from that point on.
“Under blog posts, I was pleasantly surprised to see my blog ranked number one. Then, looking closer, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The actual CNN.com site had the #2 and #3 positions behind, you guessed it, my blog. People were searching for the term “cnn.com/uncovering america” and clicking on my blog. Once there, they found a prominent and clear link to the information they were looking for and off they went.”
There’s an important message in this example for those who run a business and have a website, but who have been on the fence about whether a blog would be worth it. Blogs are worth it.
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Michael – So true. I have found myself ranking higher than the local paper and TV stations for current news in the area. I have even had one of the local news stations hit my blog looking for information for a story. Go BLOG! – Ashley
Quite true. I was one of the first bloggers to write about the Whopper Freakout campaign, and I’m still the #4 result for it on Google ahead of even postings on Digg and stories on “official” news sites. Google seems to not only reward blogs, but also those who post about things early.
@Ashley & Jon: Yes, it’s quite something, isn’t it? That’s not the whole of it, though. I discovered today that a comment left on a YouTube video can rank quite well some search terms. I had seen the odd headline here and there of using YouTube for SEO, but I never realized how easy it was.
Michael I have seen YouTube videos come up in the search but hadn’t thought about the comments. That is something I will have to play with. – Ashley
So true – I think search engines love fresh content.