I’ve proven that blogs can and do play a positive role in SEO. Now my clients are generally small businesses with low traffic web sites, and an extra 50 visitors a day can and does mean additional business for many of them. That’s the perspective I have; if you think in terms of thousands of visitors, then maybe this post won’t apply.

A Slight Twist on SEO

In a post last week, Michael Martinez talked about SEO metrics and made the point that the only metric that should matter to SEO practitioners is how many more visitors can be converted to customers (assuming of course conversion is the goal of the web site).

This is actually a really important point. Who gives a shit if there’s more traffic, if noone buys your stuff? What’s best, 1,000 tyrekickers or 10 ready-to-spend prospects?

So if you start to think of SEO as the process to drive more qualified visitors to a web site, and not just more visitors (qualified or not), then you’ll understand what I mean in the remainder of this post.

Original Content

Set up a blog just like I covered yesterday - the theme, plugins and ping list are all configured to let the search engine world know when a post gets published. Plus there’s at least one obvious (that is, to a human) link to your main web site.

Then post some original content, and write it like you would any SEO-aware copy (keywords, titles, description and keywords/ tags, etc).

Oh, and get a few mates to digg it as well (there are many other social media sites, have a look at this article from SEOmoz).

If you do this right, you will get traffic to your blog. And if they’re motivated enough (read ‘qualified’), they may even click through to your main web site.

It’s not about search engine rankings. It’s about content that actually attracts and interests people. people have credit cards, search engines don’t. Appeal direct to the audience, and let search engines be the intermediary.

Intelligent Comments

You don’t even need a blog if you’re smart enough to write intelligently on your topic.

Find a few high-traffic blogs that deal with your topic. Post your comments where you have something to say, and make sure your URL is attached to your name.

Comments are for people to read. Not for search engines. Don’t worry about the fact that the default Wordpress install adds a ‘nofollow’ tag to your comment; this is not about link love, it’s about relevant comments being read, and people being interested enough in your viewpoint to learn a little more about you.

This is an underutilised technique and yes, it does provide worthwhile traffic to your web site. And it’s so damn easy!

Incoming Links

Every so often you’ll come across a post on someone else’s blog that resonates with you. There’s a viewpoint in there you strongly agree (or disagree) with, or it meshed with some other point you want to make… the list goes on.

Returning to your ‘original content’ blog; write a post with your particular angle, and link to the original post. The original author will see this as an incoming link, and all bloggers love incoming links.

At the minimum, they will visit your blog and see what you’re on about. If they like what you say and how you say it, you may even get a guest blogger post on their (high traffic) blog. You may even get honourable mention in a future post and perhaps a slot on their blogroll.

Trust me on this. It works.

So there you have them. Three ways to use blogs to improve your main web site’s SEO. And one way that used to work, and now doesn’t. If you’ve got any other suggestions, please leave a comment below. I’d love to know about them!