For many reading this, that’s going to be a really, really odd question. We’ve come to accept search engines as part of our everyday life on the internet, and we’ve come to accept all the weird and wonderful things they keep adding (that are 90% non-search-related) on a weekly basis as things to be interested in, use, blog about and discuss. When it comes down to regular search rankings as opposed to add-on services or ego-searches on blog specific engines though, do blogs actually need them?
Some blogs clearly do. Many professional blogs do, and indeed that’s often the #1 priority for some bloggers, but I’d argue that even for these blogs wasting time obsessing about search is well, a waste of time.
Who Needs to Rank, and Who Doesn’t?
Any blog that relies solely on contextual advertising need to rank for phrases. Contrary to popular beleif, you’re better off not worrying about 1-3 word generic terms that are often highly competitive, but are better off concentrating on the long tail phrases that given time and archive depth, will drive more punters out through an advert.
Affiliate blogs also benefit from the same long tail search phrases, the money phrases.
Those blogs that I think don’t need to rank at all would include:
- Community blogs
- News blogs
- Personal blogs
- Expert blogs
- Consultant blogs
- There are undoubtably more
So why don’t they need to rank? Simple, there’s little value in drive-by search traffic for these types of blogs — other types benefit in that drive-by traffic clicks out via an advert, but for these blogs the value of a visit is in gaining repeat visits not one hit wonders.
Those repeat visits, and better still, those visits that convert to an RSS subscription don’t come from search engines. No, I don’t have any hard proof, though I feel this is right intuitively, based on a lot of reading of similar theories over the years, but when it all comes out in the wash, a human referered link is ten times more valuable than a search link.
There, some almost random thoughts on Search and blogs for your wednesday morning thinking, let’s hear what you think eh?
And for what it’s worth, the only reason robots aren’t banned at Performancing is that we feel we’d like to pass on that link juice to those we link to — I don’t personally feel that a site like this benefits in any way shape or form from Search rankings.
Thoughts?