Scissorhands no longer belong only to Edward. They also belong (very much so) to Google. Just as the hairdresser/gardener trimmed people’s hair and the bushes, Google does the same with online stores and websites that don’t follow its guidelines.
One of the tweaks in the new Google Penguin 2.0 update causing the most headaches is link building, or backlinks. Given the bad SEO practices that have been carried out, Google has decided to leave behind the abuse—excessive in some cases—of reciprocal links and the way they have been built until now.
Many people have been tearing their hair out over this, and some have even said that the backlink “is dead,” affecting different aspects of the store’s rankings and PageRank. But the only thing that’s clear is that links are still necessary, both for SEO and for branding.
That’s why having a corporate blog on your online stores is increasingly important. Besides positioning you as a reference in your industry, it will bring you positive feedback, as long as you put it in the hands of a professional writer and content producer who devotes the hours needed to rank it and give it visibility.
If you want your blog to be read and shared and, most importantly, want others to naturally want to be mentioned in it, take note of these tips:
- Integrate it into your store. If we have to leave to read it, we probably won’t come back to make the purchase, or we’ll have lost the store’s domain because it’s built with a template or on another server.
- Update it weekly. It’s an ongoing job of producing and developing topics, so plan what you want to write about, how much and when.
- Tie your blog to news from your industry and earn links naturally by covering topics of general interest.
- With the new update, Author Rank (unique, exclusive content with authorship) will be valued more than ever.
- Look after it and treat it as your gateway to customers and the world.
- Write correctly and clearly.
- Be careful with keyword density (which some also consider dead)…
What about you—is your blog up and running yet?
Illustration by http://bobdoucette.com/
