Test Results From Using External Blogs for Off Page SEO
Less than 3 weeks ago the team at Frederick Web Promotions performed an empirical test of Effectiveness of External Blogs for SEO.
We are pleased to announce our test results as they worked much better than we could have hoped for in boosting one of our small business client’s ranking in Google. Full Disclosure: your results will vary with the competition your company faces.
The Test:
In order for a test to be empirical we felt we needed to take an established website that ranked well in Google for one keyword phrase and see if we could get that same website to rank well for a related keyword phrase… without changing the website at all.
We wanted to test the effectiveness of using the 2 largest free blog platforms, as “external blogs” to boost a main website’s ranking. The external blogs we used were Blogger.com and Wordpress.com. Each blog was linked to the main website, by that we mean there both the Blogger blog and the Wordpress.com blog contained a link to the main website, in strategic places on the blog. The main website was not a blog, but does have a company blog in a sub directory.
External Blog Platforms:
The blogs we used for the test were sub domains, most of the readers of this blog are webmasters (who know what a sub domain is) but more and more our readership is brick and mortar small businesses that are becoming aware that they need to learn what this “new to them” world of Internet marketing and Internet advertising is so they can make an informed decision on purchasing ads, hiring advertising staff and selecting an advertising agency knowledgeable in this emerging art form because
…most local advertising agencies are not skilled in Internet advertising or Internet marketing.
A sub domain and a domain.
Your website is a domain, yourcompany.com
A free blog is hosted somewhere, when you get an account on that blog platform, what you end up with is yourcompany DOT somebloghost.com
What we are suggesting is that your company website (yourcompany.com) is ”supported” by an “external blog” which would look like this: YourCompany dot SomeBlogHost.com
That external blog serves as an “extra website”, which links back to your main website.
The 2 largest free blog platforms are Blogger.com and Wordpress.com Google bought the first one and the second one is the largest non Google owned blog platform on the planet. They have 2 very distinct characteristics in that wordpress.com does not allow javascript of any kind on it’s servers. Google offers the ability to publish ads on websites (called Google adsense) that is distributed by javascript, so you won’t find any Google adsense ads on a blog hosted on wordpress.com (no javascript, no ads).
How does an extra website “link back” to a main website?
Links are Currency, Google’s ranking system is based on how many other websites contain your website’s link. In short if you want your website to rank higher, the only way that’s going to happen is if other websites, mention your website and include a link TO your website on THEIR website (or blog). )That ranking system actually has a name (and is patented by the way), it’s called PageRank. PageRank is an algorithm, which is to say it’s a computer program. Ranking is not determined by human evaluation, it’s determined by a complex ranking system which evaluates importance, evaluates relevancy, keeps score, assigns a weighting scale… translation for non geeks: It doesn’t care if the “other website” containing your company link is a ‘free one’.
Bottom Line: You can get free websites to boost your websites ranking (if you know what you’re doing)
Empirical Test Explained:
We picked a client of ours, a brick and mortar small business that hired Frederick Web Promotions to improve it’s ranking in local Google search results pages. They are a home remodeling contractor who also does commercial remodeling and would like to do more commercial work in Maryland. We did get them to rank well locally for the keyword phrases “home remodeling”, their website did not rank so well in Google for keywords that would suggest commercial remodeling.
Target Selection
We sat down with our client and discussed possible keyword phrases to get them noticed in Google for commercial as opposed to residential remodeling… some of the choices available were more difficult to hit than others, we choose one that had less competition (competition in terms of Google search volume) but would still get the point across to website visitors (potential clients) that our client did commercial work. We settled on “general contractors”, and because our client’s target market was primarily Maryland we shot for Maryland General Contractors as the desired target. At the time of the discussion our client ranked #271 in Google. At the time of my announcement in a blog post of our preliminary test results, one single post to a blogspot blog AND one single post to a wordpress.com blog improved the client’s ranking to #171 in Google. Now after a couple of posts to blogs and social bookmarking of those supporting blogs we are pleasantly surprised to see how well this tactic really worked, see for yourself:
Google this: Maryland General Contractors
Our client is now in the top 10.
If you’d like your company website to PERFORM in Google call 240 644-7530
David Bruce Jr
Local SEO Strategist
Frederick Web Promotions
6688 Canada Goose Ct
Frederick Maryland
240 644-7530
davidbrucejr@frederickwebpromotions.com
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Well it’s great to see your test was a success and good luck in your future ventures and business!