Blogs and Search Engines

I don’t tend to write or think about marketing much, but I’ve recently found: Blogs are an incredible tool for improving Search Engine placement!

My website, demop.com, only went live about 6 months ago (yes, I am a Luddite in many ways). Yesterday if you searched on “Ted Demopoulos” or “Demopoulos Associates” you would not find my web site on the first page of most search engine results. Yes, you would find all sorts of things about me: I love ham radio and wine, teach classes for SANS, partner with the Institute for Advanced Professional Studies, once taught a seminar on “Microkernels” for USENIX a decade ago, and the University of Uppsala in Sweden thinks I’m pretty cool too. You also might think I run an organization for gays and lesbians of Greek decent, although that’s a different “Ted Demopoulos.” But if you were actually looking for me, my website would not have been on page one results of Google.

Within 24 hours of starting my blog, with zero promotion other than telling three friends, my search engine world has changed. We’ll look at three of the top ones:

Google, the 800 pound gorilla of search engines:
The first hit for “Ted Demopoulos” and “Demopoulos Associates” is my web site, instead of being relegated to 2nd or 3rd page results. “The Ted Rap” is hit eleven if not in quotes, and hit #1 if in quotes.

Yahoo:
The first hit for “Ted Demopoulos”, “Demopoulos Associates”, and “The Ted Rap” is my web site. I assure you this wasn’t the case 24 hours ago!

MSN (Microsoft) Search:
Like Yahoo, all three search phrases return my website as the #1 result, and they did not a mere 24 hours ago.

I had heard that blogs were highly weighted by the search engines in their placement rules, but this is incredible. I checked right before creating my blog and then 24 hours after creation. I had previously followed all the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) rules and guidelines, but after six months I was still second page results. Then I create this blog with 2 postings and I’m make more progress with the search engines than 6 previous months of following SEO “Best Practices.” I don’t even have a link from my website or anywhere else yet to this blog!

Now how could this be possible?? I have no advertising, no links, no RSS feed. You can’t easily find my blog right now unless you have the URL, or use a search engine. Where did the search engines get the URL and why do they care? Well, I use www.blogger.com, and the search engines must have somehow found out from blogger. I will not speculate on why they care!

I’m going to go register myself with all the blog directories in the next few minutes: daypop, technorati, eatonweb, globeofblogs, etc. Who know what that may accomplish? Maybe I’ll win a valuable prize? Maybe I’ll be knighted? Perhaps the Pope will bless me?

Hopefully, at very least, I’ll stay #1 in the search engine results for myself!! There is something comforting about knowing that someone searching for me actually finds me first.

But the bottom line: Creating a blog, even with zero promotion and close to zero content to date, has done more for improving search engine placement results than following six months of Search Engine Optimization “Best Practices.”