Blogging to Look Good for Google
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The
Washington Post published an article in mid-November about Ted Leonsis. That’s not unusual, given his status as a wealthy businessman and perhaps something of a celebrity. What was unusual was that he didn’t like what he saw when he Googled his name – and he decided to do something about it.
One would think that Leonsis would be pleased to see himself in Google, but for someone of his status, that’s all but expected. He’s the vice chairman of AOL, majority owner of both the Washington Capitals hockey team and the Mystics women’s basketball team, with a minority stake in the NBA Wizards. When he typed his name into Google last year, he saw an assortment of news stories – and that simply wasn’t good enough.
News items may make for great publicity, but they leave you with relatively little control. Reporters usually don’t lie deliberately, but if you depend only on them for your publicity, you might find they leave out certain details you want to see included – or include certain details you’d just as soon see left out. Leonsis faced the same problem that any business faces, namely, how to get people to see the information about him that he wanted them to see – and get it high enough in the SERPs. “On search, you want to be on that first page,” Leonsis explained. “You don’t exist from Page 3 on.”
So what was the first step? Leonsis started a blog, which he titled “Ted’s Take.” Starting a blog is almost mundane these days, even for those who don’t particularly care where they score in the SERPs. I know plenty of people who use it as a means of keeping their friends up-to-date with what’s going on in their lives, and read other blogs for similar reasons. It can be a very good move for businesses that do care about where they are in the SERPs, because most blogs have great SEO potential built right in: clear navigation, pages linking back to other pages, and so on. The key, though, isn’t starting the blog so much as what you do with it after you start it.
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