Matt Cutts writes one of the most successful and widely read blogs in the SEO field. What can we learn from taking a close look at his blog? What lessons can we apply to making our own blog a success? Keep reading as we take benchmarking to a whole new arena.
Benchmarking has been defined as ""The process of identifying the best practice in relation to products and processes, both within an industry and outside it, with the object of using this as a guide and reference point for improving the practice of one's own organization."
We can use benchmarking techniques to examine highly successful blogs, such as the one written by Matt Cutts, to gain insights, tips and methods and a better understanding of best practices that pertain to optimizing WordPress blogs for the search engines. Blogging using WordPress is the most popular method of blogging among professionals, and it is fortunate to know that Matt Cutts uses WordPress for his blog.
This article attempts to observe the practices employed by Matt Cutts in his WordPress blog which can be used and implemented by any ordinary WordPress blogger.
Lesson #1: Frequently publish content
Matt Cutts frequently publishes blog content in varying categories. In about a three-week period (January 1, 2010 to January 22, 2010), Matt Cutts published 12 blog posts; that is more than three posts per week.
This means frequent updating of blog content is a common practice for successful bloggers like Matt Cutts. If you are blogging and have NOT been updating your blog regularly for too long, that is clearly a mistake. If you think you are busy, consider how busy Matt Cutts must be. Yet, he does have clear commitments to blogging, and we can see him frequently post content.
The lesson here is to have some commitment to update your blogs as frequently as possible depending on your goal. You can set realistic goals, for example two blog posts per week or even at least one post per week.
Lesson #2: Post substantial and original content in a mix of lengths
Other WordPress bloggers formulate difficult rules for themselves and punish themselves by writing 1000 words per blog post! Matt Cutts's blog entries, on the other hand, are a mix of short and long content while being substantial and original.
In the 12 blog posts observed since January 2010, the total number of words for all of Matt Cutts's blog posts taken together is 4,697.
On average, he writes around 400 words per blog post. It might be even less, since these are plain text content. Matt Cutts also has videos, images and even lots of comments from his blog readers that dramatically increase the number of words per blog post.
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