Blogging is cool.

I used to think that blogging was only for self-obsessed nerds that had nothing better to do with their time other than to write about themselves. I may have been wrong…

Funny as it may seem, if you actually have something decent to say then people may actually want to read that information. This is exactly the same principal that search engines use. Publish something worthwhile and if there is someone in the world who is looking for that exact same thing (it’s a big world so it’s quite possible) then the engines want your content to rank well and for your site to get found. Web users have little loyalty and if one search engine starts throwing up rubbish in the SERPS then users will jump ship in no time. The quality of the SERPS is at the top of Google’s mind.

Here’s a graph of the stats from Google Analytics to my entire site from both before and after I put up this blog. The main Squidbyte site has been around since about 2001 and is hardly ever updated – blogs are an easy way to add content to your site and let the world know something useful.

analytics_traffic.gif

When I put the blog up the only thing I did was link to it from the menu on the Squidbyte site, nothing else. To be honest, I’m quite surprised that any of it is indexed in any of the engines yet at all (Google and Yahoo! have kindly done this already which is very kind). The biggest surprise of all is that I’m already receiving some traffic from Technorati even though I’ve not added any links anywhere…(they are fast those boys and girls).  Of course, I currently have ‘no authority yet’ in Technorati so I’ll have to work hard to keep them interested.