subject: Blogs Should Not Just Be Website Optimisation Tools [print this page] The remit of website optimisation strategies has broadened somewhat in the past few years. More and more, every aspect of a firm's digital marketing strategy needs to incorporate some form of search engine marketing if it is to be successful.
Whether a firm is producing content for its various social networking portals, or for a corporate blog, website optimisation need to be a consideration.
However, according to Jake Hird, senior research analyst at Econsultancy, businesses should not use their social media campaigns solely for the purposes of website optimisation. Marketing material posted on the relatively new channels of Facebook and Twitter, or on the tried and tested channel of corporate blogs, needs to offer consumers a certain level of engagement.
"Mr Hird suggested that cynical keyword dropping would detract from the other, socially beneficial aspects of a company's corporate blog.
"Talking to a lot of different organisations, I think that this is where some confusion exists, as a blog is often assumed to be part of an SEO strategy, rather than a social one. Taking this approach is by no means a bad thing, but only to an extent, as a corporate blog should be used cyclically to listen, engage and participate with customers," Mr Hird claimed. He added: "Purely using a blog as a push marketing platform can be off-putting to customers, who are increasingly expecting companies to have conversational elements and be transparent in their operations."
Mr Hird noted that many firms just treat their corporate blogs as a press release board and suggested that while this can be beneficial for website optimisation, it can negatively impact upon how a company is perceived by their potential customers. "There's nothing wrong with having a press release area on a corporate website, but that's what it should be seen to be," he concluded. And the importance of getting social media and corporate blogs right has never been more obvious. According to Experian Hitwise, social networks account for an exceptionally high proportion of total web traffic and experts from Ovum claim that social media is going to be a stepping stone for the future development of search engines.
