6 most asked questions about SEO & Social
Yesterday I did a webinar for Smartcompany.com.au. I didn’t get to answer a lot of the questions we’ll be answering a number of them over the coming weeks. Here are some of the ones that got asked the most.
1. Group blog or individual?
A few people were asking questions around the personal voice in a company blog, having a number of blogs for each author as well as just having the brand blog.I’ve been “videoblogging” since about 2002 and really only blogging with text for about 3 or 4 years. If you want to know all about blogging connect with @problogger on twitter for all the answers as well as some great ebooks. Whilst I don’t pretend to be a professional blogger, from a business & SEO perspective there are a few things you should understand.
The whole “naming” around blogs is completely unnecessary for a business. Personal blogs where personal branding or opinions are expressed, sure name your blog “The ranty rant musings of intermittent outbursts” or whatever. For a business though, keep it business focused. If your company is large enough or warrants it why not have a marketing, customer service or manufacturing blog. For most SMEs though, a single blog called “blog” beneath the brand will suffice. Within that blog you may certainly have multiple authors, just like the Google Webmaster Central blog does.
2. What CMS?
A content management system is essential for the easy management of not only a blog but your whole site. Whilst WordPress started out as a blogging platform it has since grown into a system that some massive sites are built on. For instance whilst this blog is on WordPress, that is only one part of our site that it manages. For at least 60% of our clients we will rebuild their sites on WordPress as it simplifies the SEO work as well. Here is a vlog I did last year on WordPress
3. On wordpress.com or my own server
Definitely host your own company blog on your own server. It’s your content you need to control it. I have heard the argument that by having an external blog it gets back links to your site. Well sure but how confusing is that for the user? When your weighing up the value of a backlink you are getting from a blog hosted on the same server as hundreds of thousands other blogs versus having control of your content & user navigation, the latter wins every time.
4. How is Authorship setup?
I have recorded about 6 videos on Google Authorship now, so I won’t go over the same material again but this blog post is linked to my bio page on this site with this code rel="author" href="/author/jim/" and the bio page is linked to my profile with this code a rel="me" href="https://plus.google.com/112695398306971018937/about" . Then I have setup my Google profile so it links back to my bio page. You can have a number of pages specifically about you on a number of sites. 
5. Will Google use Authorship if you don’t have a Google Profile.
No. The primary ideas behind Authorship are attribution & authority. This is another upgrade to the algorithm and the only way Google can do this, without the spammers taking control is via a system like the Google Profile.
6. Is Google+ Really going to takeoff?
Yes it already has and Facebook this morning has rolled out changes that have copied a lot of the best bits of Google+. So Facebook are definitely taking notice and so should you.
We’ll answer more of the questions we got yesterday in the coming weeks.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
