Getting Bumped Teaches This Ghost Blogger A Valuable Lesson

The past couple of weeks provided proof of something I’ve been saying about blogging.  In today’s Internet-based shopping-and-searching business world, it’s simply not good enough to hand out stuff.  Businesses have handed out and sent out stuff for decades – flyers, brochures, letters to customers and prospects.  All of this is one-way communication.  Today, the process has got to get inter-active.  Blogs, being short, frequent, and “out there” on search engines, are ideal for this purpose.  Potential clients and customers can post comments, ask questions, or simply proceed to the business’ website to learn or do more.

There’s another aspect to interaction with blogging, and this is the one that had such a direct effect on my own blog in recent weeks.  Since one of the goals of business blogging is search engine optimization (meaning moving up the ranks in Google, Yahoo, and MSN territory), I try to set an example for my ghost blogging clients with my own Say It For You blog.  In the days leading up to my big come-uppance, my blogs had been showing up on page 1 or 2 on Google under the category “ghost blogger”.  Then, whammo – my blog disappeared!  What had happened? Without fail, I’d blogged every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, using the key words and providing fresh content that was relevant to the topic of blogging.

Turns out, I was upstaged by none other than hip-hop artist Kanye West and a host of his fans, plus a few of his detractors.  Sandra Rose claimed she’d discovered Kanye using a ghost blogger named Marcus Troy.  Dozens of fans were posting blogs opining on the truth or untruth of the matter, offering approval or horror at the practice of using a ghost blogger.  The principal players Troy, Rose, and even Kanye himself were blogging.  It was time for this professional ghost blogger to weigh in, and so I did (see Does Kanye West’s Ghost Blogger Say It For Him?).  Whew! Back up the ranks once more.

I’d been writing a lot about what drives search engine rankings, and then along comes this this living, breathing answer to the question.  What are the keys to success in blogging to win search engine rankings?  Recency?  Yes.  Relevance to the topic?  Of course, yes.  Frequency?  Yes, again.  But, there’s one more element that can’t be forgotten – traffic.  In other words, it matters how many people are writing in and coming to call at your little corner of the blogosphere – a.k.a. interaction.