What Women, Men, and Search Engines Want

The majority of women, myself included, are not overly interested in what other women want.  Unlike the majority of my female peers, on the other hand, I’m only slightly interested in what men, as a gender, want.  (I’ll hasten to add that the wants of certain men important in my life do occupy a high spot on my priority list.) But, gender matters aside, as a member of a small but rapidly growing cadre of ghost bloggers, I’m absolutely fascinated with learning what search engines want. I’m referring to the likes of Google, MSN, and Yahoo, and giving those search engines what they want is the whole idea behind business blogging.

The other day I caught a cute article in Entertainment Weekly that discussed the fact that men are embracing their feminine side in romantic comedy movies these days.  The article was titled “Guys Are The New Girls”. The piece ends with a wry question: “What do women – and men – want out of a man?”

Apparently, the answer to that question is still the subject of much debate.  By contrast, (happily for me as a professional ghost blogger), what search engines want is rather clear – to deliver relevant content to online searchers.

What determines how relevant content is?  Well, two ingredients are important for sure – recency and frequency. That’s exactly why once-in-a-while blogging just doesn’t do the trick, even if it’s high-quality stuff.  To satisfy a search engine, your blog material must be updated frequently, and I mean very frequently.  It seems that when it comes to blogging for business, search engines are saying, “Never mind what you’ve done. What have you done for me lately?”