The importance of having an active blog

Natalie van der Walt, the owner of Sugar+Spice Design, came to me in July 2009, and asked me to build her website for her. I immediately accepted, and she designed an amazing website.

After about a month or so (making websites for designers always takes longer hehe...), the website was finished. A brand spanking new website, with a brand new domain name and everything, so needless to say, Sugar+Spice Design wasn't known to Google, Yahoo, Bing and the rest of them at all.

I told Natalie how important an ongoing SEO strategy is. There are several ways of getting good rankings in the major search engines, and a well known way is to get as many in-bound links (websites linking to you, without you linking back to them) as possible (some others include getting a Facebook page up and running, start a Twitter account for your business, write lots of articles and post them online, etc. - but Natalie told me that she just don't have the time and energy to do all of these on top of her blogging - so imagine how effective your SEO can be if you actively do all of the above!). A good way of achieving this is by simply searching for free online directories, and submitting your website to them. This can be a laborious task mind you, but it's a sure way of getting Google and Yahoo to like you.

Another way, of course, to getting links to your website is to start a blog and write regular blog posts. Then you can setup links back to your website on your blog, and thus, every blog post you make, is a new in-bound link to your website.

A big bonus to blogging is that your blog, on its own, will also eventually start to rank and get traffic, so it's definitely a case of "the more the better"!

Natalie followed my advice and started with her blog almost immediately, and I helped her create links on her blog back to her website. Have a look at her blog here.

At the time of the writing of this article, she has made 285 blog posts, every one of them being a brand new link to all of her website pages.

Blogging does not have to be a major thing, as you'll see with Natalie's, she sometimes just posts a picture, or a few sentences. A blog should rather be seen as an online diary than anything else, and if you only want to write one word in your diary, you would do it right?

Anyway, Natalie's blog already has several followers who regularly tune in to read what she has to say (a quick audience to notify of a new special perhaps?) -  and her blog has a Google PageRank of 3, and it's generating some good traffic of its own!

Her main website is now reaping the rewards! Here is a list of Google searches, with her site being on page 1 of the search results:

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=south+africa+graphic+design...

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=graphic+designer+south+africa...

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=graphic+designer+cape+town...

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=freelance+designer+cape+town...

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=freelancer+cape+town...

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=freelance+design+cape+town...

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=freelance+designer+cape+town...

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=cape+town+graphic+design...

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&&sa=X&q=south+african+graphic+designer...

As you can see, she's ranking very well indeed, and her blog is one of the major factors!

We personally recommend that you use Blogger.com, which is Google's own blogging system (we just love Google products), and since it is in Google that you'd like to rank, what better than using an actual Google product to help you achieve that?

Happy blogging!