Blogs? Am I really writing about blogging? Well, yes. While the official umbrella term we now apply in the industry is content marketing, blogging continues to be the most common format that companies are utilizing to reach their perspective and current clients. I never actually realized that the term blogging would grow to obselecense, but it’s used a lot less than ever. In fact, I often refer to my writing here as articles rather than blog posts.
As I’m developing my clients sites, I sometimes don’t even include the term blog in the description of their collection of articles. So, when is a blog not a blog? I’m not sure… but the process of writing a series of content that’s in descending chronological order is just about everywhere you look online. The platforms that businesses are using are still technically blogs, and include feeds for syndication. It’s simply that the verbiage and popularity associated with blogging just isn’t utilized anymore.
Hindsight is always 20/20, but I wish I had known the term would be outdated so quickly when I wrote Corporate Blogging for Dummies. Even eight years later, most of the strategies and tips I used in the book are still productive nowadays. Some of the platforms are gone and search engines are far more sophisticated, but there’s no doubt that blogging continues to produce great results for organizations.
Rather than use feed readers, folks use and share articles via social media. Perhaps this is why Google Blog Search was retired… blog posts could no longer be distinguished from any other content online.
Google News
Of course, Google now has News… a mobile application and engine that can be used to find news sources, most of which are simply blogs. If you’d like your blog to be added, you can sign up as a publisher on Google News. Google News has some really unique methods of querying it. One way is to actually search for an RSS output. So, if you do a search (for example) and add output=rss, you can get outputs from syndicated content management systems.
Here’s an RSS Search using Google News:
https://news.google.com/search?for=martech&output=rss
There are quite a few other ways to still discover great blogs online, as detailed in this Blogger Networking Guide, Discover New Blogs. They detail a number of methods, including:
- Using Google Search queries to find curated lists of blogs.
- Discovering blogs using a Feed Reader.
- Of course, using Social Media like Facebook, Twitter, and even Pinterest.
- Using existing Directories online, many of which are still very active and accurate.
- Finding Blogrolls on existing blogs. These are lists of bookmarked blogs that the blogger recommends.
- Search for your favorite Author, they oftne have blogs.
Be sure to check out the full article, it’s a great resource.
SEO Best Practices for Commerce Product Pages: Volume 1
Search engine optimization (SEO) can make or break any website, but it's critical for commerce sites that depend on attracting, converting, retaining, and delighting customers.
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