Thanks to Sabrina Spacifici’s BeSpacific mention of Intro to Weblogs for Law Firm Marketing, I’ve heard from many folks including Jerry Lawson, whose article Web Logs for Lawyers is most interesting for its discussion of web logs effect on search engine ranking. Says Jerry,
“…it is easier for search engines to understand blog content than conventional web site content. Therefore, they tend to rank blogs higher than they would a conventional web site that has identical substantive content…”
Having other sites that link to you is an important part of building your search engine presence. Blogs are an easy way to accomplish that. The added feature of RSS feeds — which automatically syndicate your blog entries to other web sites that aggregate these feeds — helps further spread your news throughout cybersace. We have yet to see the full impact of RSS on how we filter and receive our news.
However, using web logs in your marketing mix is not a gimmick. As with other internet publishing tools such as web sites and e-newsletters, creating good relevant content is the key. (See my article Providing Information of Value Builds Relationships and Trust for more on this point, as well as Markets Are Conversations.)
In fact, I’m beginning to recognize some strategic content/usability issues arising regarding spreading your gospel via web logs. A well-written web log entry headline is as important to your entry being properly indexed by search engines and news aggregators as is a properly written meta tag title for a given web page. More on this later…
Good post. Blogs tend to build virtual communities that not only enhance knowledge about organisation but help to build custonmer loyalty. If you are interestied in this subject, there was a good article “How Virtual Communities Enhance Knowledge” at http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&id=152