Optimize Your Blog for Google Blog Search

Geoff Simon has written an article on Google Blogsearch, the premier search engine for blogs, and has come up with some interesting observations for optimizing your blog.

He has separated Google’s search patent into 9 indicators and then further divided it into the good, the bad and the ugly factors that Google Blogsearch uses to determine how worthy your blog is:

  The Bad:

1. Content, Content Content. You’ve heard it before and it bears repeating, but this time it has an interesting twist.

If the feed content in your blog is different than the actual content in your blog, this is a negative indicator.

Spammers will put a different version of content into their feeds to improve their rank than what is actually on their blog. This “mismatch” between the feed and the blog is considered by Google to be a negative indicator of the quality of the blog document.

2. Posting Frequency.

Google Blog Search also looks at when you publish your post.

Spammers generate new posts in spurts or at predictable intervals. Both behaviors are correlated with malicious intent and can be used to identify possible spammers.

Huh! This sounds a little contradictory to me and I’m guilty on both counts. Uh oh. Obviously the algorithm must be a little more complex than that, or at least I hope so or we are all in big trouble.

3. Words or Phrases. Google keeps a list of words and phrases that can appear frequently in spam, and if a blog document contains a high percentage of those words or phrases it can be considered to be a negative factor.

4. Links to other Blogs. If a high percentage of outbound links go to just a single site, it can also be considered to be a negative indicator of the quality of the blog document.

5. Post Size. Don’t make all your posts the same size, otherwise Google Blog Search thinks it smells fishy and will consider it as a negative factor as well.

 The Good:

6. Blog Pagerank. A high page rank indicates quality and can be applied to your blog posts as a positive indicator of the overall quality of your blog.

7. References from Outside Sources: Your email content or chat transcripts that contain URLs of blog posts. Apparently Google indexes those as well (only Gmail perhaps  ) and also takes that into consideration. And speaking of email, did you the know the Bloke offers an email subscription service? Hint, hint .

8. Tags. According to Google this is an indicator that you have evaluated the post and appropriately described its content. All the more reason why you should be using the Bloke’s search tags.

9. Blogrolls. Google likes quality links in your blogroll as well as in other blogrolls that link back to you. This is considered an indicator that the blog owner is interested in those external sites and its popularity.

So there you have it. If you blogroll the Bloke and join the Blokester Network you will also be helping yourself. Told you so.  Source.

Andy Beard has also done a nice job evaluating the Google search patent.

What are you doing wrong?

Please tell me ’cause I’m nosy and I want to know.

Further reading:

• Add Search Tags to Your Blog Posts for Greater Visibility, Stickiness and Increased Traffic

Search tag: pagerank, page rank, googlebot, google, google blog search, google blogsearch, tags, tagging, rss, links, linking, search engine optimization