SEO: Blogger Isn't the Answer
I just read a good article by Chris Crum over at WebPro News, entitled “The Blogger SEO Burden,” (Friday, Jan. 9, 2009)
In it, he includes a video with Stephan Spencer, Founder & President Netconcepts, who says that Blogger isn’t the way to go. Go over and watch the video. But here’s the thing…
If you have a Blogger blog, you’re building a blog that you can’t control! If you’re in business, that’s just plain dumb. Sorry. I had to say it.
It’s not that I’m not sympathetic to newbies. I started with a Blogger blog, way back when, too, and that was even before I knew what SEO was! I think Blogger had just opened. In fact, I know I learned some of the PHP stuff at Blogger. It was a good “trainer blog” for me, and it can be for you.
But when you get serious about your business, it’s time to move to a blog on your own hosting account. WordPress is more user-friendly than ever now, and Google loves the platform. It’s not quite SEO ready when you get it. You need to add “All in One SEO,” “DoFollow,” and “Google Sitemaps” for example. But really, unless you want to get super SEO, you’re probaly pretty good to go right there. I mean, you want to go with Analyticator, and some other stuff when you get into the stats. But if you’re just learning, the three plugins above are crucial.
Installing plugins in WordPress 2.7 is a breeze, and installing WordPress 2.7 is push-button when you use cPanel with Fantastico installer, or Elephante installer works the same way. These are services that just do all the work for you.
But if you don’t have cPanel or any of the installer programs, and you have MySQL databases available in your hosting plan, it’s really not all that difficult to install a WordPress blog from scratch. If you need help with that, it’s all laid out in step-by-step video over at my WordPress tech site: EasyBlogTricks.com. All you need do is register. (A Fantastico installation video is there, as well.)
Anyway, back to the article.
Chris goes on to muse that if Blogger is owned by Google, why isn’t Blogger like… the best?
So, he contacted Spencer who said, “”Believe it or not, the search engines are not expert at SEO. They are expert at search algorithms, which is a very different thing. that search engines don’t understand SEO.”
Interesting. I mean, Spenser is at a much higher level of SEO experience than I am, so it’s probably true. But, I can’t imagine that Google doesn’t have some of its own SEOs on board. I mean, like a casino hires cheats to watch the floor, right? Why wouldn’t Google hire SEOs? Just makes sense.
But regardless of whether this is the case, I hate to break it to all you blogspot.com people out there, but for SEO, getting page rank, and for rising in the SERPs and getting all that cool free organic traffic, Blogger sucks.
Why build your business on a platform you can’t control? Makes no sense to me. Spend the $10 a month on hosting over at Host Gator and throw up a blog in 5 minutes. Be the commander of your own destiny. I mean, if you can’t afford the $10 for hosting, you’re just playing at business, you aren’t a serious business person. Stop thinking that “free” will accomplish anything.
It totally won’t.
