Small Business Blogging

Last month, I did some SEO and SEO training with two small businesses, both of which are creating new web properties. One, GroupofMinds, is an arts consulting and technology company that helps arts and cultural groups use technology to expand their reach. The other, Accurate Investigations is an atlanta private investigator that does domestic surveillance such as documenting whether a husband, wife or “significant other” is engaged infidelity or cheating.

Both websites are getting new visitors, and slowly, but surely, climbing up the search rankings. However, there is one difference that is worth mentioning: Speed of indexing. When GroupofMinds makes a new post or page on their website it is indexed and in the google results page with an hour or two. When Accurate Investigations makes a change it can take up to a week for Google to recognize the change.

Why the difference?

GroupOfMinds is built on an integrated blogging platform called Wordpress. Wordpress has several built-in mini-programs (called “plugins”) that help with search engine optimization. One plugin is a “pinging” service, that notifies over a dozen internet aggregators when a change is made (Services such as technorati, feedburner, newsgator and many others). Group of Minds’ new content gets quickly indexed by the aggregators and google has multiple ways of getting to it. Accurate Investigations has to wait until google comes back to it’s website and re-index it, a process that can take days or weeks.

Take home message? Add a blog to your website. It will become a search engine magnet.