How does my blog help in SEO

[First-VehicleLeasing]

Hi

I have recently put a wordpress blog on my site and have employed a few blog writers, each putting 2 or 3 posts per week up. There brief so far has been to write interesting, humorous and topical articles.

Stupid as it may seem I have done this only because the general consensus seemed to be "you must have a blog for SEO"

Does it help?

Assuming it does:

Should I post the same articles to my facebook page and or anywhere else?

Should the articles have anchor text linking back to my site?

What should I do to make it work well?

Thanks in advance

Andy

[AlanMosley]

A blog can help, but often does not. you need to have a blog that people want top link to, it much be relevant and link back to your landing pages

make sure content is relevant, try to attract links.

dont post the same artciles anywhere else, this will lead to duplicate content.

[EGOL]

"you must have a blog for SEO"

ha... those are blog evangelists talking...  now everyone is saying that "you must have a FB presence"...  and that isn't correct 100% of the time either.

In my opinion, most of the blogs on the web "for SEO purposes" are weak efforts that have negative ROI.

I agree with Alan in that you need a blog that is enjoyed, shared, liked, linked.

So, ask youself if you are publishing trash just to have a blog?  Is it attracting any links, likes, shares.  Is it pulling any traffic.  If those things are not happening then you need to change your authors, your topics or just close the blog down.

[josh-riley]

Relevant anchor text back to your site is a good thing, as you want people to be able to make the connection and get the SEO benefit. Yes, blogs are presented as "you need" but keep in mind there's a lot of hype with this stuff. How you do it is more important than doing it - as Alan mentioned, you need to have a blog people will want to link it for it to really benefit.

[DannyNolan]

I heard on the grapevine, that google would soon be looking at penalising content that is put up for purely SEO reasons i.e. put up for the sake of putting it up, and my thoughts are one of the big things they would use to filter out thsi sort of stuff would be social signals, so my view is as others have already said to put only link worthy and shareable content. I think content purely on its quality and topic is not going to cut it without these social signals. I would forget simply using good writers and look at the more creative and social media savvy writers instead. Try to get discussion around your posts instead of shouting it out at people by social.

[ResslerMotors]

It's not so much that you have to have a blog, but you do have to have content on your website.

Awesome content that is link-able = Good for SEO

Also, don't make your blog a stand alone thing.  If a post is relevant to a page on your website, make sure to link over to it!

[agirlandamac]

Hi Andy,

This is what I did one site that seemed to work very well - 350% increase (over previous year) in traffic 7 months after adding image galleries and blog for a tile company.

Lots of descriptive content with keywords on each image on page.

Images in blog posts 2-3 per week.  Share posts and images out to interior design bloggers and print media with online presence.

Generate lots of posts (several per week) by external bloggers and media that link back to the tile company site images and image collection galleries, home page, and blog posts.

I repost their posts on the tile company's blog that "so and so design blogger" did this great post with excerpt and link to them. These are all follow links in WordPress. Link out generously.

Tweet out from blog the post with URL 3-5/day 5 days a week amid general conversation on twitter. Credit the great blogger who shared your content. Share post with URL on Facebook.

Pin like crazy.

GIve out, give credit to others, and watch it come back.

Have fun!