Can A Blog post impact negatively on Google rankings?

[kiswebsltd]

We used to rank fairly highly on Google for our preferred search term, but once we introduced a blog (or rather the blog excerps) onto our home page we dropped from page 1 to page 3 for our preferred search term.

We have made the assumption this may be down to diluting of keywords and therefor the key phrase or message to the Search Engines was not as clear as it was before.

Is this generally accepted as being the case ? If so - should each and every blog post excerpt start with the key seo search phrase to maintain the integrity of that search phrase ? or perhaps even better still is it best to have the blog on a dedicated page only with no excerpts on the home page ?

We are using Wordpress and also using multiple categories within the blog - is it perhaps best to just have all blog postings on the one page and use TAGS more often?

Thanksing you in advance.

[TaitLarson]

It's tough to say what happened without knowing exactly what the page looked like before and after the change but I'd be asking myself the following questions:

1. How much did the text on my homepage change?  How many words did I used to have on the page?  How many words to I have now.  Has the keyword density changed?  Has the number of links gone up drastically.

2. Have my competitors received new links or changed their pages? This sounds less likely given the fact that you apparently dropped about 20 slots.

Can you simply link to your blog, remove the post excerpts and see if you move back up the SERPs?  That would give you a pretty accurate idea if the blog is an issue.

I personally would not start each blog post with the same seo keywords.  That may or may not seem fishy to Google but will certainly seem fishy to your blogs readers.  I'd focus on writing legitimate content and trying to get links to it.

There's been some of discussion on these forums recently about WordPress tags.  The general consensus seems to be stick to Categories and avoid Tags unless you can figure out how to SEO tag pages and how to avoid duplicate content issues with post and category pages.  I personally don't think that Tags help or hurt that much with SEO.  I'd use Tags and Categories if you can present them in such a way that your blog readers will find them useful.  Otherwise avoid them.

[onlinemediadirect]

It might be worth posting a link to your blog and we can take a look through the code and setup. It may be this introduction but it could of course just be a coincidence.

[kiswebsltd]

Tait thanks for your comments and feedback - it is very welcome. We will be posting our new website very soon so we are effectively starting from scratch and have decided to leave teh blog on a blog page of teh site as oposed to includeing excerps on the home page.

It will be interestingto see (after a period) how we rank minus the blog. I will take on board some of your comments re Tags and Categories etc.

Thanks again

[kiswebsltd]

Thanks for the suggestion Garry - I will come back on after our new website has launched and get everyones feedback and SEO advice.

In the meantime we are working on our keyword strategy prior to writing the new content.

I'm liking this forum on SEOMOZ - I like the openness of it.

I suppose what I want to get to is fact as opposed to opinion. There seems to be a lot of opinion out there. Sometimes conflicting.

But it is definately better hearing "opinion" so we can form an "opinion" ourselves, or put theories to the test.

Thanks everyone - its all appreciated.