Changes In Google Algorithm Suggest The Need For Corporate Blogging

Google has gone and done it again. Two very important changes in the way that Google ranks webpages have rocked the SEO world, and bloggers, especially corporate bloggers, stand to benefit.

First, SEO Roundtable says Google is no longer counting unlimited subdomains as separate sites. Subdomains in the future will now be treated as folders, a major blow to websites that create extra sites like news.company.com and careers.company.com.

From the WebmasterWorld thread:News flash from Las Vegas PubCon. Matt Cutts informed us that Google will very soon begin treating subdomains and subdirectories the same in this fashion: there will be only 2 total urls from a domain in any set of search results, so no more getting 3, 4 or however many spots via subdomains. We didn't get any more information than just that basic heads-up.

In the future, the company will only have its main domain, and one subdomain ranking high in the Google SERP's.

That's a pretty big deal if you built your search engine optimization strategy on a single brand. In the future, the need to create several different brands will become a major part of a companies SEO strategy, and the easiest way to create multiple domains is powering them with blog software. For small companies, the opportunity to create an outsized presence on line is a big win. For large companies, the need to build high quality blogs with their list of domain names just became a necessity. Expect to see a rise in auction prices as well.

The second piece of news is that Google is moving away from high-ranking sites, and increasing the value of recent material.

Google Operating System points out something interesting in Google’s algorithm recently: a preference in favoring recent content. The example provided would seem to favor the conclusion; TCP/IP’s anniversary today has resulted in Google preferencing recent posts, including from Digg, over informative articles related to the search term such as Wikipedia who would have normally had the top or near to the top position.

No more living off your SEOwork from three years ago. If you're not writing regularly, you're not going to rank on the first page of Google. This is a positive event for the consumer, which means less four year old webpages, but it's great news for bloggers, whose steady stream of information is going to rank even higher in the search engines.

SEO for 2008 just changed, and blogs are going to be the answer for many companies. The old saw that SEO is a marathon, not a sprint, just got proven true. If you're one of those corporate marketing, technology, or communication executives that wonder you're going to adjust, the time to speak to a social media company is now. I guess now is the time to remind you that we've corporate blog consultants?

If you're in St Louis, and you're looking for a social media consultant, you can't afford not to call.