Blogging can be a pain in the butt if you do not want to spend time ensuring the site is up to standrads that search engines now demand.  They require more and more from a webmaster now, than ever before. Usually, it’s content. Content can make or break a site, and the only real longevity a site ever gets is from unique regular content being added, and Google seeing this happen over a length of time.

You can argue the point that most of the autoblogs out there are spinning content to 30% unique, and they are getting away with page one rankings with Google – but for how long? You really need to add enough content to ensure Google thinks you are an authority on your niche subject, and starts pumping traffic your way, based on this trust. That word has now become a beacon for most webmasters, because Trustrank is well and truly here. Google is now ranking sites NOT just based on their inbound links, but also on their outbound links (amongst other things under the Trustrank banner). If your site has no selfless outbound links – which can link to any site – then your site has less chance of ranking higher. The best place to observe this is on website flipping sites like Flippa.com. You can check the micro-niche blogs that advertise Amazon products. These guys rank up high in the SERPs, and all include Trustrank methods. You will see few that do not have outbound links in their sidebars…

Another big deal over at Google HQ has always been backlinks. You may have seen recently that Angela and PJ’s backlinks have been penalized by Google, and their sites have received a drop in Pagerank. This is testament to the fact that all your backlinking activities should be natural and relevant. Always be wary of purchasing backlinks – it may harm your site if you do!