Google is obviously a very well known brand, and it is safe to say it didn't get that way from blogging. It is probably also safe to say that most of the people who read Google's blogs are already somewhat familiar with the company. They didn't provide the model for making money online with blogs.

But...

Looking at how Google uses blogs does make for some excellent examples of how a business can use blogs to bolster their online presence and engage their customers.

The Branches

Google has individual blogs for many of the company's properties. For example, there is one for AdWords, one for AdSense, one for Google Mobile, one for Google Chrome, one for Google Analytics, one for Gmail, one for YouTube, and so on and so forth.

Of course, not all businesses have the number of properties that Google does, but for businesses offering a number of products or services, this is a strategy worth considering.

Updating and Informing

Now, having all of these blogs is pointless if they are not updated, and Google for the most part keeps these updated fairly regularly. You're not going to see a new post every single day on every single blog of Google's, but they are generally kept up with.

Because of this (at least partially), people know they can go to Google's blogs to find the latest news on product updates. They are reliable sources for company info.

Interesting

Google products are interesting to people right from the get go, just because they come from Google, and this is a company that has a large impact on the daily lives of many, many, people. So it is true they have that going for them.

Still, Google blogs generally find ways make posts interesting beyond just that. One way that I often see them do this on a variety of blogs is to highlight the usefulness of the product being talked about.

They offer tips. They provide examples of scenarios where certain aspects of their products would be of general use to the user. They often provide videos and images showing just what they're talking about.

The Go-To Place

While Google has so many blogs for their different products, they also have one central blog, the Official Google Blog, which ordinarily provides the biggest announcements the company has to make. Posts here are often cross posted with Google's other niche blogs, but if you want to know generally the biggest things that Google is up to, you can go there.

Google also has a directory of all its blogs, so users can easily find any of them from one location.

Ways to Keep Users Updated

Google offers more than one way for readers to stay updated with new blog posts across its entire network of blogs. There are RSS feeds, a standard feature for blogs, but on Google blogs, there is normally a prominent link to subscribe to the feed.

Google also has a Blogs Gadget that you can add to your iGoogle homepage. This is another way to bring new posts right to you.

What I'm Getting At

The point of this article is not to talk to go on about how great Google is. It's to point out some of the things they're doing that make their blogs worth reading. This is a problem many businesses continue to face. People just don't care about reading their blogs. So perhaps it would pay to step back and look at a business whose blogs people really do want to read.

One of the reasons Google gets so much press coverage is, frankly, that its representatives are so good about discussing corporate developments. And now things have been taken an informative/slightly ridiculous step further with a blog post summing up Google's blogging habits this year.

Perhaps Susan Straccia, member of the Google Blog Team and author of the Official Google Blog post, is a fan of movies like Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Synecdoche, New York. There certainly seems to be a "meta" element here.

Anyway, Straccia wrote, "This is our 368th post of the year on the main Google blog, which is 23% more than in 2007. In addition to more posts, we are thrilled to know that we have many more readers now - 78% more, to be exact. The number of unique visitors jumped from 6,738,830 last year to more than 12 million (12,000,723) in 2008."

She later continued, "[N]othing caused as much excitement as our earlier-than-planned unveiling of Google Chrome. This post alone had 1,735,093 unique visitors and generated 12% of our total-year pageviews on the blog! . . . . And the Google blog network keeps on growing: 44 new blogs launched this year, for a total of 127 active company blogs."

Is your mind boggled yet? Ah, well. For better or for worse, we can probably expect to see another introspective post and some even bigger numbers next 2009 year.

A week or so ago, some people noticed some updates to Google Toolbar PageRank scores. It was unconfirmed however if this was an official update. Matt Cutts eventually confirmed on Twitter that it was indeed a Google update.

Cutts later said on his blog, "In case you didn’t see where I confirmed it on Twitter, Google recently did a toolbar PageRank update. It’s pretty much done now. If you want more info, I’ve answered questions about PageRank and the Google Toolbar in the past."

People's sites are going both up and down, but it is important to remember that the toolbar is "not an accurate indicator of how Google ranks or values a site," as Loren Baker notes at Search Engine Journal. Though it is still a factor.

Cutts also makes the bold prediction that this will be the last PageRank update of the year,i think that the next update will be on march 30 :)
This blog page rank remains the same PR 3..

It’s been long established that consumers are more willing to buy a product when more information is available. A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research confirms that consumers choose products with more technical specifications offered.

In a series of five studies asking participants to choose between two kinds of products ranging from digital cameras and cell phones to towels and potato chips, study participants across the board chose the product with the most specifications.

They did so even when the specifications offered little to no additional information. All that detail, though, didn’t have an effect on the product experience after purchase, so while offering more information seems to directly influence buying, a merchant in business for the long term will have to back up his products.

The results make sense under various theoretical frameworks, especially Uncertainty Reduction Theory. Under this framework, consumers (and people in general) continuously seek information to assuage their anxieties, solidify beliefs, and justify their decisions.

For web marketers, the implications are pretty straightforward: The more information you offer a perspective customer, the more likely that customer will buy from you over the competition.

Google put out a nice holiday checklist at the Webmaster Central blog to help Web marketers prepare for the holiday season. Given that the season is nearly over, if you haven’t already done these things, try to remember them for next year.

Well, one supposes this is good advice for those that do business year round, which is everybody, right? To follow are some of the better suggestions:

1. Verify your site is indexed and returned by Google with the right snippet and page title. Cut down or eliminate on duplicate titles and meta descriptions.

2. Label your images. Nobody likes (and some distrust) images with only the generic number tag as a description (i.e., 001.jpg). Use alt tags to label your images so that when they show up in Google Images, the text matches the picture. It helps Google identify the images, too.

3. If you have a brick-and-mortar location, double check and claim your business listing in Google Local.

4. Make sure your site is compatible with all the different browsers out there.

5. If Google returns Sitelinks for your site, give those a quick review, ensure the destination pages are functional or remove unwanted sitelinks through Webmaster Tools.

If you have a web-based business or if a significant portion of your business is performed on the internet through your website, then the best advertising and marketing is completed by submitting your website to a search engine.

No amount of press releases, newspaper or radio ads, banner ads, spam emails or newsletters will achieve the same results, although it may be effective in a small proportion.

Beware of companies that promise an automatic submission of your website to hundreds of search engines which are most times nothing more than false promises. The best way to submit your website for search engine ranking and inclusion is to do it yourself or to hire an expert to do it manually, by contacting the search engine companies and directories.

As with many things, researching or getting referrals from other companies that have had great success with an SEO company is always the safest way to ensure that your website is going to be in genuinely caring hands. There are so many websites on the internet trying to make a quick buck by any means necessary.

Business dealings with the wrong types of people can be very cut-throat if you're not careful in considering and researching where you decide to go in finding your marketing partners for life.

Before you begin to submit your website to search engines, it is best to ensure that your websites are thoroughly designed to a professional quality using the right key words, good graphics and pictures and appropriate, relevant content. Don't submit websites that are incomplete.

While submitting to a search engine, make sure to provide information about your website, keywords and any other information that may be pertinent, including the name and contact information of your business.

The creation and growing life of your website in the infancy stages are always going to come with many great challenges. But once you have overcome those challenges and beaten the odds, you will most likely be able to repeat this pattern over and over if you wanted to do so.

You could also decide to become a consultant and help others to become better with their dealings online. They could learn from your mistakes and discoveries just as you had with your wonderful mentors.

Mere submissions alone to search engine companies will not guarantee that your site would be immediately listed and the ranking will be at the very top. Because there are thousands of new websites coming up every day and it may take quite some time before they take up your site for review by human editors.

One important factor to remember while submitting your website is to include a site map of your website which makes the crawling easy for the web robots. Search engines like Google hardly consider submissions without sitemaps.

It just makes sense to do everything that you can think of to make the robot's job in crawling your website as easy as it can possibly be from your end. It can also be referred to as optimizing your website to just flow very smoothly without hardly any interruption at all from the search engine programs that hit all kinds of dead ends and errors as people place businesses online.

There are many online companies that accept search engine submission services. You can choose to do it yourself with software packages available all over on the internet.

The best way, as with anything, is to get to know your prospective source of help and information as much as you can. Over some time this will develop in your mind as a trustworthy source that you can always depend on for a very long time, you hope.

You will hear from many users online that you should stay as far away as you can get from these automatic submission companies. This is very much the case in most of what you may stumble onto online.

I repeat that there are a few good, solid and dependable companies that you can find by knowing the right people and being associated with a good network of business minded people.

Recently, during a live chat Q&A, Googlers Matt Cutts and Maile Ohye, among others, faced the burning questions of webmasters around the world. Together, they put to rest some fears and myths, and confirmed some speculations.

Below are the meatier results, with the straightest answers given first, followed by responses that were a bit on the ambiguous side, which we took the liberty of translating. Did you know there are about 200 factors that go into determining a site’s ranking in the search results? How about that Google made 450 tweaks to its algorithm last year?

Only one question during that session received conflicting answers from Googlers and wasn’t reconciled: Does the age of a website/domain affect its ranking?

Ohye answered this way: a site's reputation can be a indicator to search engines, but of course, it's not everything. Having a site for a long period of time can establish credibility with users, and as a search engine we also want to reflect this type of credibility. Of course, newer domains can also gain users and credibility. It seems like running a good site is a bit like running a reputable business. So yes, if your domain has been credible for years it can help. If you buy an old domain and put all your content on it in hopes of getting instant rankings, that's not the best idea.

But, when the question was rephrased from another webmaster, Cutts answered: In the majority of cases, it actually doesn't matter--we want to return the best information, not just the oldest information. Especially if you're a mom/pop site, we try to find ways to rank your site even if your site is newer or doesn't have many links. I think it is fair for Google to use that as a signal in some circumstances, and I try never to rule a signal out completely, but I wouldn't obsess about it.

Official translation: Sometimes, when we say it does.

GOOGLE STRAIGHT TALK

Do 301 redirects carry over PageRank?

Where appropriate, ranking signals will be transferred across 301 redirects (if the same page has moved from one URL to another). This may take some time, so you should probably leave the redirect in place as long as you have control over the URL.

How many 301 redirects are acceptable?

It's ok to chain a few together. The HTTP 1.0 standard allows for a maximum of 5 redirects for a URL, so keep it minimal.

Why do pages translated into different languages each have different rankings in their respective engines?

Google looks at content on a URL-by-URL basis, so even if you have translated top content from one language to another, Google might not treat it the same way as they would treat the original content. It's also possible that the translated content is not as relevant as other original content in that language. Generally speaking, making sure that your content is as unique and compelling as possible for the users in that target market is the best thing to do.

Do backlinks from bad sites negatively affect my PageRank?

Those links might be positively affecting your PageRank (PageRank does not go down from "bad" links like those from adult sites). In general, you don't have to worry about bad links like that which point to your site that aren't under your control.

How often does your search algorithm change?

We change the algorithms all the time - last year we had over 450 changes.

Could sharing an IP address with a bad site get my site penalized?

The situations where it would matter are when the server is overloaded (can't respond to your visitors) and when it's incorrectly configured (not returning your site to your visitors). But otherwise that is no longer a concern.

Does Google have a problem with rank-checking software?

Rank-checking software is against Google’s Terms of Service and could result in blocking your IP address, and it doesn’t really help, especially when it comes to personalized or geotargeted results.


CIRCUITOUS ROUTES AND TRANSLATIONS

Question: Is there PageRank boost from .edu or .gov links?

Google’s Answer: You don't get any PageRank boost from having an .edu link or .gov link automatically. If you get an .edu link and no one is linking to that .edu page, you're not going to get any PageRank at all because that .edu page doesn't have any PageRank.

Translation: If the .edu or .gov page is linked to, then yes, because that webpage now has some authority, just like with any (non-.gov or .edu) page.

Question: Does a page load time play a crucial role in Google Page Ranking? If yes how important is it?

Google’s Answer: I think the more important issue here is user experience. If your site loads fast, your users will be happy; if it loads slow, users will be less happy. Make your users happy, right?

Translation: Yes, and as important as 200 other factors.

Question: Aaron D'Souza of the Search Quality team was reported as stating that publishing the same content on two separate geotargeted paths under your domain will not trigger the dupe content filters. Is this correct?

Google’s Answer: In general, in a case like that, we'd try to pick the best page based on various factors, including geotargeting and language choices. If that page is one which is also available for other geotargeting/language choices, we will generally try to pick the version that our algorithms feel makes the most sense.

Translation: Yes, we think.

Question: I have reported sites that clearly have paid links (e.g. the backlink page says "Advertising" above the link), but Google does not seem to take action. Why would that be the case? These are .orgs who are clearly selling their .org juice.

Google’s Answer: While paid links and spam reports are being taken very seriously by Google, the results may not be seen immediately for users or even not at all. This does not mean no action is being taken on the offending sites. Also, the TLD of the sites should not be a factor being taken into account. For this reason reporting both, web spam and PageRank passing link selling makes sense and contributes in an important way to the quality of Google's index.

Translation, partly based on .gov/.edu response: Google treats all top level domains the same, so a .org would have no more juice than a .com or .info. Further, clearly marked paid links (ones on pages labeled “Advertising”) are not necessarily violations of Google’s guidelines. If the links you reported were found to be nofollow links, then no action would be necessary. But keep trying to sabotage the competition. Business is war.

Question: Is it true that the fewer the links FROM your website, the more influence they have on the sites receiving those links?

Google’s Answer: PageRank is split up over the links from a page, but I would recommend not concentrating on this (as you won't be able to "measure" and act upon it anyway) and instead making your site as usable as possible for your visitors.

Translation: Yes, the more you link the more the link juice passed on is diluted, but don’t go trying to figure out the formula in order to game the system. We’ll figure you out. We’re Google.

Question: Does getting a lot of comments in a blog help in being well indexed/ranked by Google?

Google’s answer: Having a lot of enthusiastic users commenting on your posts and doing so generating content on your site, certainly does not harm your rankings :-) Furthermore, a large fan base gives the webmaster a bit of independence from search engine traffic, which is the reason why generating original and compelling content in order to nurture a group of committed users is something I would highly recommend to any blogger

Translation: Yes.

Question: Recently, you removed this suggestion: "Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!" from your guidelines. Is there any chance that you will be discounting these kinds of links for ranking value in future?

Google’s Answer: There's always the chance that we'll discount directory links in the future. What we were seeing was quite a few novice people would see the "directory" recommendation and go out and just try to submit to a ton of directories, even if some of the directories were lower-quality or even fly-by-night directories that weren't great for users. Right now we haven't changed how we're weighting directory links--we've only removed the directory suggestion from the webmaster guidelines.

Translation: Possibly.

Question: Until recentley (the last six months or so) a high ranking was achievable by submitting articles to article directories (providing they were 40%-60% unique), it no longer seems to be the case. Have links from article sites been de-valued at all?

Google’s Answer: In my experience, not every article directory site is high-quality. Sometimes you see a ton of articles copied all over the place, and it's hard to even find original content on the site. The user experience for a lot of those article directory sites can be pretty bad too. So you'd see users landing on those sorts of pages have a bad experience. If you're thinking of boosting your reputation and getting to be well-known, I might not start as the very first thing with an article directory. Sometimes it's nice to get to be known a little better before jumping in and submitting a ton of articles as the first thing.

Translation: Yes.

Out in Las Vegas at PubCon, Mike McDonald of WebProNews spoke with Eric Enge, who was one of the speakers at the session entitled "Real-World Low-Risk, High-Reward Link Building Strategies." You might be familiar with Enge. He's been a WebProNews blog partner for some time. He's the StoneTemple Consulting guy, and he's developed a reputation over the years as a reputable source for information about link building. In fact, that's one of StoneTemple's areas of expertise, along with SEO site evaluation, social media marketing, blog implementation, PPC, web analytics, and local SEO among other things.
At this session, Enge talked about how companies should "Think Big" in order to get the most out of their link building strategies through social media. Mike caught up with him and talked about this subject a little bit more outside of the session.

Other link building advice Enge discussed at the session included:

- Studying what has worked before
- Writing compelling articles
- Write an interesting description
- Voting for posts in front of you on the upcoming pages
- Making sure you stand out!

You can find more coverage on that session here. Watch the video above to see what Enge has to say about thinking big, and how to apply link building strategies through social media when you are a small business.