What kind of impact do links from blogs have on a page? Do archived blog pages, or comments with links get factored into SERPs?
Yes, links from archived pages do count in SERPS. However, you shouldn't post your URL in comments pages unless you are making a relevant comment. This kind of blog spamming is a huge problem for many blogs and blog owners have to spend time deleting these comments. Many blog tools now have ways of doing this. For instance, if you post a URL in the comment area of a blog powered by Blogger, it will not work. You will come across all kinds of blogs that have comments in them about erectile dysfunction or HGH with a link in them to an affiliate page or something. It's really vile the length to which spammers will go, spoiling other people's web pages.
I've read that Google puts a lot of weight on the blog results. Is there any indication that it put any more weight than a normal page?
Ok, so here's a question, well a statement then a question: I don't get blogs. How does the whole linking thing work? For example, let's say I create a blog about why oreo's should be octagonal. Who in the heck is ever going to see my rants, raves and other ramblings, let alone who's gonna link to such a site? To my way of thinking, blogs are just diaries online for people that have nothing better to do. Like I said, I just don't understand the bloging craze. I'd love to be able to take advantage of the blogging world but just can't imagine how anyone would find my rants worthwhile to link to or even how they would find my rants in the first place.
How would Google know the difference between a Blog, A 'real' news site and any other odd page? I can't see why it would put more weight on links from those type of pages just because they are a blog. I agree with Schlottke here, a link is a link.
To web browsers it is simply another page. To others it is an xml document (in atom format) filled where published dates, links and other info can be pulled from. Compare my bling blog to the xml behind it to see the differences. In my case not really anybody. Some blogs do have a huge following however. Since it is really easy for search engines to read in atom.xml it may give a site a significant boost.
Since newer content might get preferential treatment in a search engine and seeing as how blogs are updated frequently, could this have good SERP side effects?
It does appear so indeed that new pages rank high initially before being evaluated 'completely' if there is such a thing. But it depends what your goal is I reckon. Do you just want traffic to the blog or to your other services/products via the blog. Or is it merely for adsense revenue?
Well, any link is useful for SERP's for specific keywords to a specific page as long as you use the appropriate anchor text, so yes a blog with good anchor text links would be useful for your overall site if you think the running efforts of it justify the results. But I do not believe links form your blog will be wort anything more anchor text wise, nor PR wise than any other link.
TB, what benefit does your main site get from your blog other than a link? Also, I see your PR is 4. How many other bloggers have linked to you in some way? I'd really like to understand where the benefit really comes from. For example, what would be the difference of having a blog on your own site?
As somebody who has been working with blogs for about four years now, I can say with a definite "yes" that blogs do better in the search engines than static pages. Google loves blogs -- in fact they bought out the company that has the most popular blog software -- Blogger. Blogs have been around for years but they are just now hitting their mainstream stride. It isn't just about people with no time on their hands keeping blogs. Blogs are big business nowadays with major advertisers placing ads on them, like the John Kerry campaign. Now other big advertisers are jumping on the blog bandwagon and are taking them seriously. I think it's great. When something gets posted on one of my blogs, yahoo and Google pick up all those keywords within a couple days. Every time a new post goes live, all of the various bots come running.
In addition to being updated frequently, they also own Blogger and are making a lot of money placing Adsense on those free blogpot blogs.
Does anyone know any good blog software that can do all of these things - 1- have the design altered using CSS 2- Use spider friendly url's 3- sit on my server 4- uses xml to store the data I hope there is one out there, otherwise i'm going to have to commission one...