Sometimes Blogging Can Hurt Your SEO

That's a dumb thing to say, right?

I mean, blogging should never hurt your SEO-- not directly-- but very possibly indirectly.

But there is an easy fix and it definitely doesn't involve leaving the rain. I would never recommend that.

You really want to read this post if you don't want to help your competition, but you still want to be an active, contributing member of ActiveRain.

I just spent the last 12 hours working on my AR blog. I went through about 250 posts, I think, and made very tiny changes to all of them.

One thing I did was changed all of my SEO-related posts to "Associates Only."

Here's why:

I love to exchange information "in the Rain". I love to help other mortgage brokers and Realtors in any way that I can. If I find a really cool closing gift, for example, I will come to ActiveRain and blog about that very thing. Ideas for good closing gifts will always be "members only."

And I've always known that there was a risk that I was teaching my competition too much. That maybe I was giving away too much information to other mortgage brokers competing for the same business that I am competing for, in the State of Arizona.

It used to be that there was enough business to go around, but times have gotten a bit lean.

Any post that I write which involves search engine optimization or marketing tips that my competition could possibly use will be "Associates Only" from this day forth.

On top of that, I need to trim down my associates list. ActiveRain gives you the ability to block certain associates, so I will block anyone who has a "dummy" account, rarely posts, or is pretty much inactive. 

I will also have no choice but to block all mortgage brokers in Arizona. (I may make an exception to this rule, so send me an email if you have compelling reason not to.)

This does not mean that you can't still come and learn from my blog! If I come across a really good graphic artist who does website design, or a great business card printer, or a life lesson I learned from a client... I will post it in "Member's Only."

If I post something about Mortgages, I will post it "Public," and for consumers.

The only people who I am going to (do my best to) weed-out are other Arizona mortgage brokers. That's it. And it makes sense when you think about it.

I recently found that two of my competitors have been doing some unscrupulous things to try and damage my search engine reputation. One lender, for example, even uses my name in his keywords.

Can you believe that?

Get your own brain, will ya?

My copy has been stolen; images have been stolen; and all the keyword research I have done and paid for has simply been cut and pasted into other people's pages.

One of my competitor has over a dozen websites, all about the same thing: Phoenix AZ Area Mortgages.

Over 12 sites! 

I have one AZ Mortgage site. I am going to promote it honestly and I am not going to help my competition SPAM the search engine and basically steal valuable information from clients who have mortgage questions and turn to Google for answers.