Have you ever been into a hoarders house? Maybe in your inspections or listings you may have come across a hoarders house. There's stuff everywhere and none of it is organized. A little of this, a little of that and trash that no longer has any use to it at all. Pots and pans are not in the kitchen, food is everywhere, clothes scattered, etc.. nothing is where it should be.
Is your blog like this? 
You have a recipe over there, a buyers tip blog over here and a couple listings here or there. Maybe a rant, rave or complaint thrown in. The problem is that Google has no idea what your blog is about.
Are you trying to rank? Then you may need to reorganize. Don't care about ranking? Then blog away.
Here's the issue when it comes to organizing a blog:
Many people have several blogs and use them wisely for different purposes. ActiveRain blogs have member's only posts that Google doesn't index. These are perfect for posts that don't bring in business such as a funny quip, story, rant, rave, recipe or images. ActiveRain also does a good job at organizing their blogs with categories, location and tags. Most blog posts can be found easily on a Google search if there is not much competition within about 10 minutes, sometimes less. This quick indexing makes ActiveRain perfect for posts that have a short expiration date like listings or events. You can put the post into various categories and really narrow down the search field. However, the URL structure and our basic blogs are not as properly designed as they could be. Great URL structure for a blog like this would be: http://www.activerain.com/tammy.emineth/seo-blogging/your-blog-virtual-mess/ It clearly identifies several things: the main domain (activerain), the blogger (tammy emineth), the category or tag (seo blogging) and the post title. This is perfect URL structure for Google to read. It knows everything about this post in this one URL.
While we can't alter our URL's here we may be able to on other blogs like Wordpress, Real Geeks and some others. This is called parent URL - meaning the parent is the main category and topics that relate to that category fall under that field.
But it also means that your blog shouldn't be all over the place otherwise Google won't really know what it's about and it makes it more difficult to rank. If you sell Columbus real estate and have a blog or website which primarily discusses Columbus real estate you don't want to throw in posts about your kids school performance or the adventure you had on the weekend. If you want Google to find your posts you have to stick to what the blog is about. I used to say at least 70% of the site needs to be about your main field but now I'm suggesting all of it. Use AR for those random posts but for your website, stick to what it's really about. You can have a few main topics but keep it simple like:
- Events
- News
- Real Estate
- Listings
- Lifestyle
But then everything under those categories should only be related to Columbus. When you organize and build a website around categories and URL structure, it helps Google really identify what your site is about. Also, keep the posts in only one category. Don't have a "blog" category and then throw everything into blog and one other or multiple categories because then the URL structure will not know which category to put it in.
The more organized your blog is, the better it will rank.
Check out your tags on your AR blog to see what the majority of your blogging is about. Make sure all your public posts are what you really want to be found for. You can find your tags by using this URL: http://activerain.com/blogs/jerinka/tags - but instead of "jerinka" for mine, you would put in your AR user name. You can see on mine that the biggest tag is SEO, which is what the majority of my posts are about.
If you're blog is all over the board, Google won't know to rank you for what you really want to be found for. ActiveRain is a little different but you want your profile to show up when someone searches your main industry and if it can't easily identify you, you might miss out on a lead.
Need help? Give us a call or email us for pricing on reorganizing your website.
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