Mobile Commerce, SEO & Social Media Blog

The Future of Successful Blogging (2.0 if you must)

I’ve recently been asking questions of my magic 8-ball to gain some insight into the future of successful blogging. I always try to stay ahead of the curve and my 8-ball has yet to steer me wrong with the exception of that one late night trip to Tijuana (don’t ask), but now we’re back on track I’m sure of it.

The notoriously indecisive 20-sided die has been rising through the bubbles of the inky blue liquid to tell me that the face of blogging will be changing in big ways whether we are ready for it or not. The whole Internet will be changing in big ways over the next few years and very few are in denial about that.


“I’ve been asking my magic 8-ball about the future of blogging.”






The big question however, is how this all will effect us.

The do-it-alone blogs that first hit the scene at the birth of blogging will become less and less relevant. I rarely read them anymore. Would anyone read a newspaper with only one person writing all the articles? Do people still read newspapers?

Outlook Not So Good

One person’s opinion is not nearly as useful, attractive or accurate as a collaborative effort with many different views and opinions. However, if you’re talking about political opinion, that’s a different story altogether.

But I don’t see SEO or anything SEM related splitting into two hard line militant factions (IRA of SEO). Besides that, it’s just not useful, accurate, objective or interesting to follow one guy’s opinion on a daily basis now is it? Political opinion blogs and radio unfortunately may never change, but it’s lucky for us that our version of sensationalism is a “Top 10 Reasons” list or a page with crazy stats.

“The outlook may not be so good.”

Reply Hazy

Some lame blogging and linkbait techniques may be able to stick around for at least a little while longer. That is until Google unveils its googlbot3000, which would be more than capable of weeding out lame brained blogs the likes of which would briefly entertain even the daftest of aspiring SEOs. At any rate, I have some doubts about the long-term usefulness of certain blog writing techniques that we all are aware of and guilty of at one time or another; the numbered list.

It’s catchy and attention grabbing, I know, but does anyone else ever get the feeling that SEO/SEM blogs are turning into list mania? “Top 10 Reasons to Start a Blog,” “Top 5 Reasons Your Company will Fail” “Top 7 Techniques to Get Links,” “Top 10 Things to do with a Donkey in Mexico”. It all just seems a little too much at times. It’s so prevalent that I’m almost desensitized to it nowadays.

Boring, unhelpful lists have burned me out too many times. So if you must use this technique please, I beg you, make sure it’s good.

Another gripe I have is with the SEO statisticians. I’m so tired of trying to make sense of 67% of the meaningless or at least 96% of the boring and overused numbers. Show me some colorful charts or something; if you must linkbait with this technique, use the numbers in the appropriate context during the course of writing an interesting and/or useful blog.

“Another gripe I have is with the SEO statisticians.”

Signs Point to Yes

Alright, now this is the part where I praise all of my favorite bloggers out there and shed some light on what I think the future holds for SEO/SEM blogging. Collaborative cross-site blogging will or should be what it’s all about in my opinion. HuffingtonPost.com and Counterpunch.com are good examples of collaborative blogging in the realm of current events. They have blogs written by many different writers that contribute to various websites. They stay fresh and are updated constantly. As far as SEO/SEM goes I like the direction of searchengineland.com and searchenginewatch.com.

Although they tend to use the same few bloggers, they keep their content fresh and useful. My only wish is that bloggers work together more and blog on sites other than their own.

Here’s how it works. I post a blog on your site and you or someone else posts on mine. We both contribute to a greater diversity of information on the web in our respective areas, and we get a link to our own respective sites from another authoritative site. It benefits the site as well as the readers. It will also serve to raise the bar as far as quality of content goes.

I mean face it, whether you like it or not the future of the Internet is in collaboration and co-operation. The proof is out there in open source software and information. We are headed in that direction, and I couldn’t be happier about it. You can “Ask Again Later” if you want, but my hopes for the future will always be in the direction of collaboration.

Zach Louden Want content written for your Brand that shows up #1 on Search Engines and brings you new customers? Contact us.