Now that Social Media has officially become a major component of SEO, blogs that are not so mainstream or what I like to call 2nd and 3rd tier blogs have the potential of being left out and squeezed out of more and more search results. This is not a good thing my friends because 2nd and 3rd tier blogs are often better resources because of the writers involved and their ability to be more specific and opinionated.
Examples of 1st Tier Blogs
- Mashable.com
- SEOmoz.org/blog
- Copyblogger.com
- SmashingMagazine.com etc.
Examples of 2nd and 3rd Tier Blogs
- ChaseSagum.com (shameless plug)
- LinkSpiel.com etc.
1st Tier Blogs + Absorbing Social Activity = Huge Problem!
First tier blogs, those popular blogs that everybody seems to be reading such as Mashable or DeadSpin are getting all of the social activity. Meanwhile the 2nd and 3rd tier blogs are getting some social activity, they are consistently being squeezed out of the search results more and more because they can’t compete. Add personalized search to that mix and things begin to compound from there.
You can see the problem this presents. Over time search results have the potential of becoming more and more isolated amongst major publishers. Big blogs will get all of the traffic, while everyone else is left out. We are already seeing this happen in many industries on the web.
What do I mean by social activity? Specifically i’m talking about total number of Tweets, Likes, and Google +1′s. There are of course many other social signals in SEO but specifically for the simplicity of this blog post i’m talking about these 3.
Solution = Promote 2nd & 3rd Tier Blogs Like Crazy!
Because of this huge problem I am making have been making a concerted effort at Tweeting, “Liking” and Google +1′ing’ blog posts that I find helpful or valuable from these 2nd and 3rd tier blogs. I find these blogs to have better overall content and to be more personable in nature than their 1st tier competitors. I also want to see more of their pages in my personalized search results. Doing so I believe will give me a personal advantage in my searching abilities on Google moving forward.
And last but not least… the biggest reason I am doing this is because I love to see the underdog win! Don’t we all? Sure a Mashable.com post can get it’s thousands of retweets and facebook likes. But I have no interest in promoting the over-promoted.
Let’s help out the small guys/gals and work together to help better promote their content. If you know of any 2nd and 3rd tier blogs list them in the comment thread below so we can all start following them.
Leave a comment