It’s a well known fact that by blogging and commenting on other people’s blogs, forums, and community sites, that the search engines will more easily find your own site for relevant search terms. As you begin your engagement efforts on the Web, it is important to keep in mind how the major search engines will interpret your content and linking efforts. Below are some pointers from seomoz.org, as well as a link to a good resource outlining Search Engine Ranking Factors.

Most Important Factors

The following are the top 10 ranked factors across the 5 categories:

1. Title Tag - 4.57
2. Anchor Text of Links - 4.46
3. Keyword Use in Document Text - 4.38
4. Accessibility of Document - 4.3
5. Links to Document from Site-Internal Pages - 4.15
6. Primary Subject Matter of Site - 4.00
7. External Links to Linking Pages - 3.92
8. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - 3.77
9. Global Link Popularity of Site - 3.69
10. Keyword Spamming - 3.69

Web engagement to ensure your message is heard by key constituencies involves some or all of the following activities:

• Blogging your own message
• Commenting on external sites
• Establishing a Hub community, where others can start their own blog conversations on your site

The last point above is one that is often overlooked in these engagement debates that can center around blogs only far too often. By encouraging other constituents to converse on your site, search engine results can be enhanced through many of the items above. This includes the fact that more terms will be relevant on your site, more internal links and links to external sources will exist. And most of all, with outside constituents such as your customers blogging on your site, the chance for quality inbound links from external sites will go up tremendously and not involve the action of internal company team members.

It’s well worth the effort to scan Search Engine Ranking Factors to be aware of how your activities will be interpreted by the search engines.

– brian