As we continue to help people try and answer the how to create a blog question we are going to run a little experiment on the importance of content.  The three big factors in SEO are time, content and links.  There is an ongoing discussion about the importance of content with regards to search engine results.  We have devised an experiment to see just how important content is here on My Newbie Blog.  We started two new blogs today.  They were started within one hour of each other.  They are identical in every way except that they were started in two different domains as sub-domain sites.  The only difference between the two sites is that the domain names in the URL address is different.  For the purpose of this experiment we will refer to one site as “Plus” and one site as “Advantage”.

Here is how the experiment will work.  We will keep the sites identical in both the time and links part of the equation.  The only difference between the two will be that one of the sites will get more content than the other.  We will then track the search engines to see which site shows up first and which site gets the best search engine result.  If the site with more content does better, our assumption will be that content is King.  If the site that gets less content does better, we will probably assume that content is not as important as the other factors.

Let’s say for the record that our pre-experiment belief is that the site with more content should do much better than the site with less content.  However, we are open to whatever result might come.  We will begin the process of getting some (identical) links pointed at the sites and adding some initial content to each of the sites.  We will be writing regular updates to let you know how the experiment is going in the weeks and months ahead.

Once you have your site well underway, you may need to take a good look at your theme.  There are some well established very popular blogs that utilize very simple themes.  That may be the right choice for you.  But there are so many great looking themes available for WordPress that you might want to take a look and see what is available.

When I am checking out themes there are a few things that I look for:

• Attractive
• Functional
• Ease of use
• SEO Minded

Some themes look great, but they are so hard to install that it makes them unusable.  Other themes set up pretty easy, but don’t adhere to basic SEO principles.  Some of these themes can be made SEO friendly, but again how much work it takes is a factor.  I have a couple of themes that I use that are “Premium Themes”, which means that I paid for them.  They were relatively inexpensive and I like the way they look.  They really wouldn’t work for a niche site because they take some effort to set up.  I have been working with a new free theme that I like.  It’s called Massive News and it is available at www.wpelements.com.  It is one of the easiest magazine themes I have worked with.  It is worth checking out.

I also just stumbled upon some free themes that look promising.  They are located at www.wp-magazine.se/free-theme-wp-pixels/ I haven’t had a chance to check them over to see if they are workable or not, but they have promise.  If you get to them before I do, let me know how they stack up.

I was checking out some stats and search engine results for My Newbie Blog today. I started by spending some time at StatCounter.com looking at my recent keyword activity. I am pasting the most recent keyword activity here:

Most of the traffic comes from the keywords how to create a blog. I have been working to get a better return for my site with this keyword. If I can get the site to a page one return from Google for this keyword search the traffic will increase dramatically. Right now I am getting a 46 position on page 5.

I am also working on another keyword that will bring traffic if I can get in on to page 1. The keyword is starting a blog. Right now I am not getting any traffic from the keyword but I am returning a 76 position on page 8.

I get a little traffic from the word scratch used in certain phrases. Initially I was targeting the keyword starting a blog from scratch. I get a position 6 and 7 (double return) on page 1 for the keyword but not much traffic.

I also get a good return for start a blog from scratch, again page 1 this time in position 4, also a double return.

All of this is to demonstrate how important good keywords are. You might get a good search engine result for a keyword but if doesn’t bring traffic it isn’t very helpful. Spend your efforts on your best keywords. One of the ways you will know which keywords work in the beginning of your blog is by the traffic you get from MSN. They seem to add new sites faster than Google. The major traffic comes from Google, so if you are getting traffic from MSN you will get a lot more traffic from Google. Keep writing article using your best keywords and the traffic will come.