Is Blogging Dead?

By Aaron S. Robertson

Recently, a friend asked me if I thought blogging is dead, a remnant of Web 1.0 . My response is a simple "No." There is definitely still a prominent place for the role of blogging in the online universe. In fact, there will always be a prominent place for the role of blogging as long as search engines continue to use printed (or typed, to be exact) words to catalog their search results. In other words, as long as humans have to type words into search engines and search engines understand typed words, bloggers are safe. 

Now, I would agree that blogs are increasingly being challenged to keep up with the latest Web technologies in order to keep visitors interested and coming back time and time again. It appears that Web surfers no longer want to visit Web sites (especially blogs) that have nothing but words on them. They now want - demand - videos, content feeds, photos, forums, etc. So bloggers definitely need to find a way to incorporate some or all of these things into their blogs these days if they haven't done so already. And if they can do that, they will undoubtedly have many repeat visitors.

But interested, repeat visitors and search engine results are two separate things. As I said, as long as search engines depend on typed words in order to catalog their search results, blogs that have a lot of rich material will continue to dominate search results.