The Power Of The Blog

Ok folks.... We've got a new topic here: Blogs. Blogs are beginning to show up every day now. There are blogs on just about any feasible topic you can imagine. Our parent site, WebProNews utilizes blogs from lots of folks in the computer industry, the marketing and PR industry and others. One might wonder though, what goes into making a blog great. Well, a good buddy of mine wrote a nice article on it. I'll post it here.

If you're reading this then chances are that you're not an Internet purist. You don't build websites for artistic reasons, spilling your guts about what is philosophically, transcendentally, or intrinsically eminent to your soul and being. You build sites to make money, pure and simple.

You utilize the famed "information super highway" by setting up shop by its off ramps, hoping somebody stops in. You are told that traffic brought in from the search engines is key to online success, and you're determined to have a bus stop right outside your shop.

Everybody shouts, "search engine optimization!" And they usually mean that in a dirty way. Content barely gets a mention in the face of the flash-in-the-pan magicians promising rapid keyword tweaking and spider trickery to generate traffic. What many will promise is a way to get dropped in the fabled Google sandbox, as SEO often aims to please search engines, not people.

But it is people that really drive your success, and it is content that drives people to your site, even if they use a search engine interstate to get there. What good does it do if Google refers a million visitors to your site if they don't find what they're looking for?

Most searchers are window shoppers. If they don't like what they see in the window, then they're not coming back. Without content, your site becomes a ghost town with a big "Road Closed" sign in front of it.

Bookmarking is the sincerest form of Internet flattery, and this story is about building loyalty through content. If your version of SEO is closer to SEM (search engine manipulation) an algorithm change can sink you like a devalued stock, all in the name of search purity.

That leaves you to find the balance between content and the various methods used to get a high search engine ranking. And really, its not so much a balance, as it should be 80% content with some other stuff worked in for strategic reasons.

If its content that visitors and search engine spiders are looking for, then feed it to them. (Write it, and they will come.)

In addition to keyword relevancy, one of the main things an algorithm measures is the length of time visitors spend at a site. It also measures popularity by incoming links from other web pages. So how do you use this information to produce a user-friendly site? Here are some ways to make content the vehicle that drives your web success.

Market yourself as an expert in your field.

If you've set up a whole website on a particular topic, then you've got a great opportunity to talk about something you know a lot about. Write about it. Write about often. Make it appear that your content is first, and your product is second. If you sell widgets, provide information on widgets and all things related to widgets first. Most likely, a searcher wants to be educated first and to buy second. If you keep your readers interested enough to keep reading, you increase your chances of your visitor coming back. Better, you increase your chances of the visitor bringing somebody back with them.

Refer to other experts in your field.

Begin the link exchange by linking to others who can also offer quality content (though, not necessarily others who are selling the same thing). Ask them to do the same for you and the most efficient type of networking you can find has begun. This is purely a PR move, so the best sites to link to are those with regularly updated press releases, newsletters, and research-sites that are more pure form in information provisions.

Keep the content interactive, fresh, original, varied, and free.

Discussion boards, forums, blogs, and FAQ's give readers great opportunity and motivation to come to your site and stay at your site. Give them a voice in your own throat and they'll never shut up. Take content submissions and provide access to articles, ebooks, white pages, and anything else relevant. You need a bunch of content to optimize your site-about 20 pages or more to put its best foot forward.

Free stuff counts as content.

Link to or provide as much free stuff as you can-downloads, software, information, prizes, whatever. It helps if they have a required link back to your website. People take free stuff they don't even need, and then come back for more. Give free stuff, give new free stuff, and then give it again.

Again, keep it clean.

Dirty tricks can get you dropped forever. Creating pages with hidden content that visitors can't read but spiders can is a risky endeavor. It's only a matter of time before you're called out for cheating.

Here's the condensed version.

High quality, high quantity content.

People like it, link to you.

Search engines notice that people like you and link to you, the ranking begins.

You notice that search engines and people like you, you do more of what you've been doing.

More links to you, more link exchange requests, more cycle of we all like each other and we want to tell somebody else about it.

Search engines say, "hey! Look at all those inbound links!" Rank you higher.

As your rank gets higher over time (okay, not as fast as you'd like, but over the months), more and more visitors end up at your site, some to buy, some to read, some to exchange, some to comment, some to submit, some to ask questions.

Over time, you become an A-Number-One, top ranking, authority on the web, the one everybody looks to for answers on a specific topic and for buying your brand of widgets.

You're now on solid Internet ground, an established commodity of cyberspace, without risky manipulative tactics.

This story applies to all websites, but blogs even more so because most blogs are about reading opinions and news so you have to put up lots of content and it needs to be fairly well reasoned. You can add ads and other stuff but none of it means diddly without quality content and the only way to make it better is to write and keep writing.

Right now, I personally maintain a blog. It's political in nature. It reflects my own political leanings as well as some information going on in my home state of Kentucky.

Blogs exist on all kinds of topics, whethers it's in the form of personal diaries like at livejournal or something in blogspot or even MindComet's BlogsInSpace. Do any of you blog? If so, on what topics and subjects? What kind of response do you get? I've had a little response with mine but I've not been terribly agressive in circulating it. Any thoughts on what people could do to get their blog circulating.

I will also post some other article and features on blogs as they creep up. Tell us what you think.

[Wezee]

This post has an excellent article and I agree that it definitely pertains to blogs. I sometimes get caught up in other areas of running my business that too much time goes by without me blogging when the key to success is continuous frequent blogging because most people don't realize that every unique post you publish is actually its own webpage...so the more you post,the more pages develop,the more food there is for people and search engines,etc!

I have a posting on one of my blogs that goes right along with this article and provides other insights. The title of the post is What Do People Want Online? Check it out and feel free to post your own comments.

[freehits]

The use of a blog in creating a network of information to surround a commercial site is a new concept that is working for us. Free services and sites which host blogs on our domains each with tangent topics and article provide informative reading and bring in related surfers that we can direct through links or subtle ads to our main intended target page.

Not only are this great topic pages to get the links from for a main page but the each target and specialize in a certain similar topic.

If your site is about XBOX 360. Then a handful of blogs each targeting different discussion may include
1.Halo 3 rumors
2. expected games for 360
3. Playstation 3 (know thy enemy)
4. Online gaming discussion.
5. 3d modeling and programming

Each can mean a visit per week to write more or post news about the topic....or if I could get RSS to WP to work, that could take the load too.

Once a week i think provides a nice natural SEO pace as well.

running these tangent blogs on free services or your own domain provides a great source of links and a great place to place sidebar ads and more.

We find these can be 100 of every 1000 visitors coming through one of these discussion blogs.

The added bonus is the built in SEO of WP 1.5

For me I blog for business and for my family albumn type publishing.

I figure if Im opening a "Hot Dog Stand", I may as well open a 'napkin stand','ketchup stand','relish stand', and 'drink stand' too.

[laughing247]

the cool thing about blogs is they are free and you can express yourself any way you like. not to mention www.cj.com allows you to place advertisements for free and get paid. it's a easy way to learn about the internet. i still can't figure out how to get media links for funny videos on it yet. does anyone know how to do this.
check it out
ctabuk edit

The traffic levels would have to be phenomenal to make money off the PPC stuff like AdSense or one of the new ones from Yahoo, Jeeves, MSN or one of the others. At just a few cents a click, to make real money one blog, you'd have to have literally thousands upon thousands of clicks with just one blog. But... if you have the time to maintain multiple blogs, you can fair a bit better. I myself, don't have that kind of time, as much as I'd like too, it's not really feasible at this point.

[xmx]

About blogs and money, even Donald Trump is nowadays
blogging on the net...

http://donaldtrump.trumpuniversity.com


And perhaps you can find interesting this interview
about blogging and pinging:

http://myblogandping.com/interview.html

[freehits]

Wow Ilearned one thing there....

CSS to put images next to his google ads, thats a smart move, very eye grabbing idea.

[SandraM]

I have a blog on my website. I just started my site so I am still getting the hang of adding fresh content regularly. I sell vintage clothing so my friend set me up on a blog.

I have noticed XML, RSS, and others. What are these? What are "feeds"?

Sorry if these are dumb questions. Like I said, I'm just starting out.

sandra
www.debutanteclothing.com

[freehits]

Probally not something that will work for your type of business, but useful

The feeds are the live updated content from a source in short.

You can add a script to receive a feed to your site in your content, and it will automatically display the content of someones else blog, or other type of updated content.

This is like the updated headlines you see on yahoo news or MSN homepage. the news headlines would be an example of a live news feed.

I am far far far from an experienced user, but thats the short short explaination.

I dont think I explained it well, but hopefully someone will pick it up from there.

A very common source of feeds about any topic would be yahoo.com or http://www.topix.net.

[laughing247]

i took the advice of another entry and decided to go with a real web hosting company. my site is still beinf tweaked a bit but check it out. anyone have any cool ideas to add to this site please let me know.
http://www.arkansasoutdoors.net

[Alli]

Wow, what a great article! I especially like the reference to content as being the primary source of search engine bait. Over and over I have found this to be true on my web sites.

Blogs really do need content. As traffic slowly starts to climb, you'll need to keep your content fresh. A problem I have right now for my own is having time to update the way I feel I need too and still do other things around my home and be sociable etc. For some weird reason, my employer wants me to actually work so I can't do anything with it here. It makes getting that million plus hits a little tougher but one can dream.

Anyway, something I did find for folks who want to add a little "credibility" to their blog. A free newsfeed service called FeedDirect works well. I've added it to mine and it works pretty well.

http://www.feeddirect.com/cgi-local/wizard_welcome.pl

I think you can find it useful and since it's got a lot of choices as to the type of news it doesn't so much matter what type of blog you run.