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In my first article on the subject of
blogging, I cautioned against blindly falling for all the hype that's recently
been directed toward internet marketers (If you haven't read that yet, it's here).
Just a few new developments in the
marketplace made a whole lot of people suddenly stand up and take notice of a
technology that had been almost totally ignored for a number of
years.
"Experts" were coming out of the
woodwork!
Now that some of the "noise" has
subsided, I thought it might be time to evaluate the benefits of blogging in a
more rational frame of mind - so let's look at the real reasons a marketer
should seriously consider starting a blog.
1- Put a "Face" to Your Online Business.
If you've been exposed to me for any length
of time at all, you should know that I'm a big promoter of relationship
marketing. Heck, that's why I create my newsletter - and my blogs!
A blog allows you to be much less formal,
more yourself, than other forms of publishing. Not because a blog is
really so different, but because of their history. Blogs have primarily
been used by people to self-publish their own thoughts about every topic under
the sun - and pretty much without regard for whether or not anyone agreed with
their opinion.
They gave "everyman" a voice.
The result is a very informal style, and
makes the author seem more human. Someone the reader can relate to!
Even large (as in multi-billion dollar
corporations) have begun encouraging their top executives to start blogs in an
effort to reach the buying public on a different level than the stuffed-shirt
corporate web site can accomplish.
A blog can add a personality to your website
that potential customers will trust and respond to. Most marketers know
that people buy from people they like and trust.
A well-written blog is a great way to build
a relationship (and that trust) with your visitors.
2- The Fastest (and easiest) Way To Build A New Website
With no Training.
You don't need any HTML skills, and you don't need to know how
to transfer files to your web site. You don't even need to know how to
link the pages of your site together, because blogging software creates a
hierarchy of your posts by category and by date. A sort of automatic
archive of your content.
All you have to do is type in your post and
click on the "publish" button.
That means that even an internet newbie who has never had their own web site
can create a blog with little effort.
It doesn't hurt the timid "newbie"
that free or cheap blogging services make it easy for you to try it out,
without spending a fortune. With these services, you can literally set
up a blog, and be adding content to the site almost immediately.
Here are couple of places to check out for
free/very cheap hosted services:
| Blogger |
No Cost |
| TypePad |
For 90-day Trial, enter discount code
"movable". Then as little as $4.95/mo. |
Personally, I recommend finding the most
fully-featured blogging software you can find, and installing it on your own
web host, under your domain name rather than using the services, but using the
services is a great way to try it out and get over the learning curve.
If you've already got a web site, you might
find that it's an easier way to publish your online newsletter, create product
reviews (a good technique for affiliate marketers), or produce timely content
for any niche market.
Once you've proven the concept for yourself,
you would probably want to set your blog up under your own domain. To do
that, blogging software can be uploaded to your own web host.
Here's a couple of places to look for this
type of solution:
3-Increased "Stickiness"
A blog lends itself to frequent updates and makes it easy to keep your site
updated on a regular basis. It gives your visitors a reason to come back
more often.
If they find your blog interesting and
informative, they may bookmark your site, or subscribe to your RSS feed
(subject for a future article). That means you have a ready-made
audience for any new products you launch and a much greater chance of making
sales.
Adding a content-rich blog to the
traditional mini-site transforms it and creates stickiness to help insure
repeat visits (and sales).
4- Get Your Site Indexed - Quick!
There are some very large syndicators that carry RSS feeds and
make them available for publication on other web sites. Search engines
spider these syndication sites many times a day.
One of the reasons that blogs get spidered
so quickly is because most blogging software has the option of creating RSS
feeds, and it's easy (and sometimes automatic) to "ping" the large
syndication sites that carry these feeds. This "ping" lets
them know of a new feed, or any update to your site.
Blogger, for instance, pings Weblogs.com
every time you make a post, and adding your blogs and
feeds to your MyYahoo page can bring the Yahoo spider to your site almost
immediately.
You can also manually "ping" a
free site called Pingomatic
every time you add new content to your blog. Pingomatic will then ping
Yahoo and 11 other large feed sites that you've added a post.
Wouldn't it be great if it
was that easy to get Google to notice new pages on regular sites?
If you have a new site that you want to get indexed, adding a blog or RSS feed
is one of the quickest ways to get the search engines to spider your site.
5- Keep the Spiders Visiting
It's pretty common knowledge that the search engines will spider your site
more frequently if you update it on a regular basis. They figure that
frequently updated content is fresher content, and that less frequently
updated sites become stale - and therefore of less value to their
customers.
The better blogging software allows you to
categorize your posts and will automatically archive your posts by date.
Each post updates the main page of your blog, a separate page for the
individual post, a directory page for the category you assign to the
particular post, and the archive directory page.
In other words, every post will update several pages of your site.
Then pinging Yahoo and the blog and feed
directories at Pingomatic can bring a visit from the search engine spiders in
just a few hours, and while they're there they'll re-index your whole
site.
New pages on your site
get indexed quickly and older pages are visited more frequently allowing you
to make modifications to increase your search rankings and get them noticed
right away.
6-Build Your Inbound Links Quickly.
Negotiating with other sites for reciprocal links is time
consuming - and a frustrating experience for most. And... to show for it
you can only hope for an even trade.
Doesn't it make more sense to put that time
and effort into getting one-way links back to your site?
Most SEO experts consider one-way links to
be far more effective than reciprocal links, and a blog can build one-way
links to your site fast.
To do that, you should
submit your blog to the larger blog directories (much as we used to submit our
sites to search engines years ago), and if you create an RSS feed, there are
feed directories to submit those to. Here is a list of the 50 or so that
I use. I review and update this
list pretty regularly, so you may want to bookmark
this page, or make a note of it somewhere.
Once you've submitted your blog (or RSS feed) to these directories, you'll
find your inbound links growing very quickly. Other sites will carry
your feed with a link back to your site and these links will multiply very
quickly.
7- Higher Rankings
All of the major search engines index millions and millions of
web pages.
Getting top rankings for search results for
popular keywords can be almost impossible without a high PageRank on your
pages and lots of inbound links, and that's what a topic-focused blog with
frequent updates brings you.
Your blog will have an edge with the search engines and becomes the doorway to
the rest of your site.
Setting up a blog that targets a highly
competitive niche can be just the edge you need.
In a Nutshell...
Done right, a blog can be a much more
effective way to get indexed quickly, spidered often, get inbound links and
high Page Rank. At the same time, you'll be increasing traffic, building
relationships, getting repeat visitors, and making more sales.
That almost sounds too good to be true, so
again, I'd suggest that if you haven't read my last article, "Beware
the Blog/RSS Hype!" , you should do that now.
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About the Author:
Sid Hale is the owner of several successful websites including
ad-CLiX.com and Info-Syndicate.com,
and is co-creator of
jvAlert
- a membership site for facilitating high-level Joint Ventures.
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