|
Blogs (short for
web logs) are not only free and easy to
create, but they can be awesome traffic generating
tools if you use and promote them properly.
If you haven't learned
by now, the key to building free
search engine traffic
is to get as many related, high-quality sites to point
back to yours. Search engines like Google take this
into great consideration when ranking your website.
You can
create your own blog that can act as that "related
website" to point to your own, and in the long run
your blog can not only attract its own traffic, but
will help you build traffic to your main site.
My
Blog Example
I have
website creation blog that I created on
Blogger.com where I offer tips and tricks on website
creation and promotion that may not be found on this
site.
As I add new content,
this blog suddenly becomes a website of its own
because Blogger.com creates a new page each time you
add a new entry.
As I
mentioned before, search engines look for related
websites that link back to you, so I link the blog
back to my main site's homepage to help with search
engine rankings. It's sort of like a "vote" for my
main website.
Use
Blogger.com
There
are a lot of good, free blog hosts out there but I
chose to use
Blogger.com because I like that each new post
creates a search-engine friendly web page.
It's easy to use and
they offer a lot of cool features such as visitor
comments, customizable templates, archiving options
and more.
Let
People Subscribe to Your Blog Feeds
Another
benefit of creating a blog is that people can actually
subscribe to it. You may have heard of RSS feeds (RSS
stands for really simple syndication). It's a growing
Internet trend where people can receive updates/feeds
from their favorite sites all in
one place.
They use
a reader (or the Firefox browser) which allows them to
manage and browse all their feeds at once.
So let's
say you subscribe to CNN.com and USAToday.com's news
headline and sports feeds. You can open up your RSS
reader and quickly browse the latest headlines from
these sites without even visiting their individual
homepages.
Blogger.com will automatically create your blog's RSS
feed URL so people can subscribe to your feeds. Now
when they open up their RSS readers to get the updates
from their favorite sites, any new posts on your blog
will show up in their reader.
Here's the URL to
subscribe to my blog:
http://createyourwebsite.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Again, this URL was automatically created by
Blogger.com.
The above link is not
meant to be viewed directly. You should first
download a
free RSS reader and add that link as a "new
subscription" and it will feed my blog's content into
your RSS reader automatically. It's pretty cool.
Now go to your favorite
sites and see if they offer RSS feeds or perhaps they
have blogs that you can subscribe to like mine. Look
for the orange RSS or XML buttons.
Almost all of the major news sites have them.
Add
Adsense Ads
Once
your blog starts bringing in traffic, you'll want to
maximize the revenue potential by adding Adsense ads.
If you aren't familiar with Google's Adsense program,
go here to learn about it.
Free Blog with Every
Domain Name
In case you missed it
at the beginning of this article, you can get your own
free blog if you register a domain name (yoursite.com)
with
WebsitePalace.com.
That way your blog will
have a nice, concise web address instead of a long,
hard-to-remember address that you receive with the
free blogging sites.
If you already have a
domain then you can register one just to house your
blog and create something like myblogwebsite.com. Now
your blog will have its own domain.
In
Conclusion...
As you
can see, a blog can really help increase the traffic
to your main website if you continue to update and
promote it. Many webmasters are finding that search
engines sometimes index (list) blogs faster than some
websites giving them that added boost of traffic.
If you
remember nothing else from this article, remember that
the key to having search engine success is to get as
many related websites to link back to yours. Having a
blog in your posession is like creating another vote
for your site.
Be sure
to update it often with relevant, unique content so
the search engines will visit frequently. Happy
blogging!
 |