Blogs are no longer just used to tell your family members about your recent trip anymore. More and more, blogs are used in a way to drive highly targeted website visitors to your site, with the intent of making a sale. The reason blogs are becoming the mainstream for internet marketers, is due in large part to the way search engines work. For that reason it pays to have some basic understanding of the ins and outs of blogging, and SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
I mentioned search engines, and the way they work, as the driving force behind the increasing popularity of blogs as a business website, here’s what I mean. All search engines love to give their customers quality search results. Quality results, and fresh content go hand in hand. Search engines love fresh content.
When you put up a “regular”, static website, the content doesn’t change very often, if ever. With a blog, on the other hand, the content changes often, which keeps that site fresh, and in turn, keeps the search engines happy, and they will reward the blog owner, by giving them a higher page rank.
When your blog gets a high page rank, you will get a lot of free, targeted traffic, and that is the name of the game. There is one thing that all online businesses have in common, they all need a constant supply of targeted visitors to their website. Any tool, or technique, that can help a website owner get more traffic, especially for free, is a welcome addition.
One other important thing you’ll want to keep in mind, is that if you want to build a business around the blog, you need to be willing to invest a little money. You don’t want to use the free wordpress, or Blogger platforms, because you don’t actually own anything. When you buy your own domain name (for around $10), and you have that domain hosted (around $10/month), you actually own that little piece of internet real estate. You can do whatever you want with your domain, including sell it.
You also want to think carefully about what the topic of your blog will be, this is really important, if you plan on making money with your blog. A careful choice of the niche market you’re going to build your business in, is something that is too often overlooked. If you take some time to pick a good niche market, the rest of your business building will be much easier. Picking the right niche is about 90% of the battle.
Getting your new blogging career off on the right foot, you need to be willing to invest some time to learn new concepts, and then put into practice what you’ve learned, and you’ll be amazed at how much money you can make online, and how much fun you can have making it. Good luck, go for it!
