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The Biggest Reason To Start A Blog...(and it's not what you |
by:
Andrew Wroblewski |
Even people who don't own a computer know what blogging is.
Everyone is talking about it. Heck, even the Doonesbury comic
strip ran a few panels on the subject. Anna Kournikova even has
a blog for crying out loud!
But did you know that there is a secret benefit to blogging
that has NOTHING to do with the subject matter? In fact, you
could blog on about the sex life of the Tasmanian fruit fly and
still reap big rewards.
Yep, just like nearly everything else on the Internet, there's
money to be made with blogging IF you know the secret...
OK, OK. I'll tell you, but first let's take a quick ride in the
wayback machine and see how blogging came to be as popular as
it is today.
Back at the dawn of the World Wide Web, new web sites were a
rarity. Geekie guys and girls struggled with the new technology
and the launch of a new page, A new web site was practically a
media event. In the early days of the Internet, each new page
was a cause for celebration.
In 1992, Tim Berners-Lee, the scientist generally credit with
inventing the World Wide Web (and you thought it was Al Gore,
I'll bet), created the first What's New page. Later, another
Internet legend, Marc Andreesen, put up his own page. Both of
these men created hot links to all of the new pages springing
up on the net.
As the World Wide Web came into its own, a new breed of
programmer, called a Web Master (because they had mastered the
World Wide Web) created their own pages that contained
suggestions on cool web sites to visit. Because they didn't
list every single new web site, just the ones that they thought
were interesting, they were said to have filtered the net. In
1998, Jorn Barger, a bit of an odd duck, even by Internet
pioneer standards, first used the term 'weblog' to describe his
blog called 'Robot Wisdom'.
As bloggers banded together to form communities, people sought
easier and faster ways to create blogs. As a result, automated
and easy to use blogging programs such as Blog-In-A-Box were
developed so that even a half-dazed wallabie can put up a blog
in between munching on stalks of grass.
But why in the world would you WANT to run a blog if you have
an income-generating site?
Surely your customer isn't interested in reading about your
trials and tribulations of the daily business grind, right?
Probably not. However, if you can build a blog that catches
their attention, such as where the fish are biting if you sell
fishing supplies, they WILL come. And so will the surprise that
I mentioned earlier.
You see, among your visitors to your blog will be a software
program known as a spider. Not just any spider, mind you, but
the granddaddy of all search engine spiders -- the Google
spider. You see, Google LOVES to index blogs. Yep, it's true.
And that, as soon-to-be inmate Martha would say, is a good
thing.
In a nutshell, Google loves pages that have links to other
pages. Blogs link to all kinds of stuff. Google loves pages
that are linked FROM other pages. A good blog gets lots of
links to it as loyal readers tell everyone they know to put
links to their favorite blog on their web site.
Finally, Google loves fresh content. An active blog's content
can change minute by minute, but at least it's almost guaranteed
to change daily.
So, if you can find a decent subject to blog about, and you can
get a blog up and running quickly and easily, you just might be
amazed at what happens to your site's page rank in a few weeks
or more.
Listen, with tools like Blog-In-A-Box available to get you
going, there really is no reason NOT to get blogging!
Good luck from a couple of fellow bloggers.
About the author:
Steve Robichaud and Andrew Wroblewski have been involved in
online sales and marketing since 1996. To get help on starting
your own blog, visit:
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