What is a blog? A blog is a website. It has characteristics that are different from a website, but for all intents and purposes that’s what it is. Blogs have some unique features which do make them different from websites and we’ll cover some of these in more detail.

Easy to Create

A blog is easy to create. In fact, there are a number of free hosted blog applications where you can create a blog in less than 15 minutes. If you’re planning to use your blog for business, or if you intend to become a serious blogger, I wouldn’t suggest using a free hosted site. If you go with a paid hosted site, like TypePad, or host your own installation of WordPress, you can still create a nice, professional-looking blog in less than an hour.

Developing a traditional website involves more steps and complexity than developing a blog. Don’t get me wrong. Blogs can be just as complex as any website and even offer all the same features and functionality – in fact, better functionality. However, in terms of being able to go online and develop a usable site within minutes, the blog will triumph over the website every time.

Fast and Simple to Update

Blogs are really easy to use. With a blog, generally, you don’t need a website developer to add content or to make changes. If you want to make a post, you can sign in, write your post and publish. While you might engage someone to set up your blog initially (perhaps creating a custom banner, installing plugins and widgets, opt-in forms, and eCommerce), you can, for the most part, take over everything after that.

Details like adding opt-in forms for a newsletter or selling your products through a shopping cart can easily be learned. With the right templates, many which resemble well-designed, professional websites, you can create everything within the blog that you can with the website, yet reap all the benefits of a blog and do most of the work yourself. Using a blog rather than a website can save you and your company a lot of time, money and energy.

Optimized for Search Engines

Search engine optimization is about doing things that help your blog rank high in the search engines. The higher you rank, the more easily you will be found when people use online search engines like Google or Yahoo.

Blogs tend to get indexed and rank higher than regular websites for many reasons. One reason is that they have clean html code. You or your web developer have not hand-coded the blog pages. Instead, they are templatized – with consistent code that is optimized for online performance. The blog’s structure, in and of itself, is highly optimized by the way it is written. It is simple code, using standardized processes that make it search engine friendly.

Another reason blogs outperform websites and are so well-loved by the search engines is because of their very nature – they involve content and lots of it. Each time you update your blog (make a post), you’re essentially adding a website page. Each post counts as a page. The more content you have and the more frequently you update it, the more the search engines love it.

All in all, creating a blog is an easy way to get online both quickly and easily. Its structure is highly optimized. By its nature, it is focused on content, creating lots of it and posting it frequently. All these things are naturally attractive to search engines. If you haven’t created a website, or if you’re looking to overhaul the current one you have, consider using a blog instead.

I published Part 1 regarding Blog content and how to retain the visitors.

Today we look at Visitors who are the life of our blogs without them we would rant to ourselves

Visitors.

Put simply without visitors, traffic or hits to blogs, in most cases is a waste of time.

All the gurus online give us all sorts of suggestions as to the best way to gain traffic (visitors) from picking the right blog URL, to submitting our blog details to different directories.

As mentioned in my first blog, to get traffic can be summed up as ” Become Known”

However, getting there takes time and we have to measure our readers and tracks where they come from, for this I can break into two reasons:

(i) So that you can tell if your readers are actually growing. If it’s not, then something has to be done to correct this and

(ii) Once you know where your referrals are coming from you can play to your strengths.

How Do You get Visitors?

Here are a few suggestions:

Leave Comments.

Visit other blogs of a similar interest to your own and leave comments relative to what has been written in their post. Please don’t spam, be polite and most bloggers will do you the courtesy of a return visit.

Exchange Links.

Some bloggers may be willing to exchange links with you. Don’t always expect a long established, high traffic blog to necessarily exchange links as they probably won’t. It’ll most probably be like for like at first. Begin with others of similar level and work your way up.

Forums.

Get involved with a few forums. I often write posts in DreamTeamMoney. In DTM I have my own thread under Yeepage.com, newbies may not get this approved early in your blogging life but when established you can look into it. If you respect the rules and use forums correctly they work in your favor for your blog.

Keywords.

It’s important to think about keywords when you are writing your blog posts. These should be included in the title and the body of the post where possible but without over doing it Keywords will in part bring referrals to your blog from search engines.

Search engines bring some of the best traffic to a site as the keywords are used. Getting them to do this is what SEO or Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is what is needed to get them to your site.

As far as I am concerned there are two main aspects to this.

(i) Keywords and
(ii) Getting good links to your blog.

It topic is be to big to write about, but for basic blogger this is adequate.

Blog Directories

Blog Directories generally do not get huge amounts of traffic but generally these are quality readers which are better. However there is another side to these directories. They provide links to your blog and, and as mentioned above links are important to SEO. Therefore it’s worth submitting your blog to some directories.

By adding a vote button to the bottom of your posts you can increase your ranking within. Vote buttons and a few blog directories can be viewed below and bottom left respectively.

Technorati

I’ve given this a separate heading because it does produce visitors in various ways. I suggest that, if you haven’t already done so, you join Technorati and claim your blog(s). It is all self explanatory once you register.

Blog Carnivals

‘A Blog Carnival is a type of blog event. It is similar to a magazine, in that it is dedicated to a particular topic, and is published on a regular schedule, often weekly or monthly. Each edition of a blog carnival is in the form of a blog article that links to other blog articles on the particular topic.’

You can submit your posts, or articles, to Blog Carnivals (which are on other blogs). If accepted there will then be a link to your post (or article), which may then send referrals to your blog.

You can also host Blog Carnivals on your own blog. This generates interest and often an increase in traffic when they are published.

You can find more information, and an index of Blog Carnivals to which you could submit posts, at Blog Carnival. Or go who has regular Carnivals.

Not tried this yet, but I may publish this article in Leo’s next Carnival.

Socialise.

You can do this by joining websites such as MyBlogLog, myLot and a myriad of others. Find one that suits you and use the facilities they have to get known. Contact other members, leave them worthwhile comments on their blogs, join their communities and generally be nice to people – just as you would at any social gathering in the real world.

Link Baiting.

Often mentioned by long standing bloggers. It simply means writing a post, or providing some sort of information, that will make other blogs want to link to this. In other words, other bloggers will mention your post or information on their blogs and will link to it. This will (a) send you visitors and (b) give you another link to your blog. This is important, and also good for PageRank.

Link in your posts to other persons blogs.

This may sound a odd way to attract more visitors. Basically you are adding a Link to other bloggers within your post.

Now you might think that linking to other blogs will only be good for the other blogger you are linking to. However, by giving a little you often get traffic in return. Try it!

There are many more ways to attract traffic but I noticed I finished at ten, Mmmm maybe I should of called it “TEN Ways to get Visitors” If you have any other ideas please add them as comments to the bottom of this post.

If you can do the simple things mentioned in Part 1 and on Part 2

Summary of Part 1 and 2

Post content of value > Attract visitors > Keep visitors on your blog > Make them want to return.

If you can do this then you can start to look at making money online – which I’ll cover in Part 3 later in the week.

The last five years have seen an enormous increase in the popularity of blogging. A blog is simply a web log. Initially, folks were using blogs mainly as online journals. People love blogs because they are simple to set up and simple to use. Search engines love them because they are easily searchable and often updated. But businesses often ignore blogging as an amateur endeavor that isn’t fit for a professional business. Nothing could be further from the truth. Let’s explore a rationale for business blogging and how you can get started.

Blogs put a personal face to your business. You can interact with current and future customers in a transparent way. And a personal connection is paramount in business. Blogs also allow for two way communication through the use of comments. Readers can view the current blog post and comment on it. This sort of connection is highly underrated. If customers trust you, they will be much more apt to do business with you. After all, trust is a cornerstone of the business transaction. In an age of Tycos and Enrons, you need to establish trust with your current and future customers. If you have lost their trust, you have lost everything. Blogs are simply one way to establish this trust.

Blogs lift your web presence. And most small businesses have a horrible web presence. You may be questioning whether you really need to invest in your web presence. Let me share a story. Recently I was speaking with someone in the housing market. He has noticed an interesting trend. He used to be able to throw up a model home and have droves of visits. But lately model home visits have decreased. Since he was curious, he started asking around as to why people weren’t visiting model homes as much. The overriding answer was that they could now search for a lot of information online. Now, you may balk that they would never buy a house without going in one. And you’re right. But the main point is that they are gathering information before they ever step inside a house. And if a home builder is providing these potential customers answers, and establishing trust with them, they are much more likely to visit their model home. This is the art of preselling. Give customers what they want, establish trust, and you will earn their business.

Blogs deliver traffic. Blogs are fabulous for increasing your search rankings. And, if used in conjunction with an effective web marketing strategy, they are indispensable. If done well, blogs can provide search engines with a continuous stream of new and valuable content. Let’s look at why this is important. People usually find things by searching for it. If you are writing content that people are looking for, search engines will marry the two. For example, let’s say that your business sells party supplies. Now, you partner with an online marketing firm and find that a lot of people are looking for birthday party games. You could blog around birthday party games. The possibilities are endless here. And then you could link to your store over and over. Give people what they want and they will do business with you.

Blogs come in different packages. Once you start diving into blogging, you will quickly become confused or overwhelmed at the choices. Let’s break it down. Blogging software comes in many flavors. This software allows you to create your blog entries and it also allows others to view it. And there are big differences between a hosted blog solution and a non-hosted solution. Let me explain. A hosted solution will offer you a super easy blogging solution. The great downside on that offer is that you will be blogging on their domain. A domain is simply a website address, like partysupplies.com. This is true of starting a Blogger blog (http://www.blogger.com), which is owned by Google. If you start a blog with Blogger, your blog will have the address partysupplies.blogspot.com. I would recommend that if you have a business site that you host the blog on your website address. It will help your search rankings and your traffic. As for blog software packages, I whole heartedly endorse the WordPress blog platform (http://www.wordpress.org). It is an amazing blog platform. If possible, I would go with a hosting provider that offers an auto install of wordpress. This means that you simply walk through a wizard and it installs it for you. It’s the best of all worlds!

If you haven’t started a business blog, start one soon. I would recommend that you put your blog on your own domain, like partysupplies.com/wordpress. Again, I would recommend you use WordPress. And ,if at all possible, use a host that provides an auto install of this great blogging platform.