BLOGGING FOR PLACEMENT

Body text content is a major factor related to the placement ranking of your web site. Basically, search engines love content rich sites that match the theme their customers are searching for. In short, if you have an authoritative site on any topic, with lots of text including relevant keyword phrases that match the theme, your site will do well.

There’s a great solution available that allows almost anyone to get noticed and get the word out on a particular topic. It’s called a blog. Blogs require little money, minimal technical ability and will only take a few minutes daily to update.

FEED THE SPIDER
Blogs place well with the search engines because they are full of authoritative content, rich html text that search engines spiders eat right up. If you can’t take the time to constantly update and add content to your website, blogging is a simple solution that will allow you to build content over time, achieve placement and direct traffic to your business site.

WHAT EXACTLY IS A BLOG?
A blog is essentially a daily diary on a particular topic of interest. It is an effective way to communicate with like minded groups of people, a source of news on given subject matter that has the ability to announce itself and re-announce new content every time you update. If you can send an email, you can blog.

Blog audiences are large. Blogs not only place well but also they are very trendy, attracting journalists, researchers and those who are early adopters and want leading edge “hot” information.

You need a topic that you can be authoritative on and try to stick to a general theme in that topic area. By example, if you are operating a Muskoka based resort wouldn’t it be useful to have the authoritative blog on Muskoka tourism? Or, say your resort depends heavily on fishing, you could be the authority on Ontario fishing adventure.

HOW DO I GET STARTED?
Blogger, which is owned by Google, is a good choice. It takes only a few minutes to register, select a template look and start posting. Other free Blogosphere solutions include blog-city.com, Tongue Wag, Journalspace and tBlog. These are all public Blogging providers and you are publishing to the world through these services. There are also private blog solutions, which we will not touch on, as they have no relevance to business.

GOOEY LINKS ARE GOOD
Besides being extremely rich in content, blogs contain a wealth of links. Remember that Google loves themed links. They make up about 50% of the Google page rank placement algorithm. After a month of blogging, your site will be seen as a treasure trove of topical knowledge by the search engines. Many bloggers support the notion that links from site to site are the basis of the World Wide Web and links to products and services are common place in blogs. If you’ve developed a blog on Ontario fishing then some of your commercial links and ads will undoubtedly be your own fishing resort. This supports the placement of your resort web page. Inbound “Gooey” links, that is hot links from text based text content, are especially tasty to the search engine spiders. So you’re not only creating a blog that places well and advertises your resort, you’re helping the placement of your existing resort site.

Blogs, like websites, should be submitted to search engines like Google, Altavista, MSN and Fast. Some search engines specialize in blog only listings like Blog Hop, Blog Search Engine, Blog Wise and DayPop. Blog search engines registration at this point is free and most will index and list your site within 48 hours just like in the good old days of search engine website registration.

Once you start getting some decent traffic on your blog, you can begin creating affiliate advertising on your blog through Google Ad Sense or Blog Ads. These forms of advertising services on your blog site will generate a revenue stream for your blog. Yes, your blog can earn you cash too - bonus!

Another important element for your blog is a link that allows your reader to send news to the blog. This will allow you to collect additional content without writing it yourself. Blog search engines aggregate blogs by content topic so that folks can easily choose and search their interest area. Many journalists and public relations agencies follow blogs religiously to get the latest gossip, news and background. Next time you see a “talking head” consultant on CNN, who seems to be an authority on a breaking news story on some remote topic, and you wonder – how does this guy know so much about such an obscure topic? - You can bet a bundle that he/she gathered it from a blog.

OH MY GOD, I THOUGHT I UNDERSTOOD THE WEB!
Blogging is one of those things that sounds difficult but is very easy to accomplish in practice. The best way to get started is to dive in and try it. Fifteen minutes each morning will get you an awesome blog in a month or two. Many people make the mistake or false assumption that the internet is one marketing channel made up of web sites. It is not one channel. There are many marketing channel possibilities on the net and they are as diverse as marketing itself. Already we’ve seen the use of search engines marketing, websites, opt in mailings, online advertising, ezines, newsgroups, contextual advertising, retail sales, auction sites and hundreds of other channels that will emerge from the fertile minds of businesses capitalizing on web marketing. The adoption rate of web based marketing solutions is astounding and various sectors, such as online retailing, are seeing unprecedented growth. Ten years ago most resorts didn’t have a web site. Today, most resorts receive more than 80% of their business off the web in one shape or form. Blogging is one more channel. You can start blogging tomorrow or two years from now but I can assure you - just as man once looked to the horizon for the signal fire, you will look to the internet and enter the blogosphere.

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