The Biggest Reason To Start A Blog...(and it's not what you think!)
By Andrew Wroblewski
Posted Friday, July 2, 2004
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: (http://blogging.help-for-me.com)
email: admin@blogging.help-for-me.com
