Blogging for Dollars Blog

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

When I suggest to a small business owner that a blog might be a useful business tool, I often hear: “I don’t want a blog - I want a Web site!”

“A blog IS a Web site,” I reply, “you can create a site that looks like a Web site on a blog platform.”

Now TypePad has made it easier for anyone, no matter how inexperienced, to create their own site using its Pages feature:

We recently introduced you to a new feature in TypePad, the ability to create individual Pages in your weblog. As we mentioned, this is a great way to add new information to your weblog but how else can this great feature be used? The Pages feature is also a great way to build a custom website for a business or for any purpose at all.

Let’s say that you want to build a website for your business. With the introduction of a new preference, you can now create a series of Pages to build your website instead of using posts. This allows you to control the Page’s file name and it is positioned in the main directory of your website’s folder.

TypePad is one of my favorite blogging services; my writing blog’s been hosted at TypePad since 2004. The beauty of a TypePad site is that all the heavy lifting is done for you, and if you get stuck, you can get help immediately.

Technorati Tags: blogs, sites, Web site, blog, TypePad, pages

The Web is built on links. If you can get a link from a blog which has high traffic, your blog will get a boost, not only immediately, but more importantly long term, because links from high traffic blogs give your blog legitimacy and visibility.

“Link-building” is an art form. A decade ago, you got a link by asking for it - placing a link to a site on your own site, and asking for a link in return. This sometimes worked. However, it doesn’t work today.

How to get links to your blog

1. Create a unique, valuable piece of content on your blog to which other blogs link naturally. This is the best way to get links, but of course it takes a lot of thought and effort;

2. Create a blog roll of blogs you admire, and which are relevant to your audience. Don’t ask for any links in return. Some of the other blogs may link to yours, but most won’t. However, a good blog roll adds value to your blog for your audience, and some of the blogs to which you link will check out your blog because they’re curious about where their traffic is coming from;

3. Write a press release and post it on one of the many online PR sites;

4. Write articles for article directories. This strategy no longer works as well as it did a couple of years ago. However, you can get links in this way, and these links do help to create a profile for your blog. If you provide a great article, other sites will pick it up, gaining you many more links.

Tip: don’t create a mass of junk articles. The article directories are filled with nonsense articles: many site owners no longer both to visit them to scan for content that’s worth republishing because there’s so much utter junk - adding more garbage to a garbage pile won’t help your blog;

5. Write unique articles for other blogs. Every blog owner’s hungry for good content. Offering a free, valuable blog post is gold, and you’ll get grateful acceptances;

6. Comment on other blogs - but make your contents useful, and add to the conversation when you do. Posting “I agree” or “Great blog!” will get your comment deleted. You’ll also annoy the blog owner;

7. Trackback from your own blog, to blogs you reference;

8. Offer to guest blog on another blog, but wait until you have several months’ worth of content on your own blog.

So there you go: eight ways to build links to your blog. Link-building is a long term effort. Every link you get is valuable, and getting a link from a high-traffic blog is a gold mine - you’ll get a constant stream of traffic.

New to blogging? Read this blog’s ebook manual, Blogging for Dollars, to get up to speed on blogging fast.

Technorati Tags: links, traffic, blogs, publicity, PR

There’s an interesting discussion on “Web Site Woes: Why Can’t I Just Kill It & Blog?”:

I get such dismal traffic to my Customized Newsletters website that I wake up with dreams of trashing it altogether. Why can’t I just put it all on a blog? Blogging is something I know how to do and building traffic isn’t such a problem with a blog.

Creating a site? Create a blog too

Whenever I create a new site, whether for myself or a client, I always create a blog at the same time.

For example, here’s a new yoga site I created, Easy Fab Yoga.

I also created a companion blog, Easy Fab Yoga Blog, at the same time.

I know the blog will be updated reasonably frequently, and I can update the main site when I get around to it.

A blog’s dynamic, and it gets indexed fast. However, valuable onscreen real estate can get lost in a blog - that’s why it’s handy to also have a site as well.

Occasionally I’ve created a blog, and then realized that I needed a site too, so I went ahead and created one.

There’s no need to think either/ or when it comes to sites and blogs: you can have both. They’re much more powerful together - the blog brings traffic, and your site can help you to convert your traffic.

Technorati Tags: blogs, blogging, Web sites