Blogs Aren't Just Toys

Using Your Blog to Optimize Website Performance 

A blog is a wonderful way to increase online traffic to your main website. Many people will log onto an interesting looking blog, and this is the perfect way to lure them across to your home webpage. Sidebar links can lead readers to your business site, and articles aimed at drawing in a larger audience can do the same.

Engineering a new blog used to be delegated to HTML savvy tech-heads, but with the advent of such free blog creation tools like Blogspot (provided by Google to Gmail users) almost anyone can create a smart looking beginners blog in a matter of minutes. The mystery of setting up your own blog has been all but dispelled, thanks to this and other user friendly programs now freely available across the market.

You can use one of several provided templates to get started, and update or change them later as desired. Pics are easy to download, and a variety of fonts and text colors are readily available to make your blog interesting and fun.

If you update your blog on a daily basis it will attract more attention. Use hot keywords in your titles and tags to maximize traffic to your blog, and encourage visitors to post as well. You can easily moderate the comments and the more activity your blog sees, the better.

Consider a contest to get your blog noticed; this can be as simple as a guessing contest or a competition to choose the name for a new product. If you have an attractive logo you can promote your blog and your business by giving away free items such as caps or t-shirts to every the first twenty or fifty people to sign into or register on your website by linking from your blog.

Eventually, if you publicize the existence of your blog and make it a main hub for discussion in your particular field, search engines will start picking it up and you will have an additional link to your site. Once people start to visit your blog, they often return and link their friends as well.

You can use your blog to advertise your products, to post updates on what’s new or forthcoming, or simply as a place for FAQ or product comments from your consumers. Utilizing a blog lets your customers be an active part of something larger, and will foster the feeling that your product is user friendly as well.

Using keywords to tag all posts to your blog can optimize the chances of a search engine picking up a relevant post or article. You can administrate your blog on a daily or weekly basis to keep it up to date and productive. Find other blogs and websites in similar fields and request a link sharing partnership.

Many people don’t fully realize how a blog can help their online business, but the fact remains that blogs are a powerful tool if used to their full potential. A blog doesn’t have to be personal or flirtatious; a serious, informational blog can generate almost as much traffic as a standard website!