Ask this question of any SEO expert and they will tell you “fresh content” and “backlinks”, other than Google took over Blogger. The last one is the favorite as no one can argue with that.

Search engines like fresh content as it is valuable for their users, and links show that other sites or blogs (and not just your own website) think that the information on your website is useful to their readers.

A blog can be an individual’s viewpoint, a life journal, a school girl’s diary, a poet’s space, an artist’s expression, or just about sharing your moments with family and friends. One can share information, pictures and even videos with no previous knowledge of designing and programming.

Companies use blogs to promote their latest products, introduce new services, announce upcoming events, share event pictures and videos, announce special offers/discounts, run opinion polls, introduce new team members, special announcements, build loyalty, and invite their customers to leave comments and give testimonials.

Bloggers believe that blogs are being taken more seriously as information sources. One in five bloggers don’t think that newspapers will survive the next ten years. Half believe that blogs will be a primary source for news and entertainment in the next five years.

Bloggers are most open to receiving marketing messages from other blogs. Even non-blog web content is more influential among this group than traditional media sources for brand information.

Home businesses and young entrepreneurs use blogs to increase awareness and attract traffic to their online business, new ventures, and daring expeditions into the unknown.

Professionals use blogs to brand themselves, create awareness and credibility, make money (yes that’s possible), and share their knowledge and experiences.

Housewives use blogs to share cooking tips and recipes, their children’s growing moments, travel log of the last trip, and shopping expeditions.

We SEO experts use blogs for achieving higher rankings for specific keywords. Unbelievable, and yet in many instances my blog link appears higher on search engines results page than pages that I optimize personally for the same keyword.

Getting started with blogging is relatively easy. You can sign up with blogger.com or other such blogging platforms.

If you don’t own a domain name for your blog, no worries, you can start with a free subdomain with Blogger.

Lets look into some interesting statistics on blogs.

The numbers vary but agree that blogs are here to stay!

comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008)

- Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US

- Facebook: 41.0 million | MySpace 75.1 million

- Total internet audience 188.9 million

eMarketer (May 2008)

- 94.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of Internet users)

- 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12%)

Universal McCann (March 2008)

- 184 million WW have started a blog | 26.4 US

- 346 million WW read blogs | 60.3 US

- 77% of active Internet users read blogs

Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008 Report is now available. For a detailed report go to technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/

The report states that Brands make up a major part of bloggers’ online conversations. More than four in five bloggers post product or brand reviews, and blog about brands they love or hate. Even day-to-day experiences with customer care or in a retail store are fodder for blog posts. Companies are already reaching out to bloggers: one-third of bloggers have been approached to be brand advocates. (ref Technorati 2008 Report)

But wait, that’s not all. The report also states that Blogs are an increasingly attractive platform for advertisers. The majority of bloggers we surveyed have advertising on their blogs. Marketers realize that bloggers are creating high quality content and attracting growing, loyal audiences. So there is potential for profit from blogging. (ref Technorati 2008 Report)

Well you are convinced, and you start writing periodically, uploading photographs and videos and have shared your blog link with many friends, but a few months down a nagging worry start to hit you (this is for those who don’t track their readers using tracking software’s like Google Analytics) that you are writing for “you” alone and your mum who thinks “my son is the best”.

While there is nothing wrong with writing, just for the pleasure of writing, I am sure you all want to reach out and touch someone else with all your hard work. The real challenge is to get your target audience to read your blog whether its family, friends, colleagues, or readers around the world who would be interested in what you are writing about.

Trust me even friends will betray you if what you write does not make them want to come back, so pay close attention to the questions below and answer them as honestly as you can.

-What would make your blog special to your audience?

-Why would they want to bookmark your blog?

-Why would they want to link to it and tell others?

-What is my ultimate goal for this blog?

While the first 3 questions require you to dig down deep inside your minds and hearts, the last question is most critical. What do you ultimately want out all the hard work, late nights and coffee cups invested into your blog?

Well, whether your blog is for the purpose of sharing knowledge, gaining credibility, increasing visibility and rankings, building customer loyalty, sharing information, making money, or assisting our fellow men in the journey of life, the bottom line remains search engines love blogs, and so should you.

So keep writing!

http://www.seo-optimization-experts.com/seoblog.html

A weblog (or simply blog) is a website that ‘publishes’ or features articles (which are called ‘blog posts’, ‘posts’, or ‘entries’), written by an individual or a group that make use of any or a combination of the following:

·    Straight texts

·    Photographs or images (photoblog)

·    Video (videoblog)

·    Audio files (audioblog)

·    Hyperlinks

Usually presented and arranged in reverse chronological order, blogs are essentially used for the following purposes:

·    Online journal or a web diary

·    Content managament system

·    Online publishing platform

A typical blog has the following components:

·    Post date -the date and time of the blog entry

·    Category – the category that the blog belongs to

·    Title – the title of the blog

·    Main body – the main content of the blog

·    RSS and trackback – links the blog back from other sites

·    Comments – commentaries that are added by readers

·    Permalinks – the URL of the full article

·    Other optional items – calendar, archives, blogrolls, and add-ons or plug-ins

A blog can also have a footer, usually found at the bottom of the blog, that shows the post date, the author, the category, and the ’stats’ (the nubmer of comments or trackbacks).

There are numerous types of blogs. Some of them are the following:

1. Political blog – on news, politics, activism, and other issue based blogs (such as campaigning).

2. Personal blog – also known as online diary that may include an individual’s day-to-day experience, complaints, poems, and illicit thoughts, and communications between friends.

3. Topical blog – with focus either on a particular niche (function or position) that is usually technical in nature or a local information.

4. Health blog – on specific health issues. Medical blog is a major category of health blog that features medical news from health care professionals and/or actual patient cases.

5. Literary blog – also known as litblog.

6. Travel blog – with focus on a traveler’s stories on a particular journey.

7. Research blog – on academic issues such as research notes.

8. Legal blog – on law (technical areas) and legal affairs; also known as ‘blawgs’.

9. Media blog – focus on falsehoods or inconsistencies in mass media; usually exclusive for a newspaper or a television network.

10. Religious blog – on religious topics

11. Educational blog – on educational applications, usually written by students and teachers.

12. Collaborative or collective blog – a specific topic written by a group of people.

13. Directory blog – contains a collection of numerous web sites.

14. Business blog – used by entrepreneurs and corporate employees to promote their businesses or talk about their work.

15. Personification blog – focus on non-human being or objects (such as dogs).

16. Spam blogs – used for promoting affiliated websites; also known as ’splogs’.

Blogging is typically done on a regular (almost daily) basis. The term “blogging” refers to the act of authoring, maintaining, or adding an article to an existing blog, while the term “blogger” refers to a person or a group who keeps a blog.

Today, more than 3 million blogs can be found in the Internet. This figure is continuously growing, as the availability of various blog software, tools, and other applications make it easier for just about anyone to update or maintain the blog (even those with little or no technical background). Because of this trend, bloggers can now be categorized into 4 main types:

·    Personal bloggers – people who focus on a diary or on any topic that an individual feels strongly about.

·    Business bloggers – people who focus on promoting products and services.

·    Organizational bloggers – people who focus on internal or external communication in an organization or a community.

·    Professional bloggers – people who are hired or paid to do blogging.

Problogging (professional blogging) refers to blogging for a profit. Probloggers (professional bloggers) are people who make money from blogging (as an individual blog publisher or a hired blogger).

Below are just some of the many money-making opportunities for probloggers:

·    Advertising programs

·    RSS advertising

·    Sponsorship

·    Affiliate Programs

·    Digital assets

·    Blog network writing gigs

·    Business blog writing gigs

·    Non blogging writing gigs

·    Donations

·    Flipping blogs

·    Merchandising

·    Consulting and speaking

The following are a few things that you need to consider if you want to be successful in problogging:

1. Be patient. Problogging requires a lot of time and effort, not to mention a long-term vision.

2. Know your audience. Targeting a specific audience or group is a key to building a readership.

3. Be an ‘expert’. Focus on a specific niche topic and strive to be the “go-to” blogger on that topic.

4. Diversify. Experiment with various add and affiliate programs that enable you to make money online (aside from blogging).

5. Do not bore your readers. Focus on the layout. White spaces, line spacings, and bigger fonts make a blog welcoming to read.

Certainly, it is possible to earn money from blogs. One just needs to take risks, the passion, and the right attitude in order to be a successful problogger.

“Too often. . . I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.” – Louis L’Amour

Almost every-single person on the planet makes a big mistake when it comes to their income. They rely on just one source of income to earn a living. This source is usually their day-job. If for some reason they were to lose their job, they’d lose their only way of making money.

This causes people to live in constant fear of their boss, their performance on the job, hourly wages and the possibility of getting fired.

This doesn’t have to be you. You can fire your boss. And if you do have a job that requires a boss, you won’t worry about losing your job.

What you need to have is several different ways of making money. If one or two of those ways go sour, you’ll still have three or more different sources of income that consistently earns you cash.

When you combine money-making strategies, not only will you have a lot more freedom, but you’ll also have a lot more money.

If you use a website or blog as the corner-stone of your money-making empire, you’ll have something that automatically makes money for you – even while you are busy doing something else.

And you don’t have to rely on just one website or blog. You can have several nich-websites/blogs that all earn money. Even if you only make a small $500 a month from each of your websites, but you have 10 of them, you’ll be earning $5,000 a month.

Then what you can do is work one, or several, travel jobs. Anything you do for these jobs gets put up as content on your website, or websites.

By using this strategy you’ll be earning more money from your websites, while you earn additional income from your travel jobs.

Let me give you an example of how this could work:

We’ll say that you have just one nich-website to start with. Your website is set-up as a blog; it’s all about you. You monetize the site with Google ads and affiliate commissions (like through Clickbank or Commission Junction). You don’t even have your own product yet, but you still earn money.

You then work in Alaska for the winter commercial fishing season. You earn several thousands of dollars per month, with free room and board. You take the experiences you have in Alaska and post them on your website as articles, pictures, video, MP3s, or anything you like – it’s your website.

So not only are you making money from your Alaska job, but you’re making more money from your website as well.

You also take the photographs you have of Alaska, and post them on stock photography internet sites to earn a commission every time one of your pictures is downloaded. This starts to earn you residual income that will last for years to come.

After the fishing season, you grab the money you saved and decide to travel around Europe for three months. While you travel you update your website with your travel experiences and you post more photographs to the stock photography sites.

You also decide to write a few articles for magazines and websites about tourist destinations in Europe, that earns you even more money.

After your Europe trip you decide to go to Tailand. You find Tailand to be a fascinating, affordable country, so you plan to stay there for five months.

In Thailand you continue to update your website with your travel experiences, thus gaining you more visitors and more income. You regularly post photographs to the stock websites, and you land a job teaching English.

When you’re not teaching English you stroll over to the handicraft shops looking for deals. You buy handmade scarves and sweaters for dirt-cheap prices. Then you sell them for 20 times what they cost you through online auction sites like eBay.

After your visit to Thailand…

Do you see how this works? The more you do what you love to do, the more money you’ll make. Plus, you’ll be making money from five, ten or fifteen different sources – most of which run automatically for you.

This way you can make just a small amount of money from each job, yet still have more than enough cash to do anything you want to do. Can you imagine how much money you’ll earn if each job made you moderate wages? What if each one earned you great wages?

And you won’t have to worry about getting “fired” ever again! You’ll be financially independent from a variety of money-making sources, and you’ll have all the time you need to do whatever you want.

“Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God.” – Kurt Vonnegut