Internet Marketing and Blogs - Creating and Marketing the Blog WebAdvantage.net Getting a simple blog up and running is a very easy process. Blogger, now owned by Google, is probably the easiest choice. It takes about 5 minutes to register, choose a blogging template, and get your first entry published. Other free blogging solutions include tBlog, TongueWag, journalspace, and blog-city.com. Paid blog hosting services include Salon.com's co-branded blogs and the Blogging Network. If you want to create a privately owned blog there are also various software solutions including MovableType and Greymatter. Most of the blogging software firms offer basic open sourced (free) blog solutions which can then be customized and designed to web site specifications by a programmer or through paid installation. Blogs and Search Engines Rankings Currently, blogs tend to get great rankings in search engines. Why? Content and linking. Unlike regular business sites, by their very nature blogs are based on updated information which makes them extremely rich in content. Many blogs are updated several times a day with new articles, thoughts and information. After months or even weeks of inception, a blog can be seen as a wealth of topical knowledge, a quality that search engines such as Google cherish. Blogs also contain a wealth of links. Since bloggers constantly look for ways to keep their blogs updated, they are likely to provide links rather than solely create all their content themselves. Many bloggers are "old school" Internet believers who have not forgotten that links from site-to-site helped to found the Internet and are not as worried about losing visitors to other sites. Therefore, making a link request of a blogger is likely to yield a much better response than a link request of a regular web site. And such density of linking can lead to high search engine rankings. Linking and content are not the only reasons owning a blog feels like time traveling back to 1995. There is much about blogging that's still actually fast and free such as the multiple blog search engines and directories that actually have free submittals and 48 hour indexing! An added benefit is that most of these directories have high search engine rankings so getting them to link to your blog will only help the search engine rankings of your own blog. Submitting Your Blogs The first place that you should submit your blog to is Google. It would not hurt either to do some free submittals to AltaVista and FAST Search. Then, submit your blog to the top blog search engines and directories. We have provided a list of these directories on our site. LIST OF BLOG SEARCH ENGINES & DIRECTORIES BlogSearchEngine http://www.blogsearchengine.com BlogHop http://www.bloghop.com BlogWise http://www.blogwise.com DayPop http://www.daypop.com Revenue for Your Blogs Once you start getting some steady traffic to your blog, you can potentially start to monetize that traffic. Consider implementing the new Google AdSense program (informational link provided below), though since Google owns Blogger it will not grant AdSense accounts for free Blogger users. Upgrading from a free to professional account grants you the ability to run Google AdSense on your blog and only costs $15 annually. The revenue you generate should well cover the cost of the upgrade. Another option for running advertising on your blog is Blogads. According to their site, "Blogads are an expression of the grassroots intellectual economy. Blogads serve a far more passionate audience than is served by AOL Time Warner, Google, or the average Daily Bugle." Here's how BlogAds works. Blog owners run a BlogAds box on their site which includes advertising information for their blog. The ad pricing is determined by the blog owner and the advertisement is purchased via BlogAds.com for time intervals from one week to a year. BlogAds.com keeps an updated list of the most popular blogs and advertising pricing on their site. Top click thru percentages have been running from 2.5% to 4%. Blogs and Public Relations Blogs have brought a whole new dimension to the media relations world. News and industry-specific blogs have become the "speaker's corner" for the online community. Bloggers and blog readers are now seen as opinion leaders and early adopters. The blog is an indispensible component of today's online public relations campaigns. What does this mean to a blogmaster? You're blog may be the way for PR professionals to reach their target public as an alternative to the mass media. Make it easy for PR professionals to contact you by putting a "send news" link where these important people can find it. See our special site section for a list of places you can announce your blog to PR communities. For a list of these PR communities, please see Part II of this tip; Blogging Tools, Marketing Blogs, and Blog Public Relations http://www.webadvantage.net/tip_archive.cfm?tip_id=242&&a=1 Blogging Tools By using reader feedback, blog forwarding (forwarding blogs to other users' emails) and ranking tools on your blog, it will keep users interested and help market your blog virally. For a list of blogging tools, please see Part II of this tip; Blogging Tools, Marketing Blogs, and Blog Public Relations. http://www.webadvantage.net/tip_archive.cfm?tip_id=242&&a=1 Internet Marketing Blogs Here's a list of some of the hottest blogs on Internet Marketing. MarketingWonk http://www.marketingwonk.com Search Engine Journal http://searchenginejournal.blogspot.com WebSense http://www.websense.com Traffick http://www.traffick.com ================================================================ Published with permission of WebAdvantage.net http://www.webadvantage.net A full service Internet marketing, search engine marketing, and Marketing News Service. ================================================================