Blogging

Blogging is a powerful way to generate traffic and
if you're not already doing it you should start now.

The search engines love blogs and you'll often see
blog posts dominate the top rankings for keywords.
You can take advantage of this by starting your
own blog (or blogs) to generate lots of new traffic
and funnel it all towards your main website.

You can build your website as a subsection of your
current website or you can build it as a separate,
standalone site.

Whichever you choose you'll want to make sure you link
back to your main site. Don't just link to your home
page either. Sprnkle in links to some of your other
pages too.

I recommend using either Blogger (good) or Wordpress
(the best) to create your new blog. They're both easy to
learn and use, and they're feature-rich and customizable.

You can host your blog on their servers, but I recommend
you register your own domain and host your blog yourself.

There's 2 very good reasons for you to host your own blog:

First, your url will look more professional and credible.

If you use Blogger, your domain will look like this:

yourwebsite.blogspot.com

And in Wordpress it will be:

yourwebsite.wordpress.com

But if you host it yourself it will simply be:

yourwebsite.com

That's much easier to remember and much more credible to
your readers.

The second reason you should host your own blog is even
more important. Many blogs that are hosted on free services
like Blogger disappear without warning or reason. It's
happened to many a blogger, and you don't want to take
the chance of losing all your hard work for nothing.

Keys to a successful blog

Show some personality. A dull blog won't build much of a
following. Don't be afraid to take a stand. Stir up a
little controversy and get people talking about you blog.

Post often...at least a couple times a week. Stale blogs
that aren't regularly updated quickly lose ther following.

Add an RSS feed so readers can subscribe to your blog and
be notified when you add a new post.

Find other blogs in your niche and add comments to their
posts. Most blogs let you add a link back to your own site.
You can use this method to build relationships and links
to your site, but don't abuse it. Post useful comments,
not sales pitches or SPAM.