All Entries in the "Blog Hosting" Category
Is A Free Blog Host As Effective As Owning Your Own Domain Name?
I recently had a client ask me if setting up a blog on WordPress.com or Blogger.com is as effective as owning your own domain name. He wanted to set up a blog on the free blog post and said that it would get crawled faster. True. It would. But when it comes to blogging you have to look at the long-term benefits. Here are the long-term benefits that your own domain name provides that free blog hosts don’t:
- You own the real estate. It’s always better to own the real estate than to rent it. Free blog hosts are like half way houses. You don’t have to pay rent, but you have none of the benefits of ownership. Eventually, you’ll outstay your welcome.
There are two primary reasons why free blog hosts are undesirable. Since they’re free, a lot of spammers use them. That’s make it a bad neighborhood. By owning your own domain name, you can ensure that your site sits on a server where it will gain a positive reputation. Secondly, if the blog host is shut down or goes out of business, or the owner changes the business model of the site, then you’ll lose your blog. You’ll have to move all the content to another location or lose it. - The long-term SEO is more rewarding. While you can build links from a free blog host, you should seriously consider getting your own domain name for that purpose. Since you own the real estate and the content, you have more control (as stated above), but you can also tweak your software and site template more easily to conform to modern SEO conventions.
- It’s not that expensive. Sure, you have to pay for the domain name ($10/year) and the hosting, but you are more likely to rank for your key phrases if your content is well optimized over the long run. If you are writing a hobby blog then a free host may be perfect for you, but for business I’d strongly recommend your own domain name.
You can always augment your own blog with a WordPress.com or Blogger.com blog. The free web hosts shouldn’t be your first approach, but they work great as support tools. Just don’t copy/paste your blog content from one blog to another as you’ll run into duplicate content issues.
Need a professional blog manager?
Why Blogger Is Not Good For Business
I still talk to people who are sold on Blogger.com being a great place to host a blog. Just because it’s free. I hate to be the party spoiler (actually, I quite like spiking the punch, thank you!), but the reason Blogger.com is not a good place to host your blog is precisely because it is free.
Human error has a way of killing good grass. Sure, you can pull out the weeds one by one, but the more “free” something is the more weeds you can expect to see. And pulling out all those weeds takes time. So to make it go easier and more quickly, you have to create something to automate the process – something like an algorithm, which is a fancy word for a mathematical equation that is supposed to search out and find the weeds in a big field of grass. In this case, it’s the free blog host Blogger.com and the weeds are spam blogs.
Big problem. Google’s algorithm actually flagged legitimate blogs as spam blogs. Thousands of them. And some of them were rather high profile blogs that had been hosted at Blogger.com for a long time. If it could happen them, do you think it could happen to you?
For every day that your blog is down that could potentially be thousands of dollars slipping through a hole in your pocket. It may be just a few pennies a day, but if you don’t sew up that hole then you could lose thousands over time. That thousand dollars over the course of one year represents hundreds of thousands over time. When you consider what you could have that $1,000 do for you, earning you more in an interest-bearing account, for instance, the problem is a lot bigger than it at first seems. You can’t afford to lose even a dime to someone else’s error.
It’s better, if you can, to own the property. And since you can purchase a web domain for as little as $10 per year, why not do so? Imagine opening up a storefront on the busiest street in your town for $10/year. Would you do that? Or would you opt for the empty warehouse across the railroad tracks that gets graffiti spray painted on its face once a month just because it’s free?
Sorry for the graphic image, but that’s how serious this is. Don’t use a free host. You’re much better off paying $25-$30 per month for a secure host and $10 per year than you are using a free host that could flake out on you at any time. It’s a business blog, man. Run it like one.
Blog Hosting: How SEO Hosting Provider Beats All Others Hands Down
Too many people think that hosting is simple and easy. They believe that any old host will do, but I’ll tell you from experience that this isn’t true. There are popular hosts that I would never recommend for a company blog.
When it comes to choosing a host for your blog, you need to think about a long-term commitment. You don’t want to have to pull out and find a new host because of lousy service or technical issues. It’s worth it to pay a little extra for a host that can meet your blog’s needs. Specifically, you want a web host that can address the following issues:
- Speed – If you have a slow loading blog or website you will lose sales. You want a host that can increase the your load time speed and that means picking a host that doesn’t put your blog on a server that is bogged down by spammers and huge files.
- Functionality – For a blog, you need to stay away from Windows Servers. We recommend Linux or Apache. You also want a host that can support Fantastico, cpanel, php, and MySQL. Functionality is very important for a blog and modern blogging platforms – the best ones – are php and MySQL based. You want the best functionality available for the best performance.
- Tech Support – Cheap web posts provide cheap and lousy tech support. Remember, as in all things, you get what you pay for. When you have a problem, you want someone who can speak your language and takes your problem seriously.
- Customer Service – Finally, customer service. I separate this from technical support because sometimes you just need good, solid advice. Blog Content Provider gives advice based on more than 20 years combined experience in SEO, blogging, and Internet marketing. We recommend what works. Not only do you get valuable experience with us, but we also evaluate your business plan based on your goals. If it won’t work, we’ll let you know before you spend thousands of dollars. If it’s a good idea, we’ll praise you for it!
When it comes to these very important issues regarding web hosting, for your blog we recommend SEO Hosting Provider. Yes, it’s a part of our family, but that’s not why we recommend it. We recommend it because we’ve put the thought behind the processes necessary for your blog and have designed a blog host to meet those needs. If you can find a better host anywhere else we’ll still work with you to make your blog the best that it can be.
Types Of Real Estate Blogs That Have Been Used Effectively
Here’s an excellent article for real estate professionals on the different types of blog that you can start for your local real estate market to help you market your business:
Real Blogging – 3 Creative Ways to Use a Real Estate Blog
Blogs are a simple and efficient way to publish information onto the Web. Blogging programs are flexible, versatile, easy to set up and even easier to use. Because of these benefits, people from many different industries are using blogs in creative ways to support their business.
Real estate agents have also found many effective uses for the blog. This is the industry I am most familiar with, so I would like to contribute a few ideas of my own. Here are five ways real estate agents can use blogging to support their business.
The author actually only introduces three types of real estate blog, but I’ll provide the other two. We have had many clients succeed with their real estate blogs and I know we can help you too.
1. Relocation Advice and Support
A savvy agent could create a blog catering to people who plan to relocate to the agent’s city. This would be a great way to keep these folks informed on local real estate issues. It’s also a good way for the agent to connect with future clients who are moving to the area. Blogging programs are easy to set up, so an agent could create one specifically for this purpose.
This strategy is perfect for areas with a high rate of buyer influx and population growth. For example, here in the Austin area where I live, there are a lot of folks relocating from California. If I were a local real estate professional, I would launch a blog that catered to these people. It would be a great way to generate new business, so it would be a worthwhile venture.
Relocation advice is one of the most popular types of real estate blog. Not only can you share information about relocating to your particular area, but you can also provide general relocation tips like this moving company does. In fact, why not partner with a moving company in your area to write a combined blog dealing with relocation advice? You can market both of your companies and share the expense.
2. Local Real Estate News Source
An enterprising and web-savvy agent could also manage a blog like a real estate news website. It could be hosted under its own domain with its own web address, separate from the agent’s main website. That way the blog could be named something appropriate, like the “Raleigh Realty Weekly” (or whatever is applicable to the agent’s locality and specialty).
This publishing strategy would benefit the publisher in several ways. First of all, the agent gains another source of Internet traffic, which can be valuable in terms of business growth. Theoretically, two websites could mean twice the traffic … and twice the leads.
This is also a great way to network with professionals in related industries, such as home inspectors, mortgage brokers, home stagers and more. These folks could even be invited to contribute information to the site.
A news blog would also help the agent establish a level of authority. For example, few agents would be able to say something like: “Jane is also the publisher of the Dallas Real Estate Review…”
Excellent advice. One well-written mortgage and real estate news blog is the Mortgage and Real Estate Blog. This is a blog that covers the mortgage, banking, and real estate industries. It also sometimes promotes real estate and mortgage blogs that use the Blog Content Provider services or that choose to sponsor the blog (contact BCP).
When it comes to blogging, the real estate industry probably has the most natural creative outlets for meeting the needs of its customer base. Why not use them?
3. Timely Market Updates
Blogging is easy, even for people with little or no web-publishing experience. As a result, blogs are ideally suited for updating an audience about timely topics. This is why a lot of realty professionals use blogging programs in the first place. They realize that their audience (home buyers and sellers) wants current information about the local housing market. So these Internet-savvy agents use their blogs to share information about local sales trends, housing prices, new homes for sale, new neighborhoods being developed, etc.
Blogging seems easy, but it really isn’t. You have to understand how to get attention for your blog and many self bloggers stumble through it without ever achieving any level of success with it. But blogging about your local real estate market is probably the easiest way for real estate self bloggers to get in on the action. Doing it this way will demonstrate your level of knowledge on your market, but it will also mean you are just like everyone else. You have to do something to set yourself apart from other real estate bloggers like Adrienne Francis has done.
Conclusion
These are just a few of the ways you can use a real estate professional can use a blog to grow his or her business. There are plenty of other creative strategies as well. The point of this article is merely to open your eyes to the possibilities of blogging. Not all of these ideas will be right for you, but one of them could be. So do some experimentation and see what you can come up with. Use the ideas I’ve listed above to get your creative juices flowing. Good luck.
Brandon Cornett publishes a number of websites related to real estate marketing, mortgage web site strategies and more. For more marketing tips, visit the author online at http://www.smartmortgagemarketing.com.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brandon_Cornett
This is a great article by Brandon Corbett, but as he said at the end, there are other ways you can make a real estate blog work for you. One other type of real estate blog that you can write is a community blog. Instead of focusing entirely on real estate, you can make your blog’s focus the entire community that you serve. You can lead people to the parks and rec department of your city, discuss neighborhood improvement, community service projects, or anything of service to your community. This type of blog will make you a pillar of the community and not just a real estate agent.
Another type of blog that you can write is a local listing blog. Why not make each blog post highlight a listing in your portfolio? This is relatively simple and can be done through RSS feeds or simply by copying and pasting the descriptions of homes in your portfolio listings to your blog. There will be a high degree of duplicate content with this type of blog, which may cause it to not do so well in the search engines, but because it is a blog and not a static website, you can reach your market through ping lists that are off limits to static web pages where real estate listings usually appear. You can essentially use this type of blog to target a market demographic that you can’t reach through normal organic search marketing.
There are other types of real estate blogs that you can put to good use as well:
- Hybrid – Combine one or more of these types of blogs into one.
- Specialty – Write a green real estate blog or target another specialized market segment.
- Use your imagination – There is no limit to what you can achieve through a real estate blog. Have an idea? Let us know. Blog Content Provider is ready when you are to do what they say can’t be done.
