All Entries Tagged With: "domain name"

How To Ruin Good Blogging Advice

I found a great article about blogging online. I agreed with every word. Up until the last paragraph. It really was a beautiful article. Clear, sound advice. Then, the author made one huge mistake. I mean, HUGE. Here’s the article minus the mistake:

Blogging For Small Business – How to Build Your Reputation

By Barry Deen

Blogs have taken the internet by storm. More and more people are setting up blogs, and in the most part they die off within their first year, before they pick up any momentum. Most people set up blogs to build their reputation, sell products and get traffic to sell ads.

Although blogs have been around for a while, many small businesses are still not taking advantage of all the benefits a small business blog can provide to your bottom line.

* Creates awareness about your service / product

Many businesses have great, innovative products – especially in the technology sector. A major problem small businesses run into is getting the word out about their product on a small marketing budget. Creating a blog will create awareness about your product and ultimately drive sales.

* Builds your reputation as a subject matter expert

If you are an expert in your field, it is very beneficial to write about what you do and how you do it. The quality of your content is key. It may seem counter-intuitive to give away your “secrets” – however most people will find your articles because they are not the experts and are looking to learn.

* Strengthens your Search Engine Optimization strategy

The better quality articles you write, the more likely it is that other people will link to your articles. Link popularity is one of the most important aspects of SEO. Additionally, with correct code structure, you can create an internal cross linking strategy that will drive your PageRank higher.

This is all great advice. I don’t disagree with a single word. A blog is perhaps the most powerful marketing tool any small business owner can employ. If you can write then it’s a great free tool. If you can’t write and you need to hire a ghostwriter then it’s a low-cost tool that you can work to your advantage.

But the writer of this great article then went on to give some very poor advice. What was that? Here it is in all its pristine glory:

These are some of the benefits of blogging for small business. Setting up a blog is very cheap, often times free (www.blogspot.com or www.wordpress.com) and all you have to risk is your time.

Folks, I would not set up a business blog on a free host. You lose all control of your content that way. I have seen people set up 10 blogs at WordPress.com and lose it all overnight because one person made a spam report. It doesn’t matter if you think it’s spam. If WordPress or Blogger executives think it is spam then they can, and will, take it down. You lose it all.

Instead, spend $10 to buy a domain name that you have control over. Set up a WordPress blog on your domain name and write to it every day. That is the best SEO you will ever have and it will only cost you $10 plus the cost of hosting, which is usually no more than $60 per year.

The above article was written by:

Barry Deen is President & CEO of Web Strategy Canada and one of the top affiliate marketing specialists in Canada. For information on how to make money online, checkout http://www.makemillionsathome.ca For information on Barry Deen and his company, Web Strategy Canada, visit http://www.web-strategy.ca

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Barry_Deen

To learn more about business blogging contact a qualified blog consultant today.

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.

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Is A Blog A Good Business Model

Every now and then I see someone giving the advice to start a blog and use the blog as a business website to attract new business. In essence, the blog is touted as a good business model. But is it?

I generally say that if you are planning to go in business then you shouldn’t start a blog and use that as your primary website. There are several reasons for this, the chief of which blogs make great marketing tools but rarely succeed as standalone business ventures.

There are a few, however, that work quite well as businesses. If you are going to make blogging your chief business interest then you need to have a plan and that plan includes a monetization plan. How will your blog make money? On the whole, however, most businesses would do better to use the blog as a marketing tool to drive traffic to another website. But there is one way you can start with a blog and build a static website later and be very successful.

In this model, you use your blog as an Elijah, a forerunner to your website. If you know that you are going to build a website to cover a particular niche, don’t build the website right away. Instead, put a blog on that domain name and start blogging to it every day with rich, keyword-focused content. After you have achieved respectable first page rankings for the key phrase that you are trying to capture you can then build your static website right there on that domain name. But don’t ditch the blog.

Move the blog to a folder on that site and keep blogging every day, but build your static website on the domain name itself. You’ll get all the traffic and SEO benefits that you’ve already built into the blog and you can keep the blog active to continue building fresh daily content.

Blog Branding Made Easy

Is it possible to brand your blog in the same way that you brand a business or product? You bet there is. There are three things that go into branding a blog and you should pay attention to these three things:

• Domain Name
• Blog Design
• Blog “Voice” or Personality

First, let’s talk about your domain name. You should give it some thought. Do your keyword and competition research to find out where your niche is. Then come up with a suitable domain name that uses your keyword and that speaks to what your position within your niche will be. The right domain name is one that tells potential customers what you do and how you can benefit them before they ever visit your blog site.

Blog design is another element that speaks to your brand. Does your design make it easy for customers to know what you do? Is it compatible with your website’s design? If not, you should put a little more thought into blog design. The design of your blog can go a long way to make you successful in your branding efforts.

Finally, the personality behind your blog is important. Who do you have writing your blog? Is that person literate and well-versed in your company philosophy? Your blog writer must understand your place in the market. She should be able to communicate your company vision and values in a simple, non-threatening way. Your blog voice, or personality, should be consistent throughout. In other words, if you change writers on your blog often then you might present a disjointed or inconsistent voice and that will turn some consumers off.