What is a blog, what is SEO, and why write a blog?
Today, Technorati tracks about 133 million blogs.[1] Blogging is truly one of the Web 2.0 wonders. Yet, many still are unaware of what they are and what they can provide.
The term "weblog" was coined back in 1997. In 1999, Peter Merholz, founder of Adaptive Path and former Epinion.com creative director, shortened the term to "blog". He originally sent around links of websites with annotations and got the idea to share it with a wider group of people. He is often now called the "Blog Father".
Blogging software allows you to add content to a website without the hassle of learning a lot of HTML or style sheets. It removes the content from the layout, and it frees the blogger from the headaches normally associated with setting up websites. "Content" used to be mostly text, but images are a common component of blogs as well. Video blogging has now become quite common, which can add to a blog's appeal.
In the beginning, blogs were pretty much the online version of a personal diary. It was a way for friends and family to stay connected, share stories and share photos. Eventually, the idea of using them for business purposes began to catch on. However, it wasn't until the fall of 2003 that the 1 millionth blog came online. A year later, that number had tripled. News blogs about President Bush's National Guard service abounded, and online blog journalism really took off.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is often used to raise a site's rankings in search engines and knock down barriers that prevent it from rising in the ranks. Search engines look at the number of searches for keywords that point to the site, what links people select off of the presented links and the number of inbound links to the site. Changes to the HTML can modify the keywords that influence how search engines index the site and its pages. Other sites may be encouraged to link to the site, thus increasing the number of inbound links.
Unfortunately, this latter practice has a dark side to it. Many blogs are spam blogs, or "splogs". They are nothing more than links to other blogs without any real content of their own. Splogs are an artificial way to raise the number of inbound links, and search engines and tagging sites have recently begun to combat them heavily. In many cases, it is counterproductive and turns customers off. However, there are SEO "experts" that will sell such strategies to unwary companies and charge a hefty fee for this. SEO is still unregulated, so let the buyer beware.
There can be many reasons to write a blog. You may wish to:
1. Share information with a large group. It may be blurbs about church activities or photos of family reunions.
2. Engage customers and provide them a service that drives them to your online web site of products.
3. Establish yourself as an expert in a given field by publishing relevant and informative articles related to that field.
4. Establish a second career as a writer.
5. Raise awareness of issues of political, social or religious issues.
6. "For the opportunity to make an additional $1.65 per week through Google AdWords or the Amazon Associate program" (Huffington Post, p.17).
7. To show off what you know.
8. To show off how much you don't know.
9. Do something constructive with all of the free time that being unemployed provides.
And, there are many more reasons than there is space to put them into. Instead of asking, "Why blog?", it might be better to ask, "Why not blog?"
So, are you ready to take the plunge yet? How do you get started? You can use either www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com.
* Blogger will work best if you have a Gmail account, but don't worry that is free. Blogger is a little easier to setup, allows ads and can use Google's tools to help you manage the site. It also comes with a lot of widgets (Google calls them "gadgets") that can be plunked onto your main page. Unfortunately, support is almost entirely through their forum instead of email or a website where you can track a trouble ticket. You're left in pretty much the same boat if you choose to add any AdSense for advertising as well.
* WordPress can be a little more confusing to setup, but it has more of a community atmosphere to it. You have to setup an account, but that isn't difficult. Their support forums seem to have more obvious staff involvement. WordPress also, IMO, seems to draw visitors to it easier. Unlike Google, there are severe restrictions on advertising, unless you want to pay them for a VIP account.
In short, if you want ads, go with Blogger. If you want community and more visitors, go with WordPress. If you want both, then pony up the cash for a WordPress VIP account. If you don't care about either, then consider how many of your potential readers have Gmail. If it is a significant portion, then I'd go with Blogger. If you want easier setup, Blogger also wins here IMO, yet WordPress seems to me to have more appealing templates for visual effect. If you are still unsure, why not setup one on both and play with it? It is free, and you can always delete the one you don't want to keep later.
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Sources:
1. Technorati, "State of the Blogosphere / 2008", http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosph ere/
2. Editors of the Huffington Post, The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging, 2008
3. Wikipedia, "Search engine optimization", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimizat ion