Using Blogs to Drive Traffic to Your Websites
Blogs have been around for a few years now and are still growing in popularity. There are several reasons why more and more people are using blogs. It is extremely easy to post anything on a blog as compared to posting similar content on a traditional web page. Therefore anyone who wants to write comments, experience, opinions, and ideas on any subject finds it very convenient to use blogs where you can just insert your postings without bothering about messing with HTML.
The blogs have evolved in way which makes them highly interactive. The owner of the blog can allow the visitors to post their comments. Many blogs allow the use of trackback which make them even more interactive. It is possible to subscribe to RSS feeds of the blogs by which the subscriber gets to know as soon as new posts are made to the blogs.
It does not cost anything to own and host blogs which is another reason for their popularity. The most extensively used blogging service is Blogger which is provided by Google. By using Blogger you can own and host blogs without any cost. If you do have your own website you can use the same hosting service to host your blogs. In case your hosting service provides you with cPanel and Fantastic you can use WordPress blogs. You can get blogs with literally hundreds of designs and templates to choose from.
Advertising your blogs is much simpler than advertising your web pages. It is not necessary to submit your blogs to each search engine as you would do with your web pages. You can use pinging services to ping your blog whenever you make a posting. By pinging you inform several blog directories about your blogs and your new postings. You can also set your blogs to automatically ping whenever a new posting is made. This makes advertising your blogs a simple process. However, you can still go ahead and register with individual blog directories and search engines.
You can normally get visitors to your blogs much faster than to a new web page. The search engines also tend to index blogs faster. All these features and more make blogs very powerful medium for communication. Blogs can be very well used as a marketing tool to promote a website or a business. With your postings you can provide links to your websites along with a short description. The visitors of your blog will be inclined to visit your sites also. Your blog will be dedicated to a particular subject. It will attract visitors who are interested in the subject of your blog. The content of the blog should further arouse their interest and should lead them to click on the link to your website.
With regular posting to your blogs, say once or twice a week, the traffic to your blogs should increase and some of the traffic will be directed to your websites. In case you do not have enough material to write in your blogs, you can always get fresh relevant content from ezines. While taking content from ezines you should be careful about meeting their conditions.
Blogs can be used very effectively to promote your business and to get your message across. Blogs can also be used for generating revenue. You can put up Google Adsense and other contextual ads. You can also put up affiliate links. Another possibility is to put up web forms to invite subscribers for your newsletters. Some knowledge of HTML will be required to install Adsense and web forms etc.
It is so easy to use blogs as a promotional tool without any hassles. The simplest procedure will be to set up a blog which does not cost anything, and keep adding content about two times in a week. And add links to your business. Ensure that pinging is done every time a new post is inserted. Adding good content regularly will gradually increase traffic and promote your business.
Sanjay Johari
http://www.articlesbase.com/online-promotion-articles/using-blogs-to-drive-traffic-to-your-websites-40550.html