blogging for traffic: the other side!

You may have already read about blogging for traffic on other peoples blog sites. This article is about the other side of the blogging coin!

It's not too difficult these days for anyone to put up a blog. There are plenty of open source (i.e. free) blog platforms that can be integrated with your web site, e.g. http://wordpress.com. If you set up an RSS feed so people can be notified when new articles are posted it will help bring visitors back to your site. Essentially this is the other side of blogging for traffic! So a win-win situation here. If you do decide to put up a blog be considerate to your visitors and put up a recent comments widget, and top commentators widget, and let visitors have their own link in the blog and widget. On the other hand approve your blog posts, to stop spammers and other unwanted content.

There are some serious issues to consider before installing a blog. Top among them is do you have time? You will need to post useful content to them regularly (several times a week, or daily if you can), as well as approving visitor comments. Your blog should contain well-written, relevant and informative articles: whether about current events and news, tips and "how to" articles or thought provoking articles or video. They should also be search engine optimized (including keywords and links). You need to decide if you have the time and resources to pull this off. Another possibility is having an ezine instead, which you could send out just once a week or less frequently.

If you think you can manage a blog then there are some good reasons for having one: