February 2006 Edition of The Net Gazette by Oak Web Works


Table of Contents:

  • Web Tip #13
  • Welcome to the Blogosphere
    • Why are blogs so important?
    • Some more business benefits of blogging
    • Some ways in which you can make revenue from your blog
    • Blog directory websites
    • How to blog for business
  • Web Tip #14

 

Web Tip #13:

Add one page of new and original content to your website every other day.

Many say do this every day, but let's be realistic. Why should you do this? There are a number of good reasons. First, the whole crux of the Web is content and connections. Have you ever heard the phrase 'Content is King'? Interestingly, this is a phrase that was popular back in the 90's when I started out in Web business. Amazingly, this is one of the only phrases that has stuck around and been consistently relevant, especially today!

One of the main reason people visit sites is for information. Therefore, the more original and fresh content you add to your website regularly, the more reasons you're giving people to visit and return.

Another important reason to add fresh content regularly is that search engines like it. If a search engine records that you are adding fresh content regularly, then it is going to visit and re-index your site more often than websites that don't change or grow as often. Re-indexing, or spidering, means the search engine action of compiling and storing the most up-to-date version of your site for upcoming searches. Why do you think blogs and forums have become so popular? One reason is that they allow for easy and regular content additions. Search engines spider or re-index these sites much more frequently.

It's always better to have a site that gets re-indexed as often as possible. Why? Because if you add a new product page for instance, don't you want people to be able to find your new product online via the search engines as soon as possible? This will only happen if your site has been re-indexed by the engines after you added the new product page. If it takes weeks to get re-indexed, or even worse months, then that is a lot of wasted time not selling your new product online. In essence, your product is invisible online till it's Web page is re-indexed. The same holds true for a new service, or anything new.

Adding new and original content also has the added benefit of creating new phrases and words that could possibly show up in search engines and thus allowing your site to be found in more ways by more people.

 

 

Welcome to the Blogosphere

What the heck is a blog? Blog is short for Web Log or Weblog and the Blogosphere is the online blog world, some parts of which are hyperlinked extensively to each other.

This is the Wikipedia definition: Blog is short for weblog. A weblog is a journal (or newsletter) that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the Web site.

I recommend that you read lots of people's blogs to learn what blogs are. That will help you more to understand them than reading what I have to say. Go to your favorite search engine and type in the word 'blog' and the subject you're interested in. For example, 'web design blog', or 'blog music' , or 'sports blog'. You'll find lots of blogs that way.

Before I get into blogs a little further, I want to take a quick history trip back to the beginning of the Web and Tim-Berners Lee, the Web's inventor. The following excerpt is from a Web book I am currently writing:

The Internet includes the World Wide Web, email and newsgroups. The World Wide Web (or Web) came later, and was created by Tim Berners-Lee while working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva. The Web sits on top of the Internet. It is the system of websites, resources and users on the Internet. Tim Berners-Lee’s own definition is,

"The World Wide Web is the universe of network-accessible information, an embodiment of human knowledge."

In his book “Weaving The Web”, Berners-Lee explains how and why he came up with the idea of the Web. He begins the book,

“When I first began tinkering with a software program that eventually gave rise to the idea of the World Wide Web, I named it Enquire, short for Enquire Within upon Everything, a musty old book of Victorian advice I noticed as a child in my parents’ house outside London. With its title suggestive of magic, the book served as a portal to a world of information . . .”

CERN attracted scientists, engineers and researchers from all over the world who spoke various languages and brought with them various experiments, data, software and hardware. Of course there was a need for them all to collaborate while at CERN so there was a great demand for them to share information. Berners-Lee continues,

“It was clear to me that there was a need for something like Enquire at CERN. In addition to keeping track of relationships between all the people, experiments, and machines, I wanted to access different kinds of information, such as researcher’s technical papers, the manuals for different software modules, minutes of meetings, hastily scribbled notes and so on. Furthermore, I found myself answering the same questions asked frequently of my by different people. It would be so much easier if everyone could just read my database.”

Tim Berners-Lee recognized needs and came up with a viable solution. Keeping track of information and communicating are two very fundamental human needs. It’s not just the domain of scientists. Whenever a new technology catches on it can be traced back to the fact that it satisfies human needs. It improves the way in which people meet their needs. Again, opportunities are found in coming up with new, workable, and more efficient ways of meeting people’s requirements or desires. Berners-Lee’s original vision for the Web was one of collaboration. He wanted people to be able to post information to the Web as easily as it was to view information. Unfortunately, the latter was what was embraced more readily by the general population. In order for people to view information on the Web they needed special software called a browser.

The Web really started to spread when Berners-Lee published the software for a server and browser on relevant newsgroups. This started to get the university community involved and students began to write code for their own browsers. The most famous is Marc Andreessen, the University of Illinois student who programmed Mosaic which eventually became Netscape.

Note the sentence above that I bolded and put in maroon: He [Tim Berners-Lee] wanted people to be able to post information to the Web as easily as it was to view information.

Blogs have become a way in which regular, non-technical people can post information to the Web as easily as they can access it. Blogs are helping the Web get closer to Berners-Lee's original vision. Let's now discuss blogs in business.

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Why are blogs so important?

Well, they're not that important, yet. But they could be soon, and most likely will be. In fact, some would argue that they are already vital in today's Web business world. I am not ready to agree to that yet, but it is becoming more obvious to me over time that blogs can no longer be ignored in business.

Online businesses can benefit from blogging by taking advantage of a vehicle for easily posting new, original, and business-related content on a regular basis. (See Web Tip #13 above for why it's important to regularly update your website.)

Here are some more business benefits of blogging:

  • Blogs help to position you and/or your company as experts and leaders in your industry.
  • They're interactive in nature. At the end of each blog entry is usually a link that allows anyone to add their own comments to your blog entries. This allows your customers and potential customers to make comments about your products or services or ask you questions to help them in their buying process.
  • Blogs are marketed easily and quickly by their RSS feeds (more on RSS feeds in the next edition of The Net Gazette).
  • Blogs allow you to stress your choice of products, services, relevant news stories, quotes, pictures and more with your audience, customers and potential customers.
  • People are generous with adding links to your blog if the content is good, especially within their own blogs. More links means more traffic and better search engine rankings.

Here are some ways in which you can make revenue from your blog:

  • Selling advertisements. Whether you use banners or text links, if your site draws a regular audience interested in your blog topics or theme, try to offer ad space to organizations that are looking to market to your audience. In fact, if your blogs becomes really popular then advertisers will call you.
  • Offering Google's AdSense. Google's website explains, "Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads on their website's content pages and earn money."
  • Affiliate Programs. Affiliate programs allow Web sites who provide links to your site to receive payments or reciprocal advertising in exchange for promoting your Web site. In the case of blogging, this is reversed, where you post links within your blog, and collect money from the owners of those links when they result in a click-through and sale.

Here are some websites where you can get your blog listed in:

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How to blog for business:

First you need to get blogging software. You can choose to create a blog that is housed on another site such as http://www.blogger.com (which is a blog service) or you can host it on your own Web server. I recommend the latter since the links that are developed by others pointing to your blog won't be counted in the search engines. This is because the links are attributed to domains, so a link to http://MyNewBlog.blogger.com gives a link credit to blogger.com and not your domain. (See the January '05 issue of The Net Gazette or this Oak Web Works, LLC page to learn why links to your domain are so important to search engines.)

If your blog is a business blog, you really ought to host your own blog as opposed to using a blog service. You'll need the extra functionality and control.

If you plan on hosting your own blog and if you plan to use a UNIX Web server platform then you need to go with blogging software such as Movable Type. If you have a Microsoft Web server platform for your site then you'll need software such as BetaParticle blog.

Next you'll need a database to hook your blog up to. The database is what stores the blog entries, among other things. If you don't know if you have a database on or connected to your website server, or if you don't know how to hook up your blog to your database, contact your host company or Web server administrator for help.

Once you have the blog set up on your domain (for example http://www.MyWebsite.com/blog) and you've hooked it up to a live database, you can start blogging. Generally, each entry is also a day. So you can write a new entry every day, or whenever you want, and that entry will show up on the blog at the top, moving older entries below.

You ought to think of a theme for your blog. In other words, your blog could be about your personal experiences in the industry you're in. It could be about your company's product reviews, or new services. It could be about your thoughts and opinions about issues related to your industry. It could be a place where you regularly find and list new resources to help others in your industry. The list is endless. But be sure to stick to a theme and be original. You want to offer something of value to your website visitors.

Sticking to theme helps you position yourself for future advertisers and also makes for better reading for your visitors. Furthermore, you want to give a good impression with your blog and each and every entry if you want it to augment your online business. Finally, sticking to a theme helps with the search engines since it's believed that engines determine website themes and use this information for ranking.

Of course your blog could be about personal things too. Many blogs are just that, an online journal. But since we're interested in Web business here, I am discussing business blogs only.

What's great is that blogs get indexed easily and quickly by search engines. Each entry is another "page" that can be potentially listed in Google for example, which will drive more traffic to your site.

Another neat thing about running a blog once it's set up is that you do not need to be technical at all to make regular entries. This is helpful if you want to delegate the writing to someone else, since technical skills won't be a prerequisite. This allows you to have the most qualified person regarding the blog's theme and hopefully the best writer actually make the entries.

Be creative. Add images to your blog entries to spice things up a bit. Although blogging can be lonely, keep at it. Sometimes it seems like you're just writing new entries each day for yourself only. It may be a while before someone chooses to add a comment to one of your entries. You may not hear from anyone for a long time. But that doesn't mean people aren't reading it. In fact, check your website statistics to see just how many people are visiting your new blog. As you add more entries, get your blog listed on other sites and market your blog, it will build, and eventually you'll have a nice following of engaged readers.

Most importantly, be sure to pepper your entries with calls to action. For example, if your business blog is attached to your travel website and the blog's theme is traveling and finding great travel deals all over the world, make sure you add a link to an entry that points people to a travel special you're running on your website. What would be even better is a blog entry about the fantastic vacation you took to Hawaii and included at the end was a link to cheap Hawaii vacation deals on your website.

See one of my blogs to help you get more ideas:

I found a great list of blogging articles - you should definitely check it out.

Good luck and happy blogging.

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Web Tip #14: Del.icio.us 

Use Del.icio.us for on-the-go bookmarking.

Remember back in the August of last year (2005) edition of The Net Gazette I mentioned in Web Tip #9 how to export and import bookmarks (favorites) if you use more than one computer regularly? It was decent advice, but I have since found a better way. And this way is very 2006!

A New York guy named Joshua Schachter had this same issue of multiple computers, but one very important bookmarks list. So he decided to use the Web (like so many do) to help him. He devised a thing called Del.icio.us. It is a central place where anyone can save their bookmarks list, and access it from anywhere with a Web connection for free. The following is from http://business2.blogs:

Joshua Schachter is surrounded by lawyers and his phone is ringing off the hook. He just sold his two-year old company, del.icio.us, to Yahoo today for an undisclosed sum (estimated to be in the $15 million to $30 $20 million range). "All I want is to go home and sleep right now," says the 31-year-old founder, who started the site as a hobby before quitting his job at Morgan Stanley to build the company. His nine-person startup has 300,000 registered users, and in the past month or so traffic to del.icio.us has tripled, as more and more people get hooked on posting, tagging, and sharing Web bookmarks with each other.

So here is another way to have one list of Web bookmarks but be able to access it from anywhere. This also allows you to peruse other people's bookmark lists. In fact, Del.icio.us may become a good way for your website to be found in the future, offering an alternative to search engines.

Go ahead and give this free service a try at http://del.icio.us/.

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In the next issue of The Net Gazette we're going to look more into blogs, RSS feeds and Web 2.0.

Till next time, Happy Webbing

- Jason

 

To learn more about these subjects or if you have a need for e-marketing, design or programming services, please visit www.oakwebworks.com.

Oak Web Works

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