Having a blog on the Internet that gives people some
good informaton doens’t do a lot of good if people
don’t know that it’s there.


If you want people to be able to find your blog,
something that is important is that you have good
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.

Whenever you put one or more words into a search bar
to look for something, the SEO of a website is what
helps bring up those websites.

For example, if your blog is about Harry Potter, you
are going to want to be sure that your blog includes
popular terms such as Harry Pottter, JK Rowling, and
other things that are related to Harry Potter.

Think about the things that people look for when they
are interested in Harry Potter, and the kinds of
things that come up when you search.

It’s always a good idea to use your own experience
when you are optimizing your blog for searching.

Think about what has worked, what hasn’t worked, and
use them for your own blog SEO. This way, when someone
puts one of the terms that you put in your blog into a
search engine it will be one of the sites that comes
up.

Of course, there are other factors that come into play
that determine where your blog will come up in the
list, but everyone starts somewhere.

The more keywords that your blog uses, the more people
will come to your blog. It just takes time and
patience.

Something that you will find, especially if you join
something like LiveJournal or GreatestJournal, is that
users just like you have created communities for
people with common interests.


There are communities for just about any subject, and
if you find that there isn’t a community for the
subject you can create one. This is a great place to
advertise your blog.

The nice thing about communities is that there isn’t
any limit as to how many communities that you can
join.

For example, say that you love blogging about books,
horseback riding, and skiing in Tahoe. All you have to
do is look through the communities for ones that have
those interests and join them.

As long as you post something related to the topic to
the chosen community, people will see you and perhaps
they will check out your personal blog.

Something to remember is that you don’t want to write
a post tht is one sentence long in order to get people
to go to your blog. They will want to know that what
you write is interesting and is something worth
reading.

Joining communities can be a great way to advertise
your blog and drive traffic to it. If you are
referring to something that you posted about on your
blog, you can use a link back to your entry in your
post.

As with posting comments on someone else’s blog, you d
on’t want people to think that you joined a community
simply to get traffic to your blog. Otherwise, people
won’t visit your blog and you may get banned from the
community as well.

Something that has become increasingly popular since
the Internet has grown are the email groups that are
available through Yahoo, MSN, and other venues.


They are a great way to meet other people who have a
common interest, and are very similar to the
communities that are available through blogging sites.

There is plenty of diverse subjects and there are
communities for just about any subject.

These groups can be a great place for people who have
a blog about the subject and want to share it with
other people.

Most of the time when you join a group, you are
encouraged to take a moment and to introduce yourself.
This is a great opportunity to tell people about your
blog, but make certain that you don’t overdo it.

Just like with any of the other places you will
advertise your blog, you want to make people want to
go to your blog. If you are too overbearing, you will
turn people off.

If your blog covers different subjects, you can
advertise it on the other groups that cover those
subjects as well.

Make certain that your post to the groups is
interesting and that you let people know what it is
that your blog is about. There’s nothing worse than
getting taken to a blog under false pretences.

When people visit your blog, make certain that you
thank them for visiting and respond to comments that
they leave.

If they know that you appreciate the time that they
took, they are more likely to come back again.

Blogging traffic is a give and take relationship.
Sometimes one of the best ways to get traffic to your
blog is by visiting someone else ’s blog.


Go to their blog and read one of their entries, or
read a few of them. Chances are that you are going to
find something that you have in common.

When you find something that you find truly
interesting on a blog, leave a comment so that they
know that you were there.

One of the best known blogs available is LiveJournal.
A great feature of LiveJournal is that you can search
for interests on their site and it will come up with
results of those who have that interest.

Are you interested in horseback riding You can see
what other bloggers are interested in horseback riding
as well.

When you are commenting on someone’s post, you want to
make sure that you don’t leave generic comment. If you
like the post, say something about what you read in
the post.

After you have commented on the person’s post, then
you can say something like, ‘I really like horseback
riding too. I had a similar experience to yours.’ and
then use it to link back to your journal.

But be sure that you sound sincere when you are
commenting, and don’t make them feel like you’re just
fishing for traffic.

If someone thinks that you are using their blog to get
more traffic to yours, they won’t visit your site and
your efforts will be wasted.

If you want to have more people visit your blog, there
are plenty of blog directories on the Internet that
you can submit your blog to so that people will come
and visit it. Most blog directories are listed by the
topics that the blogs that are submited cover.


Blog Catalog is a free blog directory that offers
categories such as career and jobs, writing, Iraq, and
many others. It has features such as featured blogs
and other things to offer those who submit their blogs
there.

Another great place to add your blog is
blog-drectory.org. Not only do they have an an
extensive list of categories with sub categories, you
can get your blog reviewed. For the most popular
blogs, it shows the amount of hits that blogs have and
if they have any reviews. As well as listing by
category, the blogs are also listed by location.

There are other blog directories on the Internet -
these are only a ouple of them. But blog directories
are a great place to advertise your blog and to make
new friends. You never know what you will find when
you browsing through the directory, and you may just
find out information that you never knew. Some of the
blog directories offer chat features as well, so that
you can meet other people easily.

As you can see, blog directories are a great place to
get your blog noticed and bring people to read your
blog and look at your pictures.

I was referred to a prospective client recently that had their website redesigned. They paid $60,000 for a site that really does nothing for them. It is a simple brochure site that provides visitors nothing and it certainly does nothing to convert traffic into sales. Since all their budget went to design, they have no money left over to properly market the site. Mistake #1, don't pay $60,000 for a branding exercise.

A corporate website is about supporting the business. The beauty of the Internet is there is no guessing. You can measure pretty much anything. What are you trying to accomplish? Increase traffic? Generate leads? Increase sales? If it is yes to one of these questions, then a $60,000 investment should get you another $600,00 to your bottom-line? Can a brochure site deliver a 80-95% ROI?

Web design is a commodity today. The cost of design should represent about 25% of your total spend. Design costs are competitive today, so spending more than you have to should be the last thing you do. There are excellent open source Content Management Systems (CMS) that give you the power to manage your own content. The cost of the software is $0 to you. We recommend using either Plone or Joomla. Both of these platforms provide you with Web 2.0 compliant back-end at low cost for setup and maintenance.

The value in web design is working with companies that can properly market what you do. To properly market the site, you should be spending 10-12x what you should spend in design. So, it is possible to get a Web 2.0 website at an affordable cost. If you are a small company that is spending $4,000-$8,000 on a basic website, you should plan over 12 months to spend an additional $30,000-$80,000 on marketing. The dollars spent on marketing brings the traffic to the site. Simple rule, more traffic through the front door means more business.

Unlike other advertising, you can control your spend and measure your ROI pretty quickly. You can turn your marketing dollars on and off depending on the performance, it is all measurable.

DeFabis Photography is an example of a client that went through the redesign process. We built a Search Engine Friendly website that allows him to manage content on the site. Prior to working with us, his website was not listed in the top 100 on Google for the popular keywords. Since working with us, his visitors and page views have increased. But most important, he has doubled his bookings from this time last year. And, he did not spend $60,000 on his web design.

If you need help in evaluating a prospective vendor, here are some question that may help you understand their knowledge:

1. How do capture visitor traffic off the Internet? Can you track their movement through my site? If so, how?
2. How do manage pay per click advertising dollars to ensure I am maximizing my spend and not wasting money?
3. How do you measure whether my site is friendly to my users?
4. How many page views would you estimate my site would get to determine the right level of hosting?
5. What things will you need to change on my website? What things can I change on my own?
6. If I want to change the look, does it require changes to the backend scripting on the site?
7. What will it take to add a new page to match an ad we are running to the new site? For instance, I want to advertise a special and build a page specific for it, what will it take for us to do this?
8. What do you anticipate the average cost per lead for the website to be?
9. Who owns the source code to the site?

So, think about your objectives. Think about what you want to accomplish and spend your money according to the results you want to achieve. A pretty website just does not generate the type of results you should and can get using the Internet. Don't get mugged for $60,000. It's bad for your business.