How Do I Start Blogging
February 9th 2009
OurInternetSchool > WebSite Management > Meaning Of Blogging
What Does Blog Stand For?
Blog is an acronym of weB LOG, or web logging, although some jokingly say it stands for Big Load Of Gossip. Blog’s started out as online journals where people (bloggers) could read, write or edit shared information about hobbies and common pursuits. Now you know where did the word blog come from, its time to understand "how do I start a blog"
The Search Engines love blogs as they are usually made up of topical information and are constantly updated by bloggers. So it wasn’t long before savvy marketers started using blogs to promote their businesses and indeed blogging is a fantastic way to drive traffic.
It is now possible to create an entirely free website . The primary resource that marketers use to do this is blogger.com, and while this does have the advantage of being free, it has the disadvantage that you need to have a small degree of involvement in your site once or twice a week.
This is necessary because when you create a blog site, it is essential that you add fresh content to that site every two or three days, and then ‘ping’ notification to the major search and directory sites that you have done so. By doing this, you keep the search engines ‘happy’, and that is one of the most effective ways of ensuring that you see a steady flow of new traffic on your site.
In addition to this, because blogger.com is owned by Google, it is remarkably easy to set up through your Google account. Once you have logged into blogger using either your Google log-in information or by opening a new account, the first thing you need to do is create your new blog.
This is a three step process where you choose a blog title, a URL and a template. That being done, that is it - you are good to go.
This Video Gives You Simple Instructions
But if you are willing to spend a little money, you can set up a far more effective and efficient site that is likely to generate far more traffic than you could ever expect to raise from blogger.
The first thing you need is a specific topic or niche for your site, because you are going to register a domain name under which that site will be built. It is far more effective if that domain name can be directly related to the subject of that site.
For example, imagine that you were going to build a site that gives information to newcomers to fly fishing. In that case, a name like ‘FlyFishingNewbiesClub.com’ would be appropriate. Checking whether such a domain name is still available using a register like GoDaddy, we find that it is:
Consequently, you would register this domain name.
The next step is to find a suitable web hosting company, and there are few better than HostGator, especially as their $7.95 a month ‘Baby’ shared hosting account offers outstanding value.
The final job is to tie together your domain name and your new hosting account. You will find video instructions on how to do so at Our Internet School free members area.
The next thing you want to do is install a WordPress blog on your own website. Using HostGator, this literally takes no more than five minutes.
Open up the cpanel through which you control your site, and look for the icon for ‘Fantastico’ or ‘Fantastico DeLuxe’. Click the icon, and you come to a list of programs which can be installed on your site in a matter of two or three minutes. Amongst this list, you will see WordPress, so click the link and follow the instructions to action the installation:
Once WordPress has installed on your site, you will have a default template (known in WordPress terms as a ‘theme’) showing on your site that looks okay, but is pretty boring.
What you should do is find a free theme that matches the topic of your site from any of the free download sites listed here, and then follow the instructions that you can find here to upload this theme to your site.
Also on the page, you will find a list of essential plug-ins that you should download and install. These are complimentary snippets of software that make WordPress far more adaptable, usable and attractive to the search engines. By installing these plug-ins, you are likely to increase your traffic numbers. General plug-in installation instructions can be found here.
One final job is to set up WordPress so that it automatically sends a ‘ping’ to the search and directory sites every time new content is posted to your blog. To do this, copy the ping list from here, open up your WordPress admin control panel and look for ‘Settings’ at the top right hand page corner:
Next, you want ‘Writing’ (top left) and scroll to the bottom of the page to ‘Update Services’:
Paste the ‘ping list’ into the box, and click ‘Save Changes’. Your blog is now set to ping every one of these services automatically with every update.
Your site is finally ready to go, and all you need to do now is start adding content. You could do this manually, as you were going to do when using blogger, but because you are using WordPress, there are a couple of additional plug-ins available that will automatically add content to your site.
The first of these plug-ins is SmartRSS, which you download entirely free by clicking on the link. However, pay attention to the installation instructions on the download page, as they are slightly different from the norm. Once this plug-in is successfully installed, it allows you to automatically add content The plug-in allows you to automatically update your site every few hours, and every time it happens, your blog will automatically send out a ‘ping’ to let everyone know of the changes.
The only problem with this method of adding content to your site is that because you are pulling that information from other people’s RSS feeds, it is not unique content. The search engines and especially Google are extremely keen on unique content, so using SmartRSS is great, but it is not perfect.
The other plug-in that you must consider using allows you to get round this problem by uploading your own unique articles en-masse to your blog, and then the plug-in will publish those articles one by one. It does this on a random time basis so that it does not appear to the search engines as if there is any automation involved in the process.
All that you need to do is go back to the articles that you wrote for your article marketing efforts and rewrite every one of them by doing little more than changing the words slightly. You then upload these articles en-masse to your site and let ZipPoster handle the task of publishing them one by one in a manner that looked entirely manual and therefore natural.
With 100 articles, if you published one every two or three days, you have a year’s worth of content available that will be posted to your site on autopilot. That should guarantee that your visitors come back time after time. Of course you should also look at adding video marketing to your blog.
How To Add YouTube Video To Your Blog
More information on how Jack Humphrey uses linking for web site promotion can be found in the Gold Members area of
http://www.OurInternetSchool.com
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