30 Minutes to a better blog - 02: Introduction To Blogs

What's A Blog's?


For those of you who have never used a blog, or even have no clue what a blog is this section is for you. A blog is usually a piece of software used to manage Html/PHP and MySQL pages and databases. Or put much simpler, Used to manage posts of information such as what you eat for the day, or even something like a news article you wrote. Blog software is usually ran from the server side not the user's side. You as a “Blogger” login and manage your blog software from any connection to the internet. The software it's self is responsible for storing, and managing the media you produce.


Why Do We Blog?


Why would someone invest time into blogging? I have found that most people who blog can be broken down into 4 main groups. There could be many sub categorizes but I feel these 4 are a good representation of general bloggers.

• Diary's
• Informative
• Advertisement
• Link Building/Rank Building

Deciding your reason for starting a blog most likely falls into one of these 4 places. Lets walk through each one and decided which best fits you.


Diary's: These are the people who use their blogs to record their information such as important events, things they are proud of, or even for displaying their photography or other artistic media. This type of blogger's focus is on displaying content that is usually original and from that person personal experiences.


Although the information on these sites can drive some traffic, they often times do not have popular search terms used to drive traffic. In some cases (Lets say A Real Estate Agent) using your day's events, like showing a house, can provide a good opportunity to provide a blog post with some pictures, address, features and other things about the property you are showing. This post could potentially drive some traffic and make it possible for a sale to be made on that house.


Informative: This group is usually dedicated to a focused area of specialty. They use their blog for providing information such as Tutorials on achieving a task, Documentation on experiments or studies, or things like historical or educational facts. I have found this group to be the most use out of any others. The majority of internet traffic seems to come from this group, and often indicates a searcher who is seeking a solution to a problem, doing research on a topic, or other things such as reviews on products they look to buy.


Although this groups style is providing end user's with accurate and helpful information, they often use their advice and information to provide the opportunity for the end user to acquire a product or service. Often this product or service is provided on the same site, or with the same company. Informational blogs are a great way to acquire search traffic focused on those looking to either buy a product, or have the product already and are good targets for “Addon's” to the items of discussion in the blog.


Advertisement: This group seems to be highly comprised of automated software. For the ones who do things “By Hand” often incorporate most of the techniques used by Informative blogs. In most cases providing information or reviews to drive traffic to provide an opportunity to purchase a product or service. Which again would either be provided by the site, or through an affiliate service.


This groups main content is based on products or a service they sale or refer. Traffic is driven through the use of keywords for those items for sale. The down side to these types of blogs, if Advertisement is their main goal and source of content, is the fact that there are so many of them out there. With such a large amount of content online already it is vital for a blogger using their blog for Advertisement to follow strict protocols to ensure their content is accurate and readable by search engines.


For bloggers who are just starting for the first time, I would highly recommend your first blog be from one of the free service providers, such as www.blogspot.com, Or www.wordpress.org

The reason for this is so that you can be assured that your content is kept to strict markup rules and that your links will have a smaller chance to cause problems. Although these Free Hosted blogs can be slightly more limiting, it provides a very safe environment for someone who does not wish to spend a lot of time on ensuring SEO(Search Engine Optimization) standards are followed. SEO will be a topic discussed in a later chapter.


Link Building/Rank Building: This type of blog is almost a mix of Informative and Advertisement. Although it has it's own category because it's purpose can be largely different. For now we will not get into a lot about why Link Building/Rank Building is important, but bloggers often use this style to market their products and services much like the advertisers. The difference is often in the writing style of the content. Link building's content is not as important as the amount of content and it's age.


Another large factor for this group is the amount of inbound links. Meaning links that are on other websites pointing to their website. This is a large factor in Ranking on search engines and can directly effect traffic flow. This group often does not rely on return visitors for business, but rather look for the one time customers from search traffic.