Blogging is a great way to get keyword-rich content on your site, get your message on the search engines, and get people to visit your site. But how do you start writing a blog?
When you think about starting a blog, you have a lot of choices. Use a "standalone" online service like WordPress or Google's Blogger to start blogging quickly and for free. These free tools are easy to change and can help both new and experienced bloggers. The bad thing is that you can't use the name of your website. For instance, if using Blogger, you blog address would be something like 'yourblog.blogspot.com.' You can link to this from your own site, but since it is on a different domain, search engines won't "give you credit" for the extra content. You can still get more exposure from a blog, though, if you link to other pages in a creative way.
These free services offer software tools that are both useful and easy to use. Some people like to use more basic blog services, but they can still get a lot out of WordPress or Blogger and the large community of users who already use them.
One of the best things about these services is how easy they are to use and how they have more features than some blog software programmes. Blogger and WordPress don't require you to know how to "code," and they both have easy-to-use icons like those in a word processor that you can use to build and post to your blog. People can make blogs that are as high-tech and complete as full-fledged websites if they know how to use this programme.
If you are sometimes "offline," WordPress can help you by letting you import posts. This means that you can work on your blog even if you aren't connected to the internet. You can then import it when you are. You can also import your posts directly into Blogger or WordPress if you already use another blogging service like.
Another good thing about these services is that they have large libraries of widgets, elements, and themes that you can use to add useful features and styles that look professional to your blog right away. With just a few clicks, you can add features like an RSS feed using a very simple drag-and-drop interface.
You could also think about using blogging software that you can add right to your website. Some hosting services, like GoDaddy, let you use the domain name you already have for your blog. The benefit is that the content of your blog becomes part of what search engines see about your domain. In these situations, you are more likely to pay an extra fee to your hosting provider every month. Google's Blogger is another option. It lets you publish to an FTP site, so you can blog from your own domain. You lose some of the flexibility of the "out of the box" service, but with a little work you can have a customised template and pretty easy posting that lives on your domain.
As your needs change or if you are a more tech-savvy blogger, you may also want to think about blogging software that you can add directly to your website. bBlog is one to think about. bBlog is a PHP/MySQL application that is free to use. If you don't know what the last sentence means, you don't need to read this. If you do know, you might be able to use the more options that an integrated application could give you.
In the end, there are many ways to get started that are very cheap or even free.
