You want to Blog in order to have another way to increase traffic and links to you site. When a search engine spider goes to your site, it will pick up on the link to your blog and index it as another page of your site along with the content of the blog. You will want your Blog to reflect your website's theme or use it as a means of it's content to create enough interest by the reader to visit your website. People leaving comments at your blog will also show as traffic. As with all else, you must remember that the content, or text, is what the spiders see when they visit your site to index it. This content is used as the reference for searches done by visitors to the engine as they look for the matches to the keywords. This holds true whether or not the results of the search show a thumbnail of your site or simple html text, used as the link for the visitor to the engine to click on.

There are several places on the internet where you can get your own blog at no charge. Some will be easier than others to set up and edit, it depends upon your level of expertise and how you like the program's resulting product. As with anything else, if you pay for something you will get more with a better quality. You will have to determine this for yourself. If you can not or don't want to spend money, then you will have to do it yourself and work within the limitations of the version of the tool until you can afford to up-grade.

I set up a Blog this past week and as the first posting, used last weeks article I wrote for this newsletter. I also publish my article with a couple of content sites. In doing this I have created several links not only to my website but to the article itself. People and search for articles or Blogs and find mine via the topic. Traffic to the inter-linked pages from other websites that in turn go to my links gives my site more 'depth' across the internet. This is one of the major factors with your site's ranking that should not be ignored. You may view my blog at my main website page by clicking on the box or by going here: http://cpucash.blogspot.com/

If you look at the upper right hand corner of the blog, you will see a link to get one of your own

As with article publishing, you have places to publish your blog and it's information for those looking for information about your topic. You will want to up-date your ROR on your site also, as it's listing of your blog will give the spiders a quick look at the links associated with your website. Here is a good place to start publishing your blog: http://pingomatic.com/

Who can tell how long this avenue of increasing ranking will be a useful tool? It can not be ignored, however and should be somewhere on your site for those looking for one from you.

Where does all this lead? To sign up for your newsletter, purchasing of your product or service. or whatever else you have to offer at your website. One of my client's website produces at least a few calls a day from those that have visited their website. Of these the conversion to clients is around fifty percent. This may not sound like much, but when you take into consideration that the average client will spend from several hundred to several thousands of dollars for the products or services, it is a very good Return on Investment. That's it, the bottom line being income generation. Not only will my client's company get the initial income, but they will get residual income from up-grades and service calls. This increases their client base and with permission, the entering of links to and from the customer's website does it's thing for the clients website traffic and ranking.

Does it work? Yes. This past week I had a visitor to my website that also visited my blog. This person sent me an e-mail that I followed up on and became a subscriber to my newsletter. This is the main purpose of my site, that is to generate enough interest for a visitor to want more information from me via the newsletter. As the newsletter is sent to the subscribers, they will see the ad's on the newsletter and after a period of time will trust me enough to look more deeply into the products and services I sell.

Conclusion: Having a Blog is just another way of doing everything you can in order to generate sales via the internet for the web side of your business. It is not considered a direct method but one that may spark interest enough by it's content for the visitor to go to your main site and investigate more before purchasing. More and more people are researching more before purchasing, so you know that by the time they call or contact you from your site that they are down to the last step before purchasing. Treat them well and qualify them quickly and you should produce income.