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By Iszuddin Ismail
Now, I build content-sites, and in my free time, I still build
more and more. To my definition, a content-site is more or
less
like what James Martell does. I would research for keywords,
define my topics, list the content that I want to have in my
site, and then start writing (or get somebody else to write
for
me).
Done with that, then it’s about building the site, putting web
pages together and getting a domain name and web hosting.
After that, you go around looking for link partners.
I suppose most people understand what a blog is. But just in
case for some newbie readers, I’ll try to explain what it is.
A
blog is a site that contains articles after articles written
one
after the other. The content is not being written all in one
go
upfront. But it is rather being updated along the way.
A blog lists the articles in a chronology manner, being the
latest, the first. MoneyClicking.net is a blog. A blog is
normally supported by a system or a script. You can use
Blogger.com (remote hosted), Wordpress (PHP script), Movable
Type (Perl script), etc.
Anyway, back to the topic. I was on the phone with my friend,
we concluded it’s better to have a blog because it’s easier to
get traffic with it.
Why? Well, there are some mechanics of a blog and also the
culture of blogging that makes it much easier.
For one thing — it’s easier to get incoming links. Let me tell
you how.
Reason #1: Blog Ping
First of all, there’s this thing called - PING. With a blog
ping, when ever you write a new article in your blog, you can
set addresses to a few ping sites to tell them that you just
updated your blog. When you do that, you’ll get a link back to
your site. Ping sites are like Technorati.com and
BlogRolling.com. News sites like MSN News, Yahoo News and
MoreOver, also have ping addresses.
Now, maybe you won’t be listed very long on that page, because
many other blogs are also pinging to those sites. But more or
less, it’ll help. I’ve gone through my web statistics and
traffic do come from the sites that I pinged.
Reason #2: Trackback
Secondly, there’s also TRACKBACK. Now, I was with a friend
explaining how trackbacks work last week. Now I’ll tell you.
With blogs, for every article that you write, there will be a
unique URL for it. And for each article, there’s also a unique
trackback URL. Whenever you are at another person’s blog, look
for trackback URL, and you may want to copy it.
Now here’s how you use a trackback URL. Let say you are at
somebody else’s blog. And he just wrote about something about
cat grooming. And somehow, you feel that you have something to
say about what he wrote — and you know, what you want to say
will be very long which may not be suitable for a comment. So
you write your own message at your blog, and lower down the
interface, you enter the other guy’s trackback URL, and then
you hit the Submit button.
Now, that new article will appear on your blog. And because
you
put in a trackback URL, a part of your article will also
appear
in the other guy’s article as a comment. And that comment
links
directly back to your article. So that’s how trackbacks work.
Reason #3: Blog Comments
Now, my third point on why blog is better than content-site —
Blog Comments. This is where you able to go around at other
blog sites and write some comments on articles. And you even
leave a link back to your site. But here’s the thing, just
make
sure that your comments are genuine, because now days, there
are
too many people spamming blog comments just to get a link
back.
Reason #4: Bloggers’ Linking Habit
OK, here’s some more. This is more a blogging culture thing —
bloggers like to link to each other. If your blog is
interesting, it’s easy to get other bloggers to link back to
you. Whether you ask for it on your website, or sometimes they
just simply give you a link back. I’ve got this many times,
and
most of the times, they link back write to a specific message.
And sometimes, they just list blog sites that they like on
their website.
Reason #5: Faster SE Indexing
This is getting quite long already. But I am not done. When it
comes to getting traffic, you may not realize this, but it’s
easier to get indexed in the search engines with a blog. I
don’t know why — perhaps it’s because incoming links are more
natural and you don’t really go around asking for them. And
when the incoming links are more natural, I think search
engine
will prefer it a lot more.
I myself have experienced where new content on my blog was
indexed in under seven days.
Reason #6: Repeat Visitors
Now, after you get traffic from search engines, ping sites,
and
other blogs, later you’ll start to realize that 80-90% of your
visitors are repeat visitors. It’s common with a blog. So the
point is with this one — it’s easier to retain visitors with a
blog.
You get huge traffic from multiple sources — and the ones you
already have you get to keep. This is different from
content-sites, where you really so much on search engine
traffic.
Blogging Seems Much More Fun ...
In my experience, starting from scratch, in six month, a
content-site may or may not reach to mark of 1000 visitors per
day. And it takes serious hours writing content and building
incoming links. I have multiple sites consistently doing
100-200 visitors per day, after six month. But with a blog,
it’s not unusual if a blog reaches 3000 visitors per day,
provided you give good content.
But I suppose, it all boils down to which you are comfortable
with.
Realizing this, I may be planning differently in the future —
but I am not certain on that yet. From the looks of it,
blogging seems much more fun. You write about what you like,
and you network with other bloggers. And the writing part
becomes much, much easier with scripts like WordPress and
Movable Type. Not much designing, no uploading files, less
link
building, etc ...
With building content-sites, you still have to build the
website again, upload them up to your web hosting, build
incoming links, etc ...
This is my opinion. And you may not think the same way I do,
based on your personal experience and knowledge. I respect
that.
About The Author: Iszuddin Ismail publishes the 10 Untold
Blogging Secrets e-course. Get the $97 e-course for FREE,
filled with advance blogging tips at
MoneyBloggingSecrets.com
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