Signing a post with a graphic signature

I will try to add a graphic signature to the end of this post. Tell me how you like it by leaving your comments.

Instruction on how to get this image signature is given at Nice image signature for you blog posts

Poll: Should Blogger give make Autosave an option?

Vovici Online Survey Software

To help you vote, here is what I have been reporting to Blogger and pestering them to give us the option to turn Autosave on and off:

1. Doing long edit. Autosave publish unfinised edit which is visible on the web, Not desirable. I would much rather to have option of when to publish the edited post and when to let Blogger autosave for me. Using IE7, Firefox 2.0, Flock

2. Using Flock to prepare long post. Definitely took much more than 10 minutes. Autosave gave sense of complacency and didn't click SAVE NOW. I had IE7, Firefox 2.0, Flock browsers, many tabs, 2 Excel files, a few Notepad files opened. Forced to shut down. When I tried editing that post again, to my UTTER DISMAY, the great part of what I had prepared was not in the autosaved draft.

3. A blogger complained that he likes to edit his old posts, play around with its layout, etc, and if he doesn't like it, he just don't publish. But now because Blogger don't give him the option (my own words) to turn off Autosave, whatever he edited get autosaved and he has lost the original which may be actually what he wants.

4. (not sure about this because that seemed to be a rare occurance) I think Autosave save at intervals of every 10 minutes. After getting Autosaved, the SAVE button is grayed out and become not clickable. If while editing/preparing post, say, 5 minutes after that, he had to do something else if the button is still unclickable, he can't save and leave the post in peace while he go to do other things. It has actually happened to me, but I can't remember how long after the post got autosaved and I don't know how long before the SAVE button become clickable again. Further, as mentioned in 1, the half finished editing post may get published because of autosave. In circumstances like this. I would really like the option to turn off Autosave, the post remain in its unedited form on the web, then come back again to continue the editing.

5. Here is another blogger complaining about autosave:

"I'm even worse off. Autosave triggers several script errors when I
have the blogger editor open on my laptop (I think my laptop has some
usual configurations that screws up the autosave script), so I get
error messages every few seconds, and the times I've tried to recover
something from autosave, it hasn't worked anyway. I really want this
feature to die."

Really hope you vote because if I get enough response, I will try to submit result to Blogger.

Find PageRank of a site

I have a post How to easily get the Google PageRank of your blog, any pages of your blog or any other site. This involves installing the very useful Google toolbar. You can find some information on why I like the Google toolbar in these posts:

Search a website which did not provide for a site search box

FireFox with Google toolbar for your blogging tasks

My preferred way to do spell check

What is FireFox and why you should be using it (the part about Google toolbar is at the bottom of the post)

However, a reader of my blog commented he prefer not to install any toolbar to find the PageRank of a site. Is so, there are many ways you can get the PageRank of a site or any particular page of a site. As I believe the PageRank of a website can be increased by the number of backlinks (inbound links) from other sites to the site, but can be decreased by the number of outgoing links, I shall just give the URL below:

http://www.rankwhere.com/google-page-rank.php

http://www.google-pagerank.net/

http://www.findpagerank.com/
(you can simultaneously get the PageRanks of multiple sites at the above PageRank finder)

http://www.1-hit.com/all-in-one/tool.ranking.htm
(this one is supposed to give you the Google PageRank as well as the Yahoo PageRank, but when tested, don't seem to work. For example, checking on my main blog

blogger-tricks.blogspot.com

resulted in "blogger-tricks.blogspot.com has a Google PageRank of /10" and nothing else)

Increase link popularity and PageRank for old classic template by removing NOFOLLOW attribute for comments

I have previously posted about Increase link popularity and PageRank by deleting NOFOLLOW attribute for comments for New Blogger. One of my reader asked how about removing the NOFOLLOW attribute for old classic Blogger templates.

For old classic template, sign into blogger.com (Dashboard). Click "Template" in the section for the relevant blog (circled in red below):



This will open the template editor. You will have to look for this block of codes in the template:

<$BlogItemCreate$>
</p>
</BlogItemCommentsEnabled>
<BlogItemBacklinksEnabled>
<a name="links"></a><h4>Links to this post:</h4>
<dl id="comments-block">
<BlogItemBacklinks>
<dt class="comment-title">
<$BlogBacklinkControl$>
<a href="<$BlogBacklinkURL$>" rel="nofollow"><$BlogBacklinkTitle$></a> <$BlogBacklinkDeleteIcon$>
</dt>
<dd class="comment-body"><$BlogBacklinkSnippet$>
<br />
<span class="comment-poster">
<em>posted by <$BlogBacklinkAuthor$> @ <$BlogBacklinkDateTime$></em>
</span>
</dd>
</BlogItemBacklinks>
</dl>
<p class="comment-timestamp"><$BlogItemBacklinkCreate$></p>
</BlogItemBacklinksEnabled>

If you are using FireFox or Internet Explorer, press ctrl+F and type "nofollow" into the "Find" box and you will easily find it:



I have tried this with Flock browser and it didn't work. So this convenient "Find" function may not work with all browsers. If you have problem with that, what you can do is click inside the template editor window and press ctrl+A (or right click on the mouse and chose "Select all") to highlight the whole template. Press ctrl+C (or right-click and select "Copy") to copy the whole template into clipboard. Open a Notepad file, click EDIT > PASTE in the menu bar at the top of Notepad (or right-click and select "Paste") to paste the template into Notepad. Click EDIT > SELECT ALL in the menu bar (or right-click and chose "Select all") to highlight the whole template in Notepad, click EDIT > FIND, then type "nofollow" into the "Find what" box and click "Find next":



The "nofollow" in the template will be located and highlighted. Delete rel="nofollow" from the template. Press ctrl+A (or right-click and chose "Select all") to highlight the whole template in Notepad. Press ctrl+C (or right-click and chose "copy") to copy the edited template. Go back to the Blogger template editor. The whole unedited template in the template editor should still be highlighted. Click the DELETE key and the template editor window will become empty. Paste the edited template into the template editor window, preview, and if everything seems fine, click "Save template".

Host your blog on Virtual Server

If you are using Google Blogger for your blog, they now provide a relatively new feature - custom domain. With custom domain, you can have your own domain for your blog and you have a choice of either letting Blogger host the blog for you or hosting it yourself. Many are of the opinion that having your own domain gives your blog more respect, rather than being a sub-domain of blogspot.com. It is much like using a real office address rather than your home address for your business. Further, when you promote your blog, you are promoting your own domain rather than blogspot.com.

There are advantages and disadvantages of letting Blogger host a blog with custom domain for you and hosting yourself, most of which I will not go into here. If there are any issues not discussed here, leave a comment. The disadvantage of letting Blogger host it for you is that you have no access to their servers. That means there will be some things you can't do. You can add a Google sitemap to your blog, but it is not a real sitemap because they use the RSS feed for the sitemap rather than a real sitemap. It is not the real thing. You also cannot do your own HTML form. These will not be a problem to you if you host the blog on your own.

There is now the possibility of using virtual server, also referred to as shared web hosting service. Shared hosting is cheaper than other types of hosting such as dedicated server hosting. Usually the Virtual host provide takes responsibility for management of servers, installation of server software, security updates, etc. This is probably the most economical option for hosting as many people share the overall cost of server maintenance.

Virtual Servers offers Virtual Server services for businesses, webmasters, bloggers especially serious bloggers and business blogs. You get full root access to to install tools and utilities, blogging tools, community platforms, mail servers, etc. They have various Dedicated Virtual Server Plans. You get an easy Control Panel to manage your site. To get a better idea of what you will get, have a look at their Features and Control Panel Demonstration.

Blogger in Draft: Upload vidoe plus Poll

Sorry for the foreign accent in the video, but at least I beleive it is comprehensible. The video was uploaded via the Upload video icon in the post editor icon. Click on that icon, click BROWSE and locate the video in your computer. Add a title, tick the "I agree to the Upload Terms and Conditions" box and click UPLOAD VIDEO.

To get this new feature, you will have to go to draft.blogger.com and sign in. The short video took longer to upload than I expected. However, I do not know exactly how long because I do multitasking and uses browsers with tabbed browsing like FireFox and went to another tab to do other things.

Other than this new Upload Video direct from Blogger, you can also add a poll by getting into your LAYOUT, click Add a Page Element, chose "Poll", click "Add to blog" and type in your question and the choices. You can elect to allow only single or multiple choices. I have tested it and you can see the poll at the bottom of in the second left sidebar.

Testing publishing with a template

Testing publishing post with template It it works, you will see a banner at the top of the post Hopes this works However, not sure if post will be published or not Because the last time I chose to send message immediately I got the message "Your message has been queued...." I never saw the post in my blog So I don't know if this one will get published I am going to copy everything, and if sending immediately does not work, I will try schedulling to send in a few minutes time

-- If this message had been sent to a list and not as a test message, the footer and manage your subscription link would be here. To see this, add yourself to a test list and send a message to that list.

Don't get banned by Google!

Don't get banned by Google! by Martin Grun

It's a simple question... Are you asking Google to penalize your website?

I'm sure you're probably thinking; Well, of course not! Yet daily I see new people complaining in search engine optimization forums that their websites have been banned by Google and they "have no idea why".

These people claim they've done nothing wrong and are absolutely clueless as to why their site is no longer in Google. The purpose of this lesson is to teach you one VERY important thing. What NOT to do when optimizing your website, to make sure you don't get banned.

How do you know if you've been banned?

First let me show you how to see if you're clearly banned by Google. Often times people think they've been banned, when in reality they've just dropped in ranking and can't find their website.

There are a couple of things you can do.

1. Check Google's search results. 2. View the Google toolbar.

Check Google's search results?

Go to Google and enter your entire URL into Google's search box. In this example we'll use a made up domain name. (www.jkhljkhkjh.com). On a side note, I tried www.somerandomdomain.com and www.fakedomainname.com and both were already taken.

Anyway, we'll go to Google and enter our entire URL and click "search" http://www.jkhljkhkjh.com

Notice that Google says there is no information available for this URL? This means that the URL is no longer in Google's database (a.k.a. index)

If you enter a brand new website into Google, you'll always get this message until the website has been indexed. But, in this case, the website we entered has been banned by Google for some reason is either banned or is brand new. If we know our website was once in Google and do the search I just showed you above, and Google says "Sorry, no information is available for URL [whatever your URL is]", then chances are... you're banned.

Another way you can quickly see if your website has been banned is by:

Viewing the Google Tool Bar

Download the Google Toolbar here: http://toolbar.google.com

Once it's installed, simply visit your website. If the Google toolbar is completely gray, this may meen that you have been banned by Google.

Banned:

* Note: Most SEOs call this "gray barred". (So if you hear that term in an SEO forum, that's what they're referring to)

Not Banned:

Ok, so now we know how to tell if our website has been banned.

What can cause your website to get banned?

There are many onpage ranking factors AND offpage ranking factors that can cause Google to ban your website. Today, we'll focus on only the onpage things that can cause your site to get banned.

Before I begin, I want you to know that many websites still get away with doing some of these things. They DO NOT help your rankings and are simply a waste of time, so don't try them. Sooner or later Google will catch up to these websites and will remove them.

It's just not worth the risk when doing them no longer helps your ranking to begin with.

Hidden Text

Hidden Text is simply text that users can't see when they visit your webpage. Some webmasters will do this so that they can add keywords throughout their webpage without it interferring with what the visitors actually see. Yet, the search engines can still see hidden text.

For example, let's say you have a white background on your website. If you wanted to hide text, you would simply make the color of your text white (#FFFFFF) and users couldn't see it.

I did a quick search in Google and quickly found an example of a website using hidden text. Have a look below:

At first glance, you're probably wondering where the hidden text is...

Let me show you. I went to the website and clicked "ctrl + a" on my keyboard. This will highlight the entire webpage as shown below:

Now we can clearly see the hidden text at the very top left side of their website that says "fat loss body fat abs weight loss diets bodybuilding dieting tips abdominals"

These are keywords that they want to rank well for and want the search engines to see when they first visit their website. Yet, they don't want their visitors to see this text. So, they've made the text white, to blend in with the background.

This website used to be ranked #1 for "fat loss", but I just did another check to see where they're ranked, and they're no longer anywhere to be found... AND it looks like they also removed they're hidden text, but it's probably too late.

Alt image tag spamming

This is another way that people will try to cram keywords into their website, allowing search engines to see their keywords, but not allowing visitors to notice any difference in their website.

The following is a website that wanted to rank well for "cabbage soup diet". What they've done is inserted a graphic of a cabbage. They've then added an alt image tag to the graphic. When a visitors visits the website, and hovers their mouse over the cabbage soup graphic, a little popup will appear.

Notice how many times they've repeated the word "cabbage soup" and "cabbage"? Way too many! It serves no purpose other than to cram as many keywords as possible into their webpage.

The real purpose of an alt image tag is if a user visits your website and the graphic will not load, or is disabled by their web browser, text will appear instead of the graphic. This is often used for blind people.

Alt image spamming is something you want to stay clear of. Using alt image tags are good, but you can overdo it, as you can see above. A good alt image tag in this case would simply be: cabbage soup diet graphic Meta Tag Surfing

What I'm referring to here is when people throw in thousands of the same exact keyword into their meta tags.

For example, the following website is trying to rank well for the keyword "tents".

< name="KEYWORDS" content="tents, TENTS, Tents, tents tents tent supplies, tents, tents tent, tent, Tent, TENTS, tents, Tents,tents, TENTS, Tents, tents tents tent supplies, tents, tents tent, tent, Tent, TENTS, tents, Tents,tents, TENTS, Tents, tents tents tent supplies, tents, tents tent, tent, Tent, TENTS, tents, Tents,tents, TENTS, Tents, tents tents tent supplies, tents, tents tent, tent, Tent, TENTS, tents, Tents tents, TENTS, Tents, tents tents tent supplies, tents, tents tent, tent, Tent, TENTS, tents, Tents">

This is obviously ridiculous. Google, and other search engines no longer use Meta Tags to rank websites.

Google WILL penalize it, and it WILL NOT help you... so, why would anyone do something like this?

Stay away from it.

Title Tag Surfing

The title is what appears in the top left hand corner of your webpage. Below is an example of Title Tag Stuffing.

Don't do it... You only need to include your keyword(s) one time in your title tag.

Anymore than 1 time will only dilute the effect, and if you overdo it as shown above, you may get severely penalized and drop in the rankings.

Those are just a few of the things that people are continuing to do online. These things WILL eventually get your website banned or penalized and WILL NOT help you rank well. It's just a waste of time and effort, plus it's just plain ignorant to waste your time on something that doesn't work and will get your website banned from the search engines anyway.

--

Visit my site to read this article with images. Traffic Building Optimized
About the Author

Helping others build traffic onto their sites.

Kontera ContentLink: An alternative to Google AdSense

Google AdSense now have another competitor - Kontera ContentLink™. Kontera provides contextual ads they called ContentLink™ using what they refer to as their patent-pending technology. You can read more about it by surfing Kontera's site.

It appears to me that there are some improvements of Kontera ContentLink™ over AdSense Text Ads. When you hover your mouse over the ContentLink™, a tool tip (a small box) will appear displaying the full text ad from the advertiser that sponsors that ContentLink™. The visitor then can choose either to ignore the ad or click on it if he find that that is what he is seeking. Furthermore, it either provides a relevant ad or an internal link to another relevant page within your site or network of sites. It may also provide 3rd Party Information Links to external information including dictionaries and encyclopedias. This provides for a better visitor experience and will encourage repeat visits. However, I do not know if publishers are paid for clicks to such sites but I very much doubt it. I will query Kontera and update this post when I receive a response.

A further improvement of Kontera ContentLink™ over AdSense is that Kontera ContentLink™ can display ads even in password protected sites.

However, there is a big difference between Google AdSense and Kontera ContentLink™. Google AdSense are prepared to work with small publishers and imposes no condition on the amount of traffic they receive to their sites, but Kontera ContentLink™ will only approve sites that have over 250,000 page impressions per month. That will rule out many blogs.

The importance of Domain Name

IP address like 218.111.66.229 is how other people on the Internet find your site, but IP address like this is obviously hard to remember. This is where Domain Name Service (DNS) comes in. It translate a domain name like www.mysite.com to an IP address. A domain name is the text name corresponding to the numeric IP address of a computer on the Internet.

There are long and hard to remember Domain names and there are short and easy Domain names. Obviously, the short and easy to remember Domain names are preferable as it makes it easier for your site visitor to find you on the Internet.

However, with the ubiquitous presence of search engines, remembering domain names are now less important than before and it is now more important that you are easily found by the search engines. A search engine places great importance to the words contained in a domain name. It helps the search engine determine what your site is all about. Having an important key word or words in the domain name as it helps in getting organic traffic. Organic traffic is traffic that comes to your Web site naturally and without being driven there by a specific marketing campaign.

Thus it pays to do serious researching of key words and domain name before you start your website. However, Internet have been around for quite some time now, and a lot of domain names have been registered, some registrants just squating on the name, hoping to make a big buck out of it when someone require it badly.

So you may have done your homework, and have settled on a very desirable domain name, but found that when you try to register the domain, you may find that it is already registered by someone. This is where buydomains.com can play a role. buydomains.com has over 800,000 of the world's finest domains registered with them for sale, and there is a good chance of you being able to find the domain name you want there.

However, buydomains.com doesn't just sell domains. They buy and sell domains, meaning if you have a desirable domain name that you want to sell, you can also do it via buydomains.com. In fact, if you have a talent for spotting good domain names that are likely to be wanted by late comers, you probably can make a tidy sum selling the domains that you registered via buydomains.com.



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On a basic level, domain names are important because the Internet's addressing scheme is not very effective without them.

Each computer on the Internet has an Internet protocol (IP) address: a unique string of four numbers separated by periods, such as 165.166.0.2. Since remembering the
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IP addresses of all of your favorite Web sites would be nearly impossible, a group of computer scientists created the domain name system to assign a unique name to each numeric IP address.

But domain names are much more than just a technical shortcut. A short, memorable domain name can make the difference between creating a successful Web presence and getting lost in cyberspace.

A domain name adds credibility to your small business. Having your own domain name makes your company look professional. If you publish your site through an ISP or a free Web hosting site, you'll end up with a URL such as www.yourisp.com/-yourbusiness. This generic address does not inspire confidence in a customer like a www.yourcompany.com domain name does. And since many people don't yet trust the Internet and e-commerce, you'll want to do what you can to prove that your small business deserves their money. If you're not willing to pay the money to register an appropriate domain name, why would consumers think you'd put any effort into creating valuable products or services?

A domain name says you're forward-thinking. Having your own domain name indicates you're part of the Digital Revolution, and it implies that you're up-to-date on emerging technologies. Whether this is true or not, having your own domain name might just put you ahead of your competitors.

Blogging: Effective Marketing

Blogging: Effective Marketing
by: Scott Lindsay

Weblogs, or “blogs” were introduced in 1997. As with most new technology the initial users of blogs were those gifted in the field of technology.

The growth of blogging began as the user interface became more simplified requiring no knowledge of HTML or other specialized coding.

Today blogging is used for personal as well as business applications. In the domain of business blogging (B-Blogging) many businesses are seeing the value of a b-blog and are allowing key personnel to blog on company time. The reasons are varied, but a b-blog is useful in presenting the face behind the brand.

The best b-blogs do not look at this format of information sharing as simply a means to say whatever comes to mind. A helpful b-blog for business is one that provides customers with the following.

1) INFORMATION – Customers are interested in the latest news on the products you offer and they may be very interested in the benefits your product or service has to offer.

2) ANNOUNCEMENTS – By providing important new offerings or staff changes, your client may feel more connected to your firm.

3) CONTESTS – In keeping with the fun nature of a b-blog, contests can be conducted through a blog that can supply visitors with a chance to receive promotional products.

4) SALES – If you will be conducting a sale on your products a b-blog can provide an easy way to pass that information along to people who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer.

5) JUST THE FAQ’S – A b-blog is an effective way to solicit questions and then respond to them in your blog.

One of the key functions of a b-blog is to raise awareness and trust for your products and/or services while keeping things light, informal and highly personable.

B-blogs can be updated as often as you need to and your posts do not need to be exceptionally long. You should say what needs to be said and sign off. By making your comments short and to the point you will likely discover your visitors will respond better than if you insist on drawing things out.

Unlike email, customers who regularly visit b-blogs indicate it is a bonus to see the personality behind the company name. At the end of the day if you have encouraged a customer to remain a customer or if you find new prospects visiting your blog then your goodwill gesture has actually moved from a nice idea to a valuable marketing tool. Isn’t that what you wanted in the first place?

About The Author
Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with High Power Sites at: High Power Sites.

Why Should I Pay for Web Hosting?

Why Should I Pay for Web Hosting?
by: Nate Landerman

The advent of blogging and free blog space has brought about a revolution in web publishing that pushes the boundaries of terms like “webmaster” and “website.” In today’s brave new world of Internet publishing for the masses, the traditional means of building and hosting a personal website has fallen out of favor for many new webmasters.

If you count yourself among the many bloggers who use a free subdomain blog account, you’ll have to think about web hosting sooner or later. Unfortunately, most don’t consider the ramifications until it’s too late. In the beginning, a free blog account or ad-supported web hosting seems like the obvious choice for a personal site. Unfortunately, this decision – or lack thereof - can cause problems down the road. Issues with free hosting and subdomain hosting range from SEO complications to ownership and control issues. Both free and paid hosting have their own merits and drawbacks, of course, so the ultimate decision is yours to make. But understanding these pros and cons is the first step in making a good decision for your site.

Free Hosting

Pros:

• It’s free. This is obviously the single most important advantage of free web hosting.

• It’s easy. Anyone can open an account on Blogger or any number of other free services and instantly get a free website requiring no more effort to publish than writing an email.

• No experience necessary. Anyone can create a site using one of these free services, with no programming, technical, or even HTML knowledge required.

Cons:

• Branding. As your blog or website grows, a subdomain hosting account offers little in the way of branding, and may adversely affect your credibility.

• SEO. If you move away from a subdomain account to your own domain, you will have to start over building links to your new domain.

• No control over ad content. With free hosting, you are at the mercy of your hosting company’s discretion as to what type of ads will be displayed on your site. Pop-ups and ads for adult sites are not uncommon.

• Limited or no accountability for site outages and other problems. When you’re getting something for nothing, it’s all too easy to become the victim of corporate apathy.

Paid Hosting

Pros:

• You can host your own domain. With paid hosting, you can brand your site with your own domain name (e.g. MySite.com) and add legitimacy to your content.

• Control. With paid hosting, you control every aspect of your site, including design and advertising content.

• SEO advantages. With a paid hosting account and domain name, you can build links to your site safely without worrying about whether or not you’ll be changing domain names. In addition, a hosting account allows you programmatic and scripting abilities not usually found in free, pre-built websites.

• Custom site development. Unlike free blogs, a hosted website can typically run a variety of CGI and scripting applications, and can be built any way you choose.

• Accountability and Portability: When you pay for hosting, you hold more leverage over your hosting company in the event of problems. Additionally, by retaining control of your source code and data, you can easily move your site to a new host.

Cons:

• Expense. Though you can get hosting plans as cheap as $2-$3 per month, it’s still a cost that free hosting does not incur.

• Some assembly required. Though many paid hosts offer site builders and blog software as part of the package, it still requires more technical work than signing up for a Blogger account.

• Maintenance. When you create a site yourself, you become responsible for the upkeep of your own code. In fact, you become responsible for just about everything involved with the site except for the server and connectivity.

So in summary, making the right choice between free or blog site hosting and paid hosting is heavily dependent on both you and your site. Though I’ve focused heavily on hosting for blog sites, much of the same information applies to free hosting vs. paid hosting for other types of sites as well. The important thing is to take a good hard look at what you want your site to eventually be, how much effort you’re willing to put into it, and then make your decision.

If you do decide on paid hosting, make sure you look at all options available. Use a web hosting review website such as I Net Publication to compare available options. Not all web hosting is alike, and many hosting companies offer free tools to ease the pain of migration as well as other perks you may not have realized you were missing.

About The Author

Nate Landerman is the owner of www.inetpublication.com, a web hosting review website. This article may be reprinted freely, provided that all links to iNetpublication remain intact.

n.landerman@inetpublication.com

Why Blogging Is Essential To Your Business

Why Blogging Is Essential To Your Business
By: Chet Holcomb

In the 'good old days' - about three years ago - you used to keep in-touch with your customers using phone calls, email messages and face to face meetings. Nowadays the world has changed. People expect even more frequent updates, yet it's nearly impossible to meet with every business contact on a regular basis.

Thankfully, blogging has come to the rescue. Setting up a blog on your web site - and having an associated RSS feed - means you can keep in constant touch with your clients and potential customers. Plus you don't have to email them and they can get your latest news without having to visit your web site.

So how does this all work? A blog is really a fancy name for a web page that gets updated regularly. It's nothing special. There are several methods of writing 'blogs', but they are nothing more than computer programs which allow you to easily update a web page. Far and away the easiest way to start a blog is with a website called blogger.com.

However, for keeping in touch with your customers, RSS is the key. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. What this means is that your blog can be automatically delivered to people who want to read it - you don't have to send it to them and neither do they have to come and collect it. All they need is the address of your RSS Feed and their RSS Newsreader can do the job for them. There are several RSS readers available and new web browsers incorporate the ability to read RSS feeds and keep them updated.

Why Blogging is Essential to Your Business

Whenever you add new content to your blog, the RSS Feed automatically gets updated in everyone's Reader program or web browser. That means you are guaranteed to be able to keep in touch with clients and prospects. You don't have to do anything other than produce the content. Equally, you don't face the problems of email filters and anti-spam programs blocking your email. Furthermore, people tend to read RSS Feeds because they have subscribed to them. Whereas they tend to ignore non urgent emails.

As you can see, there are several advantages to Blogs and RSS Feeds. But it doesn't stop there. Search engines love them. That's because blogs provide fresh and new content - precisely what searchers are looking for. Hence the search engines are actively pushing blogs higher up the search engine ranking. This means if you don't have a blog for your business, you are seriously reducing your chances of a high search engine ranking. You need a blog nowadays to get noticed by the search engines.

So, blogging is essential. Not only does it improve your web presence, it also means you can keep in touch with clients and prospects more easily. And all the marketing research you can find will tell you that keeping in regular touch with your customers is an important component in gaining new business. So get blogging!

About the Author:

Chet Holcomb of Internet Promotions is a successful marketing expert providing advice for web marketers and webmasters on how to promote your website, or product using marketing tools that work.

Read more articles by: Chet Holcomb

Article Source: www.iSnare.com