Blogging has been mostly been used for personal thoughts, professional observations, political rants, and entertainment reviews. However, there are so many more reasons to start blogging. One of the biggest benefits I have found is staying connected with my family and friends. I live on the west coast but grew up on the east coast. Through blogging, my family and I are able to stay connected and share things even though we live thousands of miles apart. We can share photos and post videos and audio files that let us remain a part of each other’s lives.

Through your blog, you can share with the world your thoughts about any topic you like. Having a blog is one of the easiest ways to stay in contact with others and communicate with others who have the same interests that you do. Everyone has something to say and wants to be heard when they say it. Blogging allows you to share your experiences, joys, laughter and pain. With a blog, you can find answers to your questions, learn new, exciting and wonderful things, comfort a friend or be comforted at times. Remember, the benefits that can come from having a blog are as wide and varied as the different topics that a blog can cover.

John Collins is a contributing author for Computer Internet Resources. Visit his blogging information website to get more good information on internet blogging, its uses, applications and benefits.

Blog is the condensed name for a “weblog” or “web log”.

Blogging is the action you perform when you make a post to a web log or blog, comment on a previous blog post or maintain a blog. Many people who make posts to a blog on a regular basis are referred to as bloggers.

Basically, a blog is an online journal where you can post your thoughts, observations and comments about a particular topic that the weblog covers. A blog is just a simple web page that has chunks of information called posts added to them on a regular basis. Depending on how it was setup by the person maintaining the blog, the posts can be all on one page forcing visitors to scroll down, or each post will have its own individual web page. When you are blogging and visiting different blogs, you will see the most recent posts first at the top of the web page.

Uses of Blogging

Online personal journals were some of the first blogs. Individuals used their computers and the technology of the internet to make entries into their journals rather than the traditional method of keeping a pen and paper journal. Blogs are primarily categorized as personal since many of them are online journals but today many blogs are used for a variety of purposes. Businesses are starting to use blogs as a way to provide information about their products and services. Politicians are using blogs to communicate with their constituents. Musicians and other entertainers are using blogging as a means to stay in touch with their fans as they tour. The list goes on.

Often, blogging is a way for you the individual to post a comment on a particular news item or subject such as politics, world or local news events, hobbies, entertainment etc. The topics covered in a blog are endless, and many times controversial and volatile. Sometimes one simple post can lead to a flood of additional comments and many have gone so far as to gain national attention by being mentioned in the news media.

Directories help locate websites within specific or definite categories. The difference between search engines and directories is that, directories feature only vetted websites, sites that have a certain standard and contain information of substance.

One of the aims of using directories is to boost traffic. To achieve this, one must choose to be featured in large, organized directories like Yahoo, DMOZ, and LookSmart. These will drive highly targeted traffic to you site (subject specific), increase significantly the link popularity, and Google PageRank.

To maximize exposure:

� Find a category that is most relevant to your website. The category and subcategories must totally fit the subject of your site and its purpose. For example, if your site is health related business the site must feature under health and not business. Only then, will surfers seeking health related websites access yours. Do a keyword search that is relevant to your site on the directory. The directory will throw up categories relevant to the key words. Choose one which is suited in all aspects.

� Coin a title and description that will boost traffic not reduce it. The title must be "dead on." It should include the most important key word and if possible begin with a letter towards the beginning of the alphabet. And, the 15-25 word description should succinctly summarize the purpose or functions of your site. While being descriptive and informative, try and weave in as many keywords pertaining to your site as possible.

� Purchase keywords from one of the pay-per-click search engines or directories.

� Make the website search engine friendly.

� Pay attention to text and image content. Heavy images reduce search engine visibility.

� Use back links on appropriate directories and trade or business listings. Check out the back links used by competitors.

� Add new content regularly. This encourages visitors and search engine spiders to return. Make sure the content is keyword rich.

� Start and maintain a web log or blog. This can become an active way to boost traffic while simultaneously disseminating information.

� Market your website by printing its address on business cards, paper bags, packaging and so on. Distribute an e-zine or updates as newsletters regularly to customers and business associates.

� Consider paying search engines for improved listings and fast appraisal of your site.

� Direct content towards search engines by adopting cloaking technology.

� Run advertisements on related web sites and mailing lists.

� Adopt a reciprocal link program.

Maximize traffic by monitoring your traffic regularly. Analyze visitor movements and frequencies. Find out what is effective and what is redundant. Use cookies efficiently. Understand technology and use it to the maximum. Keep updated on new innovations and developments. Write down a workable website marketing strategy.

There are simple steps to victory: be different, make sure your website is refreshing and delivers what it promises; create a network of supporters; be honest in your business ventures; deliver on time at affordable costs; be a learner all your life, constantly innovate your website to keep stride with changing times; carve out an exclusive niche and diversify in directions that are relevant to your business module.

Originally, blog posts are mostly text based. However, changes in internet technology and online services have given rise to other ways to make posts such as using video and audio (also known as podcasting). Now today a typical blog will have a combination of text, photos, video, and audio as well as links to other blogs and websites that are related to the topic of the blog.

Blogging has taken off and grown in popularity over the years. Now, a blog can be setup in a matter of minutes with little or no cost. There are varieties of hosting sites that will allow you to setup a blog free, and many web hosts now offer ways to quickly and easily install a variety of blogging software such as WordPress or MoveableType.

Along with quickly setting up a blog, many of the free online blogging services easily provide ways to allow you to make video and audio posts on your blog. They also offer other features such as password protecting your blog so you can keep your thoughts and feelings private, or allow only a select few in to view your blog. You are also able to pick the look or theme of your blog from literally thousands of different templates available; this is a great way to express your own individuality with your blog.

One of the most widely used free blogging services today is Blogger.com, which is owned by Google. In three easy steps, you can setup your very own blog and start expressing your thoughts and views to the world. After you setup your blog, you can make posts to it at any time day or night. The blogging services today are so easy to use and you do not need to have any technical knowledge of HTML or any other web coding language. In fact, if you can use a word processing program such as Notepad or MSWord, you can start blogging today.

Search engine optimization is the process done to generate traffic through search engines. It became a need for websites because 80%-90% of visitors come from major search engines. Higher rankings mean greater number of visitors. The same concept applies to blogs. However, many blog owners are not aware of their chances of being more visible on the web. They just update it once in a while and that's it. Considering the great number of blogs on the net today, from personal to corporate blogs, all their efforts will just go to waste if they do not optimize it.

Yes, blogs can be optimized, too. It should be done for the benefit both of your readers and search engine spiders. Although the process is quite similar with the standard website search engine optimization, it is a bit different. Here are some tips that you can do to start:

Consider the Design

It is not advisable to use the default template being offered by blog publishing sites. You wouldn't want to bump into a girl in a party wearing the same dress, do you? Same thing goes to blogs. You can hire a designer to do the work for you. If running a tight budget, you can always look for free templates offered by web design companies and you can customize it a little to make it unique.

Optimize the Tags

Use the most substantial phrase for your blog in the hard code of the title tag. Also, you have to double check that each entry's title appears on the tile tag. This is sometimes overlooked.

Keywords

You should always use your keywords in the blog post titles and categories. You can also use many categories in one entry if appropriate.

RSS Feed

It is best that you have RSS subscription button available on your blog. This would be more convenient to your readers because it will publish your recently updated work. If your blog publisher don't have RSS automatically available, there are RSS feed button creation tool on the net. But make sure that you place it where the readers can easily see them. You can put it in your sidebar. It is already on the blog owner's prerogative if he/she wants to full or partial RSS.

Use Email

Because there are some people who are not familiar with RSS feeds, go the extra mile and offer them something else with the same benefits. I'm talking about You can have your blog post via email. Free tools are also available online to do this.

Compelling Introduction

Introduction about the blog post is sent out via RSS feed. Make sure that it is compelling to enough to make your readers want to have more of it so that they would click the “more” button and read the entire article. Therefore, it should be interesting.

Check you CSS

It is common that blogs come with overwhelming amount of CSS or Cascading Style Sheets. The solution to this is to place it in an external CSS file to avoid clutter in the main template and for the main entry not to go further down.

Keywords-rich Anchor Texts

In placing links in other sites/blogs and even in putting internal links, make sure that you are using keyword-rich anchor text. Remember that it is always better to use your keywords than “click here” or “more”. It would benefit you when search engine spiders crawl your blog.

Keep Your Posts Bonded

If your blog post is somehow connected to your previous posts, link them to each other. The idea is that if your reader is interested in this particular topic, then he/she probably can also be entertained of a different story with the same subject matter. You can use Related Posts Plugin for this.

Do the same in other blogs. If you see a blog entry or an article on the same issue, make them knowledgeable of your existence by placing a link going to your post.

Purchase a Domain

We all know that blog hosting companies will only be around for such a time. Once they close their business, they will be closing your blog as well. If that happens, where will your loyal followers find you? Or there are change in the domain of your blog host, it will surely affect your rankings.

In case you have limited resources and can only settle to free hosting companies, look for those who offer to display your own domain rather than displaying their own like Wordpress and Blogger.

Proper URL Naming Convention

It is always a bad idea to use dynamic URLs whether on websites or blogs. You should always take advantage of any chance you have to use keywords, without keyword stuffing, including this one. Meaning, instead of using “www.xyzblog.com/?246”, you can consider “www.xyzblog.com/blog-post-keywords-here”. When you cannot do anything about it, use mod rewrite.

Good Navigation

If your blog is just a part of a website, it is not ebough that you a have a link going to your blog's main page. Use the sidebar to syndicate your new posts because the visitors of the website might get interested in your articles if they see the titles.

Fast Page Load

The amount of time involved for a page to load all depends on your host. There are some blogs that takes about half a minute just from the snippet of RSS feed to the full article. You can lose a lot of readers just because of this reason alone.

Moderated Trackbacks and Comments

Spammers are everywhere. They always find a way to abuse your blog by putting non-sense comments with links going to their website. It is annoying and it can also affect your rankings. There are numerous tools available online which you can use to moderate and avoid comment and trackbak spam.

Don't just create a blog to share great information or to prove that you know a lot about the field you are into. Do not settle on the number of followers your blog has. Start to optimize now and see the great changes on the next few months.

Any avid blogger will tell you that blogging is very hard work, and there have been rare cases where bloggers have admitted to letting blogging disrupt their family life, friendships in the real world, finances and time.
We are not advocating extreme behavior. But sometimes we cant help admire some of the reasons they give - one of the favorites is that blogging is not just about writing or sharing, but the enormous satisfaction one gets being an active participant in exploring human experiences, knowledge, emotions and passions.
Let's take a trip into time, back to the early hay days of the Internet. You had to pay for everything; set up of the website, hosting, server managed services, email accounts, and promoting your website. Other than that one needed the services of costly website developers to change a line of text, or a simple graphic.
It was little wonder that only companies could afford these exorbitant rates, leaving individuals and many professionals as passive participants, who could view, compare, give feedback, or buy.
Today the individual has the power to be active participants on the Internet with blogs, social bookmarking and social networking becoming commonly used terminology by college students, innovative brands and even large organizations.
Blogging gave the individual the power to create attractive pages of content with pictures, videos, and share it with the world on click of a button.
The present seems secure enough, and thousands of new blogs are being created each day, the numbers of users reading blog are on the rise, bloggers have started making a modest sum for their hard work, and popular blogs are ranking well in search engine results.
But what's sad is that 90 percent of them will witness a sad demise because of simple things they did not know (not did not do) when they started blogging. Around 8 percent of blogs will never be read, and 1 percent will give up after a year of hard struggle. Well that leaves 1 percent of blogs that will have any hope for survival, let alone success.
Now don't get discouraged, blogging is most fulfilling, but rather look within to see the reason why you want to blog and about what? Answering those questions honestly could mean the difference between success or the demise of your blog.
In the animal kingdom, it's the survival of the fittest.
In the blogging world, it's the most persistent, innovative and passionate bloggers that will survive. It will not be just about what you do, but what you feel, and how you perceive the world you so write about that will make the difference.
Great Tips for blogger survival:
1. Write about something you know, and are passionate about. After all you will not want to write 3-5 times a week on a subject that you are unfamiliar with, or are not passionate about.
2. Add your complete profile with a nice photograph. Readers like to know a little about you.
3. Be persistent in your writing, your readers expect something new each time they visit.
4. It's not about quantity, but quality. Write clean good copy, use humor and examples with nice visuals.
5. Innovate, don't give the same content rehashed, do things differently, give your blog a distinct voice.
6. Make your blog customized, attractive and easy to navigate.
7. Add a search to your blog.
8. Allows your readers to interact with your blog (polls, comments, social bookmarking).
9.Your readers are your customer's; get to know their likes and dislikes, pay attention to their comments and always answer right away.
10. Create links within your blog posts, to your other blog posts.
11. Create links from your blog post to your website (if you have one) and from your website to your blog. Also give links to other external reference sites that might add value to your reader.
12. Build links from other blogs, and popular websites to your blog.
13. Register your blog on blog search engines and blog directories.
14. Announce your blog to the world on press release sites.
15. Submit your blog posts to popular article submission sites. Don't overdo it.
16. Register your blog feed (Atom/ RSS) with content feed syndicates.
17. Track the visitors on your blog using services like Google Analytics.
18. Monitize your blog with adwords and select affiliates that adds value for your readers.
19. Track and read other blogs in competition with you. What are they doing different?
20. Track the most popular blogs, see what they are doing (how often are they posting, the titles, the quality of content, do they use graphics and videos, do they answer comments etc).
21. Leave interesting comments for other bloggers. They will notice you! More on articlebase.com

I've received a lot of email lately from people asking how they can set up their own blogs for family, friends, or business purposes without spending much money or hiring an expensive programmer or web developer.

Well, ask no more because I will now show you exactly how to get your own blog without dipping too far into your own pocket (if at all) and get up and running, even if you don't have your own website, hosting account, or domain name.

You basically get two choices when it comes to setting up a blog: host it yourself, or use a service that hosts the blog for you.

Each one carries advantages based on your level of skill, experience and how many options you want to add to your blog.

If you choose to host your blog on your own website, then you can pick from a number of different options, including MoveableType.org and WordPress.org.

However, if you don't want to host it yourself, you can also go to Yahoo.com, put in the term "free blog" and obtain a long list of services that will host a blog for you, either free of charge or for a fee.

Probably the best-known free blog service resides at Blogger.com

Recently purchased by Google, Blogger boasts thousands of blogs on topics ranging from ecommerce to pet manners.

Blogger enables you to set up a functional blog in about 5 minutes and start posting your thoughts, rants, or family facts with the world.

Log on to http://Spaces.MSN.com and find another free option offered by Microsoft's online service, MSN.

This service makes it a bit easier to share photos than Blogger, which requires a separate software tool called Picasa (also available from Google for free).

MSN's blogger service also seems to appeal more to individuals sharing their thoughts than to businesses trying to scare up new customers or get their links crawled by search engine spiders (another advantage of publishing a blog).

So if you're publishing the family blog, this one might offer more of the user-friendly options you need.

The one drawback to using free services always comes back to the age-old saying, "You get what you pay for!"

These free blog services come with virtually zero customer support, so if you can't figure it out on your own, good luck finding anyone to assist you.

If you don't mind paying $5 a month, you can get a full-featured weblog at TypePad.com that offers a decent level of customer support.

The blogs available here offer many more features than Blogger or MSN, but also require you to understand a bit more about blogging's more advanced features like "trackback links" and "pinging" blog directories to let them know you've updated your blog (so others can come take a look at your new material).

Regardless of whether you choose the free or paid option, using a hosted blogging solution rates best when getting started.

However, once your blog really starts to take off and you find you need more "bells and whistles," you may want to consider upgrading to a more sophisticated blogging solution.

For a free video that explains "trackbacks" and more, check out:

=> http://www.igottatellyou.com/trackback.html

What would you be able to do with an almost unstoppable flow of free traffic to your blog every single day, without you having to slave away at social media, email marketing, article marketing and all that other SEO stuff that is just a huge time suck. If this describes you then read on..

Optimisation of a blog for the search engines is a tricky operation especially when the very versatility of Word Press can work against you. So what if I showed you just one simple Word Press plugin that could take care of all the chores that have in the past taken hours, days, weeks if not years of tweaks and tests to get right. This software is so powerful it should come with a warning!

Please allow me to introduce Jeff Johnson's Traffic Getting SEO plugin

You know it's serious when the creator trade marks the name, that's what Jeff has done with this plugin.

Now this is version 2, which means its a tried and tested piece of software that has evolved over time and takes into account the necessary changes that keeps it current for the eggheads that improve the "Science behind the search" at Google and Yahoo. However because this version is free it is only optimised to about 80% because Jeff has a professional version which is only available to his high end clients who paid big money to get access to that version.

This plugin was created by Jeff Johnson's training laboratory, and this gentleman is a powerhouse in the Internet Marketing arena who usually charges anywhere from $5000 and up for his very personal mentoring programs. When the doors open on these programs people scramble to get in and are willing to pay to do so. What that means is that anything Jeff Johnson pushes out from his training Laboratory for FREE is worth taking very very seriously.

So what does this very special plugin actually do?

In essence this plugin is designed to optimize your blog for more traffic, more leads, and ultimately to make you more money.

This software will assist you with installing a collection of Jeff's personally recommended word press plugins that will update your blog for Search Engine Optimisation. Once you've installed and activated it, you go to the settings page, enter some basic details and click one button to totally optimise and automatically configure each individual plugin with a set of Jeff's recommended search engine optimized settings.

Now these tweaks are by no means haphazard or sloppy, these tweaks are supported by years of tracking and testing that Jeff has made to optimise his entire blog empire. Jeff has also produced millionaires galore from his coaching programs and this plugins big brother is one reason people are prepared to pay large to get into those programs. It really is that good.

So if you are even remotely serious about your blog and you absolutely should be, you would be, well, STUPID to not go grab a copy right now.

In order to get your free copy go to my blog at www.truetrafficsecrets.com and watch the video I have made to demonstrate this plugin live on that blog site. Then below the video is a link to the plugin sign up page.

Now lets be clear here you have to sign up to Jeff Johnson's email list to get your copy of this very powerful tool. Its worth your email address and the 30 seconds of your time to do. Once you have signed up you will receive an email with your access instructions.

Once you have downloaded the plugin, activated and configured it for your blog, go and arm your blog statistics because you will see changes within a matter of days.

That's it your done.

This plugin is in my opinion a simple decision for anyone serious about traffic generation and their financial survival online.