Blogging can be very habit forming, but could lead to having great website success. By having a blog, you are providing your visitors a new medium to connect with your business or industry. With the evolution of website technologies and the social networking trends of the infamous Web 2.0 generation, having a blog is essential.

Many non-techie business owners get the mindset that a blog is where teeny boppers write an entry online discussing their current love relationships. If you are one of these people, it’s time to think differently. A blog is where you will keep your visitors informed and up to date on what is going on with your business or in your industry. It is also another great way to get visitors to return to your website.

There are many free blogging solutions online today to get you started. But for the best results, you should attach a blog to your current website. WordPress is a well supported and widely used blogging platform. WordPress along with a select few of quality plugins can be the best tool you can use to improve your website’s search engine rankings and entice visitors to come back for more.

Your blog’s design should match the look and feel of your current website. Consistency is the key to remember for your site’s visitors. Although the page layout of a blog varies differently than the regular web pages on your site, it should still resemble the same brand you want your visitors to trust and recognize. Make sure that your blog is customized and coded correctly for best performance in different browsers and screen resolutions.

When it comes to writing blog posts, think of a blog as an online magazine. Write posts that are of high quality that people would like to read. By only writing a few words every other week, you are not using your blog to its full potential and your visitors won’t stand for it. Write frequent and full featured posts that are interesting and that will keep your audience on the edge of their seats.

With the growing number of RSS feed readers online, more people are subscribing to blog feeds to stay up to date. Encourage your visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed so they will be enticed to return. For those of you that do not know, an RSS feed is a teaser for your blog that lists the last number of posts. This is a great way to secure and track returning visitors to your blog.

A blog is designed to allow your site’s visitors to read and comment on your posts. Encourage your readers to post comments and be sure to reply to those comments. The more you can get your visitors to engage on your website, the more likely they are to return. Not interacting with your readers is where many blog owners go wrong. Be sure to moderate and reply to comments often.

The unique advantage that blog posts have over regular web pages is the awesome ability to get indexed in Google within a matter of minutes. When a post is published, you can set WordPress to “Ping” or inform Google that you have added something new to your blog. Google will then take the necessary actions to get your post listed in their index. In a search engine marketing advantage, if your post is optimized for a non competitive search term, you may have the possibility of securing a top 10 ranking in a matter of hours.

By having a blog that is frequently updated with great information, you are opening up new horizons for better online marketing. In a search engine standpoint, the more content you can produce, the more likely you are to gain more search engine traffic from long tail search terms. A long tail is a non-competitive, yet very popular search phrase.

If your posts are really good, you should consider utilizing the social media scene. Social media sites such as Digg can have the potential to produce thousands upon thousands of site visitors. Some sites that have reached Digg’s homepage have actually shut down due to the overwhelming amount of traffic. Encourage your readers to submit posts to Digg and to share it with their friends.

So why should you have a blog? Let’s review. By having a blog you are expanding your website into different marketing mediums by utilizing social media websites and RSS feeds, gaining search engine traffic potential, keeping your visitors informed and up to date, creating a new way to interact with your visitors and taking a gigantic leap ahead of your competitors. Not to mention the ability to become a leading expert in your industry just by blogging about what you know. With these great reasons, why don’t you have a blog?

image courtesy anniemole

Here are my notes on a variety of tips related to blogs and blogging from the recent Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York City:

• Use a blog as a way to establish yourself as an expert on a topic.
• Blogs are useful as a natural ranking tool. They attract links to boost the power of your site.
• Blog posts tend to rank well rather quickly. But unless they gain good links, they will fade after 2-3 weeks.
• Link out from a blog and spread the link love.
• You can email photos into Flick’r directly from a camera phone.  Then, you can publish them from Flick’r directly into a blog.
• Comment on other people’s blogs as a way to gain exposure for your blog. If you’re one of the early commenters, you’ll get the most attention, since most people don’t read all the comments on a post.