Blogs are the latest rage. The 'blogosphere' is almost a separate universe from the older search engine world. How can a blog drive traffic to your web site?
Post Compelling Content Frequently
Post a minimum of 3 articles a week or people won't keep coming to your site. The content must be good, relevant, and free of too much commercial 'buy my stuff' pitch. 5 times or more a week is even better.
Target Niche Groups
Less is more. Having a generic blog on 'Writing' will yield less traffic than having a very niche blog on 'Christian Fiction Writing' or 'How To Get Young Adult Fiction Published.'
Use Pictures
As with newspapers, seven times more people will read the article if it has a picture. Get a good blog tool that let's you upload photos easily and illustrate your articles.
'Ping' Your Posts
'Pinging' is the process of alerting the specialty blog search engines that you have just posted an article on your blog. Simply visit http://pingomatic.com and this tool will ping multiple blog search engines for you. As google.com and others spider the blog search engines, this will help the world find your content.
Use Search Engine Friendly URLs
Use a blog tool that let's you have keyword descriptions in the URLs. Note that this post URL for example is http://stanshinn.com/marketing/blogs-and-search-engines. Using categories in the URL will also help your ranking.
Get Listed in Blogrolls
Blogrolls are the list of favorite web sites often shown in the sidebar of personal blogs. Email a bunch of blogs authors that might be interested in your site and suggest you exchange links with each other.
Post to Discussion Groups
Ready to launch a new blog? Post 3 to 5 compelling articles, then go over to a few of your favorite discussion groups and post articles there mentioning your blog in conjunction with some compelling content that you post on the forum. This is the equivalent of starting a snowball rolling down the hill.
Remember, keep posting great content, and over a few months your readership and web traffic will grow!