Blogs and Traffic

Should I pay for a blog?

[toms184]

I understand the notion that having an active blog which points to your website can increase traffic and build inbound links. That is easy enough to start. I have a question about whether it is worth the money to pay someone to host the blog. I have an outfit that wants me to shell out $4k, and all he can tell me is that they will "ping" the major search engines every time I post to my blog. Is there value in that? Is that something I can do myself? I already created a blog on Blogger.

[jatar_k]

I would stick with blogger to start, if you need something more in the future, as you learn more about blogging, then you can better assess your exact needs

[callivert]

pinging the major search engines is useless. They will crawl your site when they decide to crawl it. The googlebot won't come running just because you pinged it.

[Mistra]

$4 k for blog?!

I can do it for you for just $400.

:D

You do not need to ping major search engines. Some blog software allow you to ping to major blog search engines whenever you post to your blog? Why do you need to pay $4 k? Pay me $400 is a better option. :D

[edited by: Mistra at 12:19 pm (utc) on Feb. 8, 2007]

[callivert]

Do it yourself, and learn as you go. There are a ton of resources out there about blogging and how to build a successful blog.
But, rather than having an 'active blog' somewhere else, you might want to think about putting your energy into new content on your main website, or even hosting your blog on your main website. e.g., widgets.com/blog/
My opinion is that an expanding website with regular updates of fresh material will be better than a separate site that links back to your main site. It's less complicated, more honest, and probably just as google-friendly.

[Turbulence]

Do it yourself, and learn as you go.

Exactly. You can do it perfectly well, since you have the enthusiasm and desire to make it possible and yielding fruit.

[mack]

they will "ping" the major search engines every time I post to my blog. Is there value in that

As has been said before in this thread, you cant simply inform a search engine when you update. The search engine will come and visit your site and pick up any changes since it was last updated. I cant see any reason for a blog to cost 4k.

There are blog search resources that do accept pings, and to an extent these can be good forms of traffic generation, but this doesn't have a 4k price tag. Many of the blogging scripts out there have pinging features built into then and they are free.

You can set up your blog on pretty much any web host, you can get hosting for very low cost nowadays. You can then take a look through opensourcecms.com and find a suitable script. Once you have chosen a script to power your blog simply download it, read the instructions and install it.

You can do all of this by yourself and have fun learning as you go along. Let us know how you get on.

Mack.