Blogs vs. Content-Sites

Now, I build content-sites, and in my free time, I still build more and more. To my definition, a content-site is more or less like what James Martell does. I would research for keywords, define my topics, list the content that I want to have in my site, and then start writing (or get somebody else to write for me).

Done with that, then it’s about building the site, putting web pages together and getting a domain name and web hosting.

After that, you go around looking for link partners.

I suppose most people understand what a blog is. But just in case for some newbie readers, I’ll try to explain what it is. A blog is a site that contains articles after articles written one after the other. The content is not being written all in one go upfront. But it is rather being updated along the way.

A blog lists the articles in a chronology manner, being the latest, the first. MoneyClicking.net is a blog. A blog is normally supported by a system or a script. You can use Blogger.com (remote hosted), Wordpress (PHP script), Movable Type (Perl script), etc.

Anyway, back to the topic. I was on the phone with my friend, we concluded it’s better to have a blog because it’s easier to get traffic with it.

Why? Well, there are some mechanics of a blog and also the culture of blogging that makes it much easier.

For one thing — it’s easier to get incoming links. Let me tell you how.

Reason #1: Blog Ping

First of all, there’s this thing called - PING. With a blog ping, when ever you write a new article in your blog, you can set addresses to a few ping sites to tell them that you just updated your blog. When you do that, you’ll get a link back to your site. Ping sites are like Technorati.com and BlogRolling.com. News sites like MSN News, Yahoo News and MoreOver, also have ping addresses.

Now, maybe you won’t be listed very long on that page, because many other blogs are also pinging to those sites. But more or less, it’ll help. I’ve gone through my web statistics and traffic do come from the sites that I pinged.

Reason #2: Trackback

Secondly, there’s also TRACKBACK. Now, I was with a friend explaining how trackbacks work last week. Now I’ll tell you. With blogs, for every article that you write, there will be a unique URL for it. And for each article, there’s also a unique trackback URL. Whenever you are at another person’s blog, look for trackback URL, and you may want to copy it.

Now here’s how you use a trackback URL. Let say you are at somebody else’s blog. And he just wrote about something about cat grooming. And somehow, you feel that you have something to say about what he wrote — and you know, what you want to say will be very long which may not be suitable for a comment. So you write your own message at your blog, and lower down the interface, you enter the other guy’s trackback URL, and then you hit the Submit button.

Now, that new article will appear on your blog. And because you put in a trackback URL, a part of your article will also appear in the other guy’s article as a comment. And that comment links directly back to your article. So that’s how trackbacks work.

Reason #3: Blog Comments

Now, my third point on why blog is better than content-site — Blog Comments. This is where you able to go around at other blog sites and write some comments on articles. And you even leave a link back to your site. But here’s the thing, just make sure that your comments are genuine, because now days, there are too many people spamming blog comments just to get a link back.

Reason #4: Bloggers’ Linking Habit

OK, here’s some more. This is more a blogging culture thing — bloggers like to link to each other. If your blog is interesting, it’s easy to get other bloggers to link back to you. Whether you ask for it on your website, or sometimes they just simply give you a link back. I’ve got this many times, and most of the times, they link back write to a specific message. And sometimes, they just list blog sites that they like on their website.

Reason #5: Faster SE Indexing

This is getting quite long already. But I am not done. When it comes to getting traffic, you may not realize this, but it’s easier to get indexed in the search engines with a blog. I don’t know why — perhaps it’s because incoming links are more natural and you don’t really go around asking for them. And when the incoming links are more natural, I think search engine will prefer it a lot more.

I myself have experienced where new content on my blog was indexed in under seven days.

Reason #6: Repeat Visitors

Now, after you get traffic from search engines, ping sites, and other blogs, later you’ll start to realize that 80-90% of your visitors are repeat visitors. It’s common with a blog. So the point is with this one — it’s easier to retain visitors with a blog.

You get huge traffic from multiple sources — and the ones you already have you get to keep. This is different from content-sites, where you really so much on search engine traffic.

Blogging Seems Much More Fun ...

In my experience, starting from scratch, in six month, a content-site may or may not reach to mark of 1000 visitors per day. And it takes serious hours writing content and building incoming links. I have multiple sites consistently doing 100-200 visitors per day, after six month. But with a blog, it’s not unusual if a blog reaches 3000 visitors per day, provided you give good content.

But I suppose, it all boils down to which you are comfortable with.

Realizing this, I may be planning differently in the future — but I am not certain on that yet. From the looks of it, blogging seems much more fun. You write about what you like, and you network with other bloggers. And the writing part becomes much, much easier with scripts like WordPress and Movable Type. Not much designing, no uploading files, less link building, etc ...

With building content-sites, you still have to build the website again, upload them up to your web hosting, build incoming links, etc ...

This is my opinion. And you may not think the same way I do, based on your personal experience and knowledge. I respect that.

Tips for Bloggers

Blogging Tips:

Write the Best Possible Content even if it is not every day
Writing often is advice that most bloggers come across on other sites. The reason why it is popular advice is due to the fact that it is based on the assumption that posting often demonstrates that you are committed to what you do. This results in visitors and readers coming back to your blog to see and read about what you’re up to. Posting too often may sometimes have the opposite effect. Visiting a blog for the second time, readers might be looking for the same post to re-read or something similar. Forcing your readers to go through a bunch of new posts, 1, 2 sometimes 3 a day might be a deterring factor. In these cases I will just use a search engine to find what I am looking for. Furthermore, the 2nd and 3rd posts of the day are usually of lesser quality due to writers fatigue and therefore less interesting. Instead of posting several times a day just post once a day or just whenever you think you have something interesting or useful to write about. Put some though in your posts, give your readers a reason to come back and always avoid bombarding them with clutter. Focus your effort on a few good topics.

Optimize your Blog for Search Engines
Most bloggers out there start blogging the wrong way. After they start blogging they do so by relying primarily on social networks for traffic. Social network traffic is great but it rarely converts into money. The best traffic to make money is search engine traffic. A blogging tip everyone should get a chance to read and re-read is that search engine traffic will be the most profitable kind. Although Social networking is an easy way to generate traffic you should always spend some time to make sure your blog and posts are properly optimized to rank well in search engine result pages. Take a few hours a week and perform a few scheduled and simple search engine optimization tasks.
Blogging SEO
In your blog
Make sure your titles are relevant to your topic, make sure you refer to your topic keywords throughout your posts, and make sure you tag your posts properly. Also make sure to interlink your posts with older relevant posts. Always use keywords you are interested in ranking high for and keep these keywords concentrated around a specific topic.
From other sites
Get as many one way inbound links with anchor text as you can; by many I mean thousands. Think of your site or your blog as a property you acquired in the country side. After you start building you will need to make a road, get it hooked up with power and so one. Backlinks are the essentials your blog or site will need to prosper. Don’t only rely on other bloggers to link to you. Create backlinks to your blog by submitting articles in databases. Write a few 500 word articles on similar topics you write about in your blog, add back links with ancor text and start submitting. Ideally you should submit a few articles to thousands of directories for every post you write. There is software available to help you do this. Do the same thing for every post. You can easily create thousands of one way links your blog and particular posts in less than a few hours.
Social bookmarking also works great for this purpose. Make sure you get your posts bookmarked at as many bookmarking sites as possible.
Once a week or once every two weeks, use Google Webmaster Tools and see which posts of yours showed up in search engine result pages. Go back to them and optimize them. Add more keywords, make the title catchier, tag them better or even elaborate on certain things you wrote and think will help them rank better in searches.