You Can Double Your Online Business by Using a Blog

Web traffic is not guaranteed, but one thing is.

If the quality of the content on your website is good and you have the right keywords in your blog, Google will take note of this. If people stay for marked periods of time on your site, Google may decide to consider you an “authority” on your particular topic.

And if you pass that test, Google will index it, and allow thousands of people to find it. This can result in tons of quality prospects visiting your business website daily.

That said, Google can also be unforgiving. Depending on what you do, it can be “unpredictable.”

If Google changes its algorithm, or raises its standards for being an authority blog and yours falls short (since Google will NEVER notify you of what that standard is), then you’re out of luck.

What does that mean? Traffic can disappear just like that.

Fortunately, Web 2.0 is now on the scene, and it can be much more effective and much quicker than a search engine (even Google) in ensuring you get a lot of traffic. Blogs, therefore, mean that you as a business owner can take full advantage of Web 2.0.

In Joe Vitale’s Hypnotic Marketing 2.0 bonus interview, David Ledoux explains how he gets over 10,000 visitors to his blog, and over 7,000 of those visitors come from social bookmarking sites alone.

What does that mean? If David had simply sat back and waited for Google or another search engine to recognize him, he’d be getting less than half the traffic he’s getting at the present moment.

There are numerous sites such as Digg.com, Stumbleupon.com, and OnlyWire.com that allow you to share your blog posts and articles with communities of millions of users with just a push of a button.

In addition, these social bookmarking sites are free and can produce amazing results if you use them properly.

However, there are a few things you must keep in mind before you go haywire submitting your blog content to them. The effectiveness of your blog largely depends on the community members on these sites.

They act very much like a democracy. People can vote up your blog article, or they can vote it down. If enough people vote it up, it becomes highly visible, resulting in more traffic. It all depends on the quality of the content you provide.

If your blog post is more like an ad, or something that’s very self-serving, then it won’t fly. Marketing and advertising should be next to nil when sharing content on these sites. People don’t like to be sold, so don’t try it.

And yep, you have to make content interesting. Boring just won’t do. Keep your content engaging, funny, interesting, or whatever particular pull is appropriate for your venue. You can play your blog articles back into your product or service in some way, but do it creatively and without “selling” to people.

One good way to do this is to create articles based upon the calendar. Events, holidays, or seasons can be very interesting to write about. If you write about things currently in the news, this can also be very effective, as long as you keep it interesting.

Joe Vitali wrote a blog called “Desperate Valentines,” in which he stated 15 things you could do if you were alone on Valentines Day. He launched that blog on February 14th and what do you think happened? Once he submitted it to Digg.com, he generated almost 20,000 unique hits to his blog.

The possibilities are literally endless, so make sure you blog to take advantage of this key component in Internet marketing, gone Web 2.0.

Dr. Joe Vitale and David Ledoux use Blogs and Web 2.0 strategies to multiply their businesses quickly; to find out how, check out their bonus interview over at Hypnotic Marketing.

- Kale McClelland