Hi all,
I have not written in quite a while so i thought i would say another hello to everyone and cover a important topic.
I have a website, should I start a blog?
The answer to this really depends on the type of website you are, do you have time to manage a separate blog, will the blogs you post on there be interesting to other people and therefore gain traffic?
If you have answered yes to the two questions above then you can start a blog.
What platform should i use for my blog?
When i talk about a platform there are lots of different providers that all offer programs you can make your blog with. Eg wordpress, blogger, blog, blogspot etc… You have to find what program best suits your needs. I am using wordpress, this can be found at wordpress.com, I use this in conjunction with my website, which basically means i have attached it to my website and all my posts and traffic directly affect my website address. You should also make sure the blog program you get is a good one because if they were to go down the pan then so would your blog and all that hard work would VANISH
This is GOOD because i want to get more TRAFFIC to my website. So basically, once you have added your wordpress on to your website (you can normally do this through your control panel, Or get your web designer to do it, Or phone me and i will do it for a small fee) You will be able to start. First thing is first, WordPress offers LOTS of different themes, and a lot of these are free of charge, have a look through some of their themes and decide on what you like, don’t base too much importance on this to start off with.
Next you need to make sure all your updates on wordpress are up to date, on the top left of your control panel the updates will normally be listed here. Then you will need to set up your categories, just one or two for the moment will be fine. Then after that have a think about what you would like to post, bear in mind what you think useful other people may not always think is useful, I have a few different posts on my website and some have got lots of posts on them and some have none.
I have made my first post what should i do now?
After you have made your first post you will have to wait, although the good thing about blog sites is the blogs that are posted on them are almost real time, which basically means if you posted something and it was popular enough it could be listed in search engines in a matter of hours. This is not always the case and either your website would have to be high profile or your subject extremely attractive. EG if you was a main News station and you was posting information on Gaddafi in Libya’s whereabouts then it would be a very small matter of time before the search engines would index it, if it was one lonely little blog it probably would not carry quite so much weight.
Anyway if your post is a good post and people like what you have put there and you allow people to post on there freely comments or feedback you will start to see in your wordpress control panel comments starting to pop up for you to authorise. This is the interesting part.
Is the comment genuine or is it a Spammer
When i first set up my blog i started getting some comments on there, quite a few and i was thinking oh this is good, i am happy with these posts, but you will start to see duplicate posts of exactly the same posts, this is because you have approved a spammers comment, don’t get worried that you have done this because although it can be a pain if you let it it can be a blessing in disguise. You have several options;
You can either set your status to only allow signed in users, (don’t do this as you won’t get any traffic)
You can spam all the posts you know are rubbish, (the ones advertising human tasting dog food, vaginal dryness treatment, I’ll create a longer opinion later) but there is one problem, to spam these does not block them????!!! WHAT? I hear you say, WordPress say it is to help them develop spam tools for their users, that’s all very well but how does it help you?
WordPress offer various Spam plug-ins that block these people from keep spamming you but you have to pay and it is not 100% foolproof
What would you suggest to block the spammers?
Although all these techniques are valid in one way or another i would suggest doing what i have done. When you get a message come through and you know it is rubbish, open up another separate window and load up your wordpress control panel, then on the left go to settings and discussion, then if you scroll down to comment blacklist this is where you can (AUTO BLOCK / SPAM) people manually i would highly recommend it, you can put either the users content, name, url, email or IP address in here, if you know it’s rubbish put it in here, i have had a lot of posts with bits in the text saying “Youre so cool, I’ll create a longer opinion later, Love the feel of your website” These are rubbish.
Why should i take the time to manually block the spammers
Although it is a bit long winded it will filter out all the rubbish being posted onto your blog. But just remember, for a spammer to put something on your blog he has to visit it, and if he visits your blog he is visiting your website as it is attached and what does that mean, TRAFFIC to your website although they drive me mad posting rubbish to my website, i would prefer to do the long winded manual method that will allow me to:
1: Spam their message automatically
2: Gain their visit as traffic
3: I can concentrate on approving the comments actually posted to my blog and not rubbish
4: I can be happy in the knowledge i am getting one over the spammers and knowing they are not getting the link and i am getting their traffic points
Why or how do these people spam your blog?
I am not a 100% sure how they do it, i would suggest they use a script which tests your blog to see if they can post a link and it get approved, once it is approved then your blog page may go to some kind of whitelist which other spammers have access to, once they have this then they use their script or program to automatically post to your blog using various pre-determined text either creating a positive/negative opinion about your blog which is so general you wouldn’t believe it, i have had people stating my “computer just died i am so happy i have now found your blog again” where you think it is harmless, but when you have 20 posts of this over 2 months you realise it is phoney.
How many more visits can a blog gain me
My blog has gained my website a LOT of visits, My website is now a pagerank 1 in google, this is also due to hardwork and i would never rely on just a blog as it is still only a small percentage and more just numbers to your website then anything else.
I would say that a blog can gain you a lot of traffic though dependant on your posts being a good subject matter that people will comment on. I would say that a good blog with around 6-7 very good posts can gain around 600 visits per month alone.
I hope you have enjoyed my post and look forward to reading all your comments.
If you wish to contact me for any work my email is info@weblister.co.uk
