One of the Number 1 traffic building secrets is adding content to your website. Have you ever considered that a blog could be the tool that makes this very possible, fast and extremely easy to do.

Blogs are written in RSS or Atom, both very effective content managment systems. Getting a blog for free is easy at www.blogger.com. After you set up your blog you need to change your settings to archive daily so you have a new page of content every time you make a post to your blog.

Blogging daily is best if you want to add new content every day. If you archive daily, then post each day the blog software will generate a new page of content for you. It’s definately the fastest and easiest way to add content.

The best way to integrate a blog into your website is to make your website into a blog. If you have fresh relevant content on your blog then top search engines like Google will return more often to gobble up that fresh content. That means your site will be spidered more often, and if you just built another page you want spidered, just leave a link within your blog posts to that page and the spider will follow it.

This is a great way to get your pages spidered fast. But it’s important to have the pge you are linking to be somewhat related to the topic of your post. Google is getting more picky about the content of the pages where your incoming links are coming from.

Also, it is important to optimize your blog just as you would for a website if you want to get theat free targeted traffic. Optimizing is easy, include your keywords within the title and description of your blog, as well as in the title posts occasionally. And don’t forget to include the same keywords within the link text of your incoming links to your blog.

Most bloggers don’t see the traffic potential their blog holds if it was oiptimized just like any other webpage.

One more factor to consider: Google loves blogs Not simply because it’s a blog, but because of the nature of blogs; They usually have fresh relevant content on a specific topic. That’s what Google loves. Give it what it wants and it will visit you more often.

Leah J. Bradshaw is the author of the Free Targeted Traffic Report; “Jumpstart Your Traffic in as Little as 10 Days”. She also authors a Moms Free Traffic Blog to help work at home moms get free traffic.

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Google just introduced Blog Search in beta yesterday. This new search function allows for you to search the internet for Blogs, Podcasts and RSS feeds. You simply type in your keywords and it will show you results that have come from these sources.

The results they display are not showing any preferences to Blogs that are published on Blogger. We are seeing results for all Blogging platforms. Actually Google Blog Search is not just looking at Blogs. They are looking for any RSS feed, which might be from a Blog, Podcast, or any other XML feed. It appears that the search tool is pretty responsive and we are seeing results show up in a matter of hours after a new post is made to the RSS Blog and Podcast Feed. This is another way that you can create online visibility for your business.

The organic results are sorted by relevancy, but you have the option to sort them by date as well. This is especially nice if you want to locate the latest post for a fast breaking news topic and want to find it quickly in the blogosphere. The other thing that Google has done is to try to eliminate some of the “noise” and Spam of the blogosphere. They are looking at high quality Blogs and show them at the top of the page under what is called “Related Blogs”. This is prime real estate for your Blog to be listed in.

As an example: Go to the new Google Blog search ( http://blogsearch.google.com ) and type in podcasting tips. The results that are shown at the top 2 of the 3 Related Blogs happen to be authored by me. You will also see over 1600 results and we have several additional results on the front page. This is because we are writing 6 quality Blogs and publishing quality content frequently to these Blogs. http://blog.podblaze.com

Google currently does not support a manual submission for your Blog feed. I think this is smart, since it keeps the unethical people out of the picture. If you are Blogging or Podcasting properly and following best practices; your feed will be found by Google. Make sure that you are also following best practices for pinging after your feed is updated. This will ensure that your feed is updated by Google.

It looks like Google started to index Blogs, Podcasts and RSS feeds in June of 2005. They are currently not showing posts that were made previous to this. They may change this in the future. Google has found a way to somewhat keep the black hat SEO and unethical Bloggers out of the results. We can all celebrate this; because this means quality and relevant results for searchers.

Podcasters should also take note that individual podcast shows are also being listed in the results. This is a great way for users find your podcasts and individual podcast shows, based upon specific topics and content.

If you are serious about improving your marketing and the online visibility for your business website; then you need to be creating quality content with a quality Blog or Podcast. If your business wants to get maximum exposure in this important new area of Google you should work with professionals that truly understand this technology. You can look at http://www.leveragedpromotion.com as they have experience with many Blogging, RSS and Podcasting Solutions.

Copyright 2005 Rodney Rumford

Rodney Rumford has over 18 years of experience in the technology field. He has held management positions in Marketing, Business Dev, Enterprise Consulting, Sales and Engineering.

He does corporate consulting in the areas of RSS & Podcasting strategy, execution and marketing. He has developed software solutions in the areas of RSS Feeds, Podcasting and PPC Advertising. He is the CEO of The Info Guru LLC., which operates several web properties that include: http://www.podblaze.com

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It seems no matter how much information comes available online, people thirst for more.

To illustrate this point, just take a look at all the online news services sprouting up on the web like garden weeds.

With the click of a mouse you can instantly search thousands of news sources for specific and timely information on virtually any topic you choose.

Heck, if you’re a real news junky, you can even get up-to- the-minute news emailed straight to your desktop!

Now, I’m the first one to say that nothing beats a good old-fashioned newspaper you hold in your hands.

Few things rate as relaxing as a cup of coffee, a quiet morning, and today’s newspaper ready for my inspection. In fact, my day doesn’t officially start until I walk to the end of my driveway to retrieve the paper (occasionally from under a bush).

But as much as I love the paper, it rarely contains stories on highly-specialized subjects such as the latest email marketing laws, html parsing, and search engine promotion.

Of course, it doesn’t make sense for virtually any local newspaper to carry news about email marketing laws (other than how they affect consumers) because the market demand simply doesn’t exist on that level.

However, around the world, thousands of people just like me want to know the instant a news story breaks on the latest “Can Spam” legislation, and that’s where online news services come into play.

Log on to http://news.google.com, http://news.yahoo.com and www.news.com to search thousands of different news sources from around the world.

On these sites you can dig up information on anything from current world events and your favorite Spanish soccer team, to cattle tagging regulations in Argentina (no kidding) and the exploding online auction markets in mainland China.

News from around the world on virtually any subject waits literally just a few keystrokes and a mouse-click away.

An incredibly useful feature offered by many of these sites includes email notification based on your keyword search criteria.

So instead of paying a “clipping” service to find articles and send them to you, these websites will do it free.

Now how could you use this type of news notification service?

Well, imagine you own stock in a specific company. You could subscribe to a number of different news services and have them send you breaking stories about the company, CEO, affiliated companies and anything else you choose.

Or, let’s say you deal in a very specific industry, such as real estate investment publishing.

You could sign up to get notified any time a news story gets published about changing regulations, interest rates or other factors affecting your business.

All this online news certainly does not rate a substitute for morning coffee, local and national news, and an important ritual to start the day, but it has a place, especially for extremely specialized areas of interest, hobbies, or business news.

Watch for many new services, software, and opportunities to arise from this growing and dynamic area of online publishing.

About The Author

(c) Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use free articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links…

Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links? “Turn Words Into Traffic” reveals the secrets for driving Thousands of NEW visitors to your website or affiliate links… without spending a dime on advertising! Click Here> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com

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