What is a blog and why should I add one to my site?
Blog stands for “weblog” which is like a diary of thoughts, events, musings and very often links to other articles of interest on the internet. The articles are posted with the most recent first and usually assigned categories and keywords to help find them in the future. They can be just straightforward text or complex web sites. Readers are invited to send in comments about the posts which can be moderated or not as the owner wishes.
A simple blog is very easy to set up but customising it for a business’ look and feel will require more specialised help. A lot of blogs are based on Word Press software (as is ours) which is open source (i.e. free) and instantly downloadable from their site at http://wordpress.org/
A few advantages of a having a blog are:
- as mentioned above a simple blog is quick and easy to install and low cost!
- search engines like them – providing you make good use of it and add plenty of new posts. With the diversity of topics you can cover on a blog, it enables you to use plenty of keywords or search terms that you may find difficult elsewhere on your web site. If used to best effect a blog should help with your search engine rankings! See our related Hints & Tips article about search engines and blogs.
- a blog is an excellent marketing tool. You can use it to keep your customers informed of new products, services, offers or any other business news, and to gain feedback from them by allowing them to post comments back to you.
