So You Want to Create a Blog
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They’re slowly taking over the Internet, commanding massive amounts of traffic and getting lots of great buzz. They’re blogs, and you want to cash in on them. But creating a popular, high-traffic blog on the Web is much easier said than done. So…you want to create a blog? Here is how.
What are Blogs?
Blogs, or Web logs, are slowly finding their way onto every single site on the Internet. Even the most prestigious print media publications have websites these days, and those sites have blogs. Professional and casual blog writers abound on the World Wide Web…even celebrities maintain blogs. But what, technically, makes a blog…a blog?
By popular definition, a blog is sort of like an online journal. Many casual bloggers feature blogs on personal websites, which offer updates on their lives and thoughts. Other blogs, featured on news-themed sites, will contain information and gossip on a single topic. Blogs on the Internet are, more or less, frequently-updated content that comes in the form of short, personal posts. The casual tone and personal nature of blog posts are often what draws readers to them.
In short, blogs are words -- and a lot of them. One reason blogs are so popular on the Internet is because of their value as content alone. Search engines look for content (text) on websites and use the appearance of keywords to determine page ranking (where the site appears in a list of search results). Blogs help provide many rich keywords to tempt the search engines, and they’re a fairly simple source of oft-updated content. This makes blogs invaluable to those who want to have lots of site traffic.
The Blog, The Theme
Blogs are often presented in a very casual, personable tone, and they frequently showcase personal thoughts and opinions. Exceptional blogs can be written by amateur or professional writers, and, in fact, anyone can easily create a blog of their own. But blogs are by no means disjointed -- thrown-together posts on any and every topic under the sun. For a blog to truly be a blog, it has to have a theme, or topic.
The topic could be broad or narrow depending on the author. Very specific topics, such as investing for college, or very broad topics, like entertainment news, could all be used for blogs. Many blogs simply provide updates on the blog writer’s life itself. It’s important to have a cohesive theme, a sense of what the blog is about. People like things they can easily identify and describe to others. Within the framework of that theme, it’s possible to do anything with a blog. Many writers include links, pictures, and streaming video to give their blogs an eye-catching appeal.
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