Blogs and social networking are ways to bill yourself as an authority online. With the power of the word, you can get new customers, build your business, establish your reputation, and sell your product or service.

Why bother creating a website when a blog will do? Search Engines search text, not images. I am a designer, and I should know. Design appeals to the customer, but it is text that the search engine indexes so that your customer can find you.

I am a creative director who has been designing for the web since the beginning. I have a long list of websites I have designed, but now I simply write and let the blog software provide the visual template for my blogs. Why? Because I love to write, and because Google actually PREFERS blogs. The reason why is that Google knows that blogs are more likely to be updated with fresh content often. Google rates sites on several factors: one of the most important is the freshness of the content and the frequency of the postings.

Whatever other marketers will tell you, you can’t fool Mother Nature or the Search Engine Spiders for long. They know when they are being slammed with copy that is keyword-rich, but content poor. Write relevant copy for your readers on a subject that interests you. If your blog is to support your business you might want to hire a professional writer — such as myself — to write articles for you. That way, you can focus on your business knowing that the search engines are finding you through the fresh content that you are posting regularly.

—– Copyright 2008 Aliyah Marr