Why Do You Publish A Blogger Blog?

One of the more intriguing questions, that we see in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger, involves the Blogger / WordPress dichotomy.

Should I migrate my blog to WordPress, where they provide SEO optimized themes, and various plugins?

My answer to that question starts with the suggestion, that the blog owner should ask himself

Why do I publish a blog?

This question has many possible answers - but I will focus on two possibilities.

To me, the choice of Blogger vs WordPress starts with asking why the blog is being published.

Blogger blogs are personal websites - and provide the best results when published with informative, interesting, and unique content. People read Blogger blogs, because they are written by people, who have something to say - and the readers provide the SEO activity.

WordPress offers a cornucopia of SEO enhancements, from clever themes, to plugins - and support groups that encourage the novice owner to develop a blog with little to no content or planning.

At the risk of stating the obvious, I'll suggest that, if you wish to publish a blog with little to no original content, you should move the blog to WordPress - and make use of their SEO optimized themes, and various plugins. Leave Blogger blogs to people who actually have something to say.

But, that suggestion has a downside.

One day, Google will take the next step beyond Panda, and further emphasise content over clever marketing schemes, and traffic enhancement techniques. As that happens, people who build blogs and websites based on themes and plugins will find their blogs and websites getting less traffic from actual people.

As actual people tire of reading cleverly marketed blogs with no content or focus, the owners of these blogs will turn to more innovative techniques for getting traffic. Hopefully, the WordPress Support forums will be more sympathetic to the novice spammers who ask

Why was my blog deleted by WordPress?

or

Why does my blog not appear at the top of the search list?

Blogger blog owners can organise their blogs, dynamically - based on how they want to present the content, and how their readers can choose to read the content.

Help Blogger to encourage the spammers to move to WordPress - and the people who have something to say can continue publishing Blogger blogs.

Design Your Blog, As You Develop Your Audience

Similar to starting a blog and immediately focusing on making money, we sometimes see people who start a blog, and immediately start designing the template, with custom features.

A beautiful, shiny design is useless, if your readers don't like it. Different blogs will attract different reader populations, who will respond to different designs.

Every Blogger blog is unique, because you are unique - and because you (hopefully) publish blogs that are all different from each other.

Different reader populations will respond to different features.

Depending upon what your readers are, they will respond to various unique features of any given blog. Find out who your readers are, and what they like, before you design your blog.

Start with any standard Blogger template, and with content, to attract readers. Work on getting traffic, from content indexed by the search engines.

Develop content, and get the blog indexed. Content leads to search reputation.

Publish informative, interesting, and unique content - and advertise the blog responsibly. And be patient. There are an infinite number of techniques which will give you better results.

Look at blogs with similar content, and see what works.

As your blog gets traffic, you'll learn of other blogs similar to yours - some of which are published by your readers. See what designs, features, and layouts interest your readers - and learn how to use those techniques.

A well designed blog can have a new template added, any convenient time.

You can modify your blog, including the design, without losing content or readers, any time it pleases you. That's the beauty of online, progressive publishing.

Start with content - and focus on getting readers. Work on the blog design, after you have content and readers.

Don't Write About What Makes Money - Write What You Know

Too many blog owners start their first blog - and the first step is to drop into the nearest online publishing forum - such as Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger, and ask the question of the typical marketing expert.

I want to start a blog. What should I write about, to make the most money?

And there is where many spam blogs start.

People who are making money, are busy making money. They do not hang out in forums, waiting for you to ask how to make money, so they can tell you how to make money - probably, some of the money that they want to be making.

Too many people who start out their blog, and base the subject of the blog upon advice from other people, will have nothing to say.

Writing, when you have nothing to say, gives your readers nothing to read.

• The blog will become dormant, and stale - and nobody will read it. And they will make no money.
• They will end up having to copy content from other blogs - most of which are about the same subject, and are written by other people who have nothing to say. They will have readers who are not interested in learning anything - and who will subscribe to hundreds of blogs, just looking for something interesting and useful.

This is similar to choosing a blog hosting service, according to what SEO friendly accessories and templates are available - or to publishing an AdSense ready blog, based on the minimum standards.

If you have nothing to say, you may try to get traffic, with clever, empty features.

In an effort to get more readers, and make more money, the unhappy blog owner will try other, imaginative techniques to increase traffic - in a subject that other blog owners are doing the same. Eventually, the blog will be deleted by Blogger - and the owner will be clueless.

My blog was just deleted, as a spam host! I need the money, to feed my family!! Please, Mr Blogger Helper, restore my blog!

And the former blog owner will not appreciate the advice, that will surely follow.

Blogger "One button" publishing is a personal website publishing service. Very few people are completely unique. Many people share interests with other people - and very few people know everything, about any given subject. Write about what you know, and share what you know.

No matter what you choose to write about, you will get various responses.

• Nobody is interested in that!
• Everybody already knows that!
• I never knew that! Thank you for telling me!
• I already knew that - but your posts helped me understand it better! Thank you for explaining it to me!

The trick is to write about what gives you more of the latter two responses - and write in a way to give you less of the first two responses.

Write about what you know - and people who need your expertise will benefit.

Write about what you know - and focus your efforts on the people who are interested in what you know - and write more about what you know.

There you have better chances of reaching people, who want to read what you know - and who learn from what you write, and who tell other people about someone who writes what interests them. And there is your reader audience.

Creating And Hosting Your Website

There are many services available on the Internet, for creating and publishing a website. Blogger provides some services so transparently, that people get confused, occasionally, about what Blogger can reliably provide. Blogger provides some equivalents of some of the services available - with others, you may be on your own, or at the mercy of the support staff for other hosting services.

1. Blog content created on Blogger, hosted on BlogSpot.
2. Blog content created on Blogger, hosted outside BlogSpot.
3. Blog content created outside Blogger, hosted on BlogSpot.
4. Blog content created outside Blogger, hosted outside BlogSpot.

Blog Content Created On Blogger, Hosted On Blogspot
This is the most popular content / hosting option. Simply use "Create a blog", pick an available BlogSpot name, choose a template, and start posting. Blogger One Button Publishing is so easy to use, many bloggers have no idea how many services are involved, here.

Blog Content Created On Blogger, Hosted Outside Blogspot
Here, after a Blogger blog is created, and hosted on BlogSpot, you had (some time ago) the option to re publish your blog to a Google server outside BlogSpot, or to a non Google server altogether. Both options had strong points and weak points. Note that the latter option, aka FTP Publishing, ended in May 2010.

Blog Content Created Outside Blogger, Hosted On Blogspot
Occasionally, someone wants to setup a blog using a desktop publishing product, then use FTP to load the blog to BlogSpot. This is, however, not an option in Blogger.

Blog Content Created Outside Blogger, Hosted Outside Blogspot
We also occasionally see requests for advice how to do this. Unfortunately, websites produced and hosted outside Blogger / BlogSpot are subject to the options and requirements of the publishing and hosting platform in use. Blogger is not involved here, at all. The nature of third party hosting services requires that you get any necessary assistance from the content and hosting service in question.

Just understand your options, and choose what's right for you.

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The New "Next Blog" Link - What Next?

Up until last week, I would advise folks looking for traffic to their blogs that they should publish, publish, publish.

Besides friends and family, your initial readers will come through the "Next Blog" link, randomly. You get more "Next Blog" traffic from posting more, less from posting less. And, you'll need this initial traffic.

Last week, with the new "Next Blog" link, all of that changed. Now, people hitting "Next Blog" get another blog, but with 2 major differences from the possibility last week.

• The "next blog" linked to will be chosen for similar content / subject, and same language, as the blog being displayed currently.
• The "next blog" linked to will not be chosen relevant to updating activity. You're just as likely to get a blog published to 5 years ago, as 5 minutes ago.

This gives us two concerns, which we did not have earlier.

• Finding other blogs of random subject and recent updates won't be as simple as hitting the "Next Blog" link.
• Getting initial traffic to your blog won't be as simple as merely "publish, publish, publish".

Instead of the "Next Blog" link bringing you random visitors, you may get more focused visitors.

• Blogger Profile surfing. You create your Blogger profile, and indicate your various interests. You can find other people like you, when you click on your various interests. People like you will find your profile, and others like yours, when they surf from their profile.
• Google Blog Search. Once your blog has value to the search engines, people searching for subject related content will find your blog.
• Next Blog surfing. People will still find your blog using "Next Blog", they will simply start from a blog similar to yours, not one of random content.

Having found other blogs through any of the above techniques, you can attract traffic to your blog by becoming a Follower of blogs that interest you. You can find other blogs by surfing from those blogs, and other people who surf those blogs may, similarly, find your blog.

None of the above techniques will attract traffic based upon posting activity, though. Whether you post daily, or yearly, you'll be just as likely to attract traffic. And you'll be more likely to surf to other blogs with subject similar to your blog. And this brings us to the final (and possibly primary) result of the new "Next Blog" link.

Spam blogs, published by the thousands, will receive significantly less traffic, and our blogs will receive, relatively, more traffic.

• Unless you start from a blog dedicated to hacking, porn, or spam, "Next Blog" will be less likely to bring you to a blog with hacking, porn, or spam.
• Publishing a blog 100 times / day will bring a spammer as much random traffic as publishing once / week, or once / year.

This will reduce the benefit of spammers who post splog farms, since 1,000 splogs today will probably attract as much traffic as 1 splog last week, and updating a splog once / year will likely attract as much traffic as once / day. This should contribute to decreased visibility and presence of the hundreds of thousand member splog farms, so common these days.

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Blogging

Setting up a web site is a lot of work.

Once you get past the process of actually setting up a web site, you have to write something.

If you want very many readers, you have to write a lot, frequently, and regularly. If you want your readers to return, they have to be able to find what you write. And need I say this - if you want readers to return over and over, what you publish has to be attractive and organised.

In other words, your web site has to have Content, Structure, and Good Appearance.

That's a lot of work, and you have to do it over and over. Can you say "Sisyphus"?

Content added == content that must be made accessible.

As you add content, you have to make the content accessible. As you make it accessible, you have to keep it organised and attractive. Add more content, and you have to make the relevant content accessible from content with a similar subject. And more content constantly requires you to make it pretty.

And hopefully, you have a private life. Or, what do you find to write about? How do you make enough time, to do everything? If your job / life doesn't revolve around web publishing, you simply can't.

The Internet is full of dead web sites, or web sites that should be dead. Web sites which are huge, and badly organised or ugly. Or very pretty web sites, that contain nothing useful. Many web sites started by folks who ran out of time, energy, or content.

A blog takes the drudgery away from web publishing, with dynamic content.

Enter Blogging. The initial blog setup is simple enough. You can find more advice in Blogger Help, or in dozens of other web sites.

Here, I'll just say - Start from the dashboard, select "Create a Blog", and follow instructions. That's a 5 minute, linear process. Then, learn how to get the URL of the blog, so you can pass it to your friends. Been there, done that.

What you do after the blog has been created - that's the fun part. Still, it's way less complicated, using Blogger One Button Publishing, than it was working with my one web site 10 years ago.

You can separate different tasks of web publishing into independent tasks.

Blogging, using a Blogger blog with a Layouts template, lets you separate Content, Structure, and Good Appearance, and make them independent tasks. You can work on each issue as you like, and when it suits your schedule. If multiple people work together on a blog, each person can be responsible for a different aspect of the blog.

The Content part, which is what you probably should spend the most time on initially, is the easiest to define. Write articles that contain information that's relevant to your reader's needs. Post each article, as written.

The blog Structure should be as important to you as Content. Structure lets your readers, having found your blog and read one or two posts, find other posts related to what they've just read. You need to group related posts, and separate unrelated posts. The blog structure starts with an Archives Index (an includable part of any Layouts template), which lists each post in the blog. The Archives Index is dynamic - as soon as you add a post, it's indexed. That's your base structure, and requires none of your time. Just write, and post.

As you continue, though, you can add more structure, both within the blog and outside it.

• Hyperlinks in the posts can link the posts thru relevant phrases in the text.
• Labels can link relevant posts through common keywords, or through a dynamic index similar to the Archives Index, and can be used to provide focused newsfeeds.
• Blogs can be grouped in clusters, using Custom Domains.
• There are other techniques for linking / dynamically merging multiple web sites, that can be relevant here.

You give up some control, of infrastructure, to gain ability.

Note that, unless you setup a blog that's externally hosted, using FTP Publishing, you'll only have control over the data. With a blog hosted by Blogger / Google, you give up control over ease of setup. You pick a template, and you make posts. That's all that you do - you don't setup folders, or files - that's all up to the Blogger wizards.

If you have an external blog utility, like a Google Webmaster Tools, that requires blog ownership verification, you will need to install meta tags into the template, not named files into the blog root. You'll have no ability to install named files, or to make named folders in the blog structure.

The Good Appearance is one of the most fun aspects of Blogging. Every blog owner has his / her own favourite templates, which are built using Cascading Style Sheets. If your blog uses a Layouts template, you can republish the blog in seconds, giving it a new look, using the "Pick New Template" wizard.

You can add, configure, or reposition accessories (aka "gadgets") within the template, using the "Page Elements" wizard. You can change the colors and text using the "Fonts and Colors" wizard. And each change is separate from the others - you can change to a new template, and a totally different look, without affecting the widgets. Or, you can change the colors in the blog, without affecting the posts content or the template.

For the best blog, balance your attention to each task.

I'm not going to tell you which of these aspects are the most important - they all have equal importance. Just setup a blog, and work on the blog, as you like. Use enough balance in each aspect, and some work publicising the blog, and you'll have readers. Then, watch what readers you get, and adjust as necessary. And when you make changes, test the changes, immediately after you make them.

You may benefit from reading the Blogger Getting Started Guide, and the Official Blogger FAQ. And when you need help, read how to ask for advice intelligently, and how to learn from advice provided.

And from time to time, look at other blogs and see what they are doing - maybe you'll see a new feature occasionally. If you see a new feature that interests you, ask yourself how this new feature works. And when you see other blogs that interest you, you can peruse them from time to time, at your convenience.

And that's Blogging, in a nutshell. Now, follow the links - and read the other articles.