Got blog? No, why not? Are you afraid you can't write? Maybe you think you can't set one up. Or, is it because you think you don't have the time. That's the lamest excuse of them all!
If you expect to build a list, you need people's eyeballs on your squeeze page, and blogs will do that for you. Search engines love them because they're mainly text based. All you need to do to rank high in the search engines is to make a daily entry. Try to stick to a theme, and make sure that keyword surrounding your niche are in every single post, it won't take long for your blog to be ranked. One of mine got a PR5 in less than six months, and a PR5 is great!
Google ranks web pages (not sites, pages) from 0 to 10, with PR10 being the highest. Even Google's own front door only has a PR8, so a PR10 is pretty hard to get. A PR5 site will show up higher in the results pages than a PR1, for instance, so it will get more traffic. The goal is to be on one of the first three pages. However, page one for the search term is still the most desired, with the #1 spot on the first page being the best of all. It gets the most traffic.
But let's adress those issues that are stopping you.
You can't write:
Well, you can. Anyone can. If you need something to help you, get a home study course and learn it. Then, sit in front of your computer or a blank sheet of paper, and just sit there. Soon, you'll begin to form ideas. Write them down. Do this for one hour, at the same time, every day. Eventually, you'll train your brain to think, "It's writing time!"
You can also find interesting tidbit on the web, and put excerpts from this stuff on your blog, too. Just be sure you aren't plagiarizing. If you want to post more than 10% of the total words in the work, then, get permission from the author first. Or use an article from one of the directories, like Ezine Articles, iSnare, or GoArticles.com. Use the work in its entirety, including the author's resource box or bio box. Then add a paragraph of introduction to the piece and a closing paragraph and "wrap" the article with your own words.
But if you're still not convinced that you can write even a paragraph, hire a ghostwriter. You can find people at Elance.com or Craigslist.com who will do the writing for you. When you buy their work, be sure you're buying "all rights," which means you can use the work any way you wish. You can rewrite it. You can put your name in the byline. You can alter the article to suit your purposes. All rights even means you can sell the article and keep all the money. If you can afford a ghostwriter, it will save time.
You don't know how to set up a blog:
More baloney. You can do it! If you have cPanel hosting, you have a program called "Fantastico" installed there. So, log into cPanel and find it. When you open it, you'll see something like "WordPress 2.0" and install or something similar. Then, you'll be asked to fill in some information and voila! You have a blog. Customization will be a problem, if you don't know some HTML, so you may want to hire somebody to help you with that.
If you need a tech person to do these things, try RentaCoder.com to find one. It should be fairly inexpensive.
There's no time for a blog:
You don't have time NOT to have a blog. Blogs are great for many reasons. First, as mentioned above search engines love them. By placing a link to your main site on your blog, you're getting a one-way link back to your site, too. That's also great for search engine optimization because search engines look at links like votes. The more one-way votes you have, the higher your site will rank. But the best thing about a blog is the traffic you'll get. Sign up for some Web2.0 sites, like StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, and Spciy Page, and book mark your posts there, too. You'll get tons of traffic!
People need to see your squeeze page to sign up for your list, right? If you don't take some action to make this happen, you won't get a very big list, so get that blog going and put a link to your squeeze page into every post. Join some Web 2.0 sites on blogging, too, like MyBlogLog.com, Technorati.com, or FeedBlaster.com. You'll see your traffic pick up. Maybe overnight!
Tellman Knudson is CEO of OvercomeEverything, Inc. and knows how to build massive traffic. He gets results! If you'd like to learn more ways to drive traffic to your site, visit MyFirstTraffic.com ( traffic.overcomeeverything.com ).
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