A big conundrum here – if you already run a website, should a new blog be a part of the website, or completely stand alone? There are a lot of different theories about, but what is best? Let’s have a look at the options.

There are basically three different ways of hosting a blog if you are already running a website. They are:

1) A sub directory, for example mysite.com/blog
2) A sub domain, for example blog.mysite.com
3) Another domain totally

So, what are the reasons behind each of these differences? Well to start at the end of the list, a lot of people think that a stand alone domain is the best way to run a new blog. If you register the new blog and host it with different hosts to the main website, then it is not associated with the main website, has a different C-Class ip address and so on.

The theory continues then that because it is a stand alone website, Google will rank heavily all links that you add from your blog to your main site, believing that they are independent sites. However, I do not believe this to be the case purely because if you get carried away and link too often to your main site, especially if you are not linking to other sites, then the search engines will easily pick up on the fact that the blog is just promoting your main website.

What about hosting your blog on your main website then? This actually does have many advantages, on top of maybe not requiring additional hosting. For a start, by hosting the blog within your main site it will be recognised as part of your site by the search engines. Now, when you start to post to your blog the search engines will see a wealth of fresh content building up and know that the website is being kept up to date. These are both good reasons for them to be sending you more visitors.

Also, if you build a good blog that is being read often by readers, the search engines can use a variety of methods to track the number of visitors to your website. And it has been shown that websites that get more visitors through various methods then also perform better with the search engines.

Lastly, if your blog is an integrated part of your website then as visitors go from website to blog and back, they do not notice a swapping about of domains, styles and so on. This can make them more comfortable about staying on your blog.

But out of a sub domain and a sub directory, which is better? Well a sub directory is more interlinked and gives the full advantages, but some times it is easier to host on a sub domain. This means that it all really boils down to your circumstances.

But if I am creating a blog for an existing website, my preference is first for a sub directory and then for a sub domain. Never a new domain.

Some people think that pre written Adsense blogs are a great money spinner. But to be honest, they are not and if you want to run a blog the easy way, you still can. Why are they so bad and what is the alternative?

You have probably seen plenty of the adverts offering you a complete blog with a variety of themes to choose from along with loads of content. It sounds like a great offer and an easy way to make some extra cash, but it is far from that. The main problem is that the content you are publishing is duplicate. You and loads of other blog owners are hosting the same material and the theme might even have a link back to the seller’s website, just to make sure they get the benefit of your work.

All of this duplicated content is picked up by the search engines and they quickly notice the plethora of blogs displaying the same articles. And when the search engines apply their filters, you are left without any traffic on your website. So, what is the alternative for the automated blog?

The alternative that works
Well you are left doing a lot of the work yourself, but even with an off the shelf package, that was still the case. In either case you are left trying to optimise the website and getting more traffic onto the website, the only difference is now you also need to provide some content.

But that is not all that difficult. There are plenty of systems that you can sign up to and be sent plenty of free guest posts to publish on your blog, maybe even automatically publishing them. Some systems will even send you multiple posts per day, so you quickly build up a huge stock of fresh content on a day by day basis.

And best of all, these posts are unique and written specially for your blog. You are not at risk of being found to be hosting duplicate content and the penalties that go with it. And all that these guest bloggers require is a couple of links back to their blog.

Why do they do this?
In return the guest bloggers want some “link juice” and maybe some traffic. They want to be placing their posts on blogs that have some sort of Google PageRank and some relevant traffic. So you really do need to build both of these to get the best results, but there are still guest blogging sites that will provide you with plenty of posts, for free, even if you are a brand new blog.

So do not pay for a pre written Adsense Blog. Just set up a simple WordPress site with a theme of your choice and then sign up to publish guest posts. Much more effective!

Adding a blog to your existing website is an excellent way of increasing your website traffic and communicating often with your customers. You can blog special offers, latest news and product updates. But, how do you add a blog to your existing website?
By Keith Lunt, ©howtostartmyblog.com

With most hosting set ups it is very easy to do. First of all though, you have a decision to make and that is where do you put the blog? Your choices would be:

mydomain.com/blog – as a sub directory
blog.mydomain.com – as a sub domain
myblogdomain.com – as a completely new URL for your blog

Let’s forget the last one, there are too many advantages to the first two options such as visitors staying on your website, keeping your existing website fresh and so on. Which of these you use is up to you, but my preference is a sub directory – that way search engines see your website as being very updated and it really is part of your website.

Install A Blog
Once you have decided where to put your website, how to get going? If you are lucky your hosts might have a 1-click install, for which you will probably need to use a sub domain rather than a sub directory. If not, just go to wordpress.org and download the latest software. Make sure your hosts have allocated you a database and follow the instructions to update the config.php file with your database location, username and password.

Now, unzip and ftp the WordPress files and try visiting your blog. This will get the installation screen, into which you must choose a username (please, not “Admin”, go for security now and use something more difficult), a password and a blog title.

Customise The Look
Then you are done! You can either download a free (or bought) WordPress theme and use that or if you can manage html and css then you can duplicate your website styling to become a theme in its own right.

Add Useful Plugins
Now, think of security and install a few plugins. A database backup tool is a must along with a plugin to limit login attempts if someone tries to hack your website. I also like WP Captcha Free, as this reduces the spam that gets to Akismet (which you need to follow the steps to activate). Lastly, either add Google Analytics if you are using that on your main site or activate WordPress Stats (actually, I do both!) so you can watch what traffic you are receiving.

You Are There!
And then you are done. You just need to start writing some posts, link to the blog from your main website and sit back safe in the knowledge that you have taken a great Search Engine Optimisation leap forward by giving search engines fresh data, whilst giving customers a great contact point.

Where should you have your blog? Should it be on your existing website or somewhere else? What are the advantages of each?
By Keith Lunt, ©howtostartmyblog.com

Putting Your Blog On A Separate Platform
This solution means that setting up the blog is very easy to do. You can go over to Blogger or WordPress.com and sign up for a new blog and then within minutes have your blog up and running.

Add to this the fact that because the blog is on a separate platform whenever there are any updates they are dealt with for you. There is no upgrading the blog’s source code whenever there is a new update or security release, it all just happens in the background.

You also do not have any costs. There are no databases or extra hosting space to pay for and if your blog goes viral, there is no bandwidth to worry about. Lastly, all of the backups and so on that your blog will need will be done for you.

In a sentence – the blog is totally managed for you. It sounds great, so why would anyone host the blog themselves?

Hosting Your Blog On Your Website
First of all, you can customise your blog to exactly match your website. It can look exactly the same as your website so visitors going from one to the other do not see it as looking any different. Also, by using your current URL that stays the same. This can give visitors a lot of confidence.

But the big advantage is that by posting often you are creating a lot of new, fresh content on your website. The search engines will see a huge bank of articles on your website and will also see that you are keeping your site up to date. If there are frequent posts then it is certainly not going to damage your search engine ranking and will almost certainly help you along the way.

It will also look a lot more professional to your visitors and customers that blog is part of your website and not on a free blogging platform such as Blogger, whilst you are also free to do what you like, whereas the free tools sometimes have limitations on what you are and are not allowed to do.

Which Is Best?
So, which of the two options is best?

If you are totally afraid of the technicalities of setting up and running your own blog then using a blogging platform is the best way forward. However, if you are happy to give it a try and either experienced in everything involved or willing to learn (it is not that difficult) then the winner is hosting the blog on your own website.

The slight problems of installing and maintaining your own blog are far outweighed by the advantages of running your own blog and the freedom that gives to you.

Preventing hackers and other unwelcome people from accessing your blog is essential. But WordPress, if not correctly used, can be open to successful attacks. What steps must you take to reduce your risks?
By Keith Lunt, ©howtostartmyblog.com

Securing WordPress is all about two things. Closing known problems and then making it as hard as possible for people to gain access to your admin, so that they instead give their attentions to another blogger.

Step 1 – Upgrade WordPress
So the first essential security step is to upgrade WordPress to the latest version. Sometimes these new versions are released to fix security problems that have been uncovered, for example users able to get more access than they should. And when WordPress is up to the latest version, also check that all Plugins and your theme are also running the latest version.

Step 2 – Don’t Use An ‘Admin’
Recent versions of WordPress now ask you for a user-id, rather than ‘Admin’, but people still install it with this as the primary user. This means that hackers do not need to guess the user name and only have to guess the password. By changing the main username to something different, hackers have to guess that as well. If you already have set up your site with Admin as the user, either go into your SQL database and change the name or change it within admin, as follows:

Step 3 – Use A Strong Password
Use a password that is difficult to guess. Do not use anything as the core to your password that is mentioned on your blog. For example, a password comprising of your town and the current year is very easy to guess!

Step 4 – Do Not Display Logon Names
Go to the user maintenance screen and give your users nicknames and display these nicknames as the post authors. Make sure that the nickname does not give away the signon name. For example, user Fred should not have a nickname of Freddy. Make sure that the actual signon user name is difficult to guess.

Step 5 – Secure Your Email!
This is something that not many people think of. If someone gets access to your email password then they can request password resets for every system that you use. So make sure that your email account is totally locked down and secure as well, else that is a back door in!

Step 6 – Back Up Your Work
If the worst happens then you will need to delete everything and start again. And that means deleting every file in site. Reloading WordPress from the installation files is easy enough, but you might have to roll back your database by a few weeks. The only way to do this is if you are taking regular backups, so install a plugin such as WordPress Backup.

Step 7 – Secure Your Login
If someone does try to hack into your blog by guessing your password, then it is possible to detect them and lock them out with plugins such as Limit Login Attempts. If it detects a certain number of failed login attempts from the same IP address, that IP address is blocked for a short while. This means hackers have to wait before trying again.

Your blog title says everything about you, but what makes a good title that will work and what makes a bad title that will scare people off? You might only have this one chance to get it right.
By Keith Lunt, ©howtostartmyblog.com

A good blog title will say everything about your blog. It will say what you are blogging about, what you are blogging for and who is your audience. A poor title will usually try to do too much and do nothing at all.

If you are running a corporate blog connected to your corporate website then your blog title is probably fairly well decided for you. It is going to be the name of your business. But most bloggers are not blogging about their business, either their blog is their business or the blog is a hobby. So, what pointers should you consider to finding a great blog title?

For a start, do not get carried away. I have seen far too many people who think that a good way to write a website URL is to string together a load of popular and relevant keywords. This technique used to get you more search engine visitors and still does with certain search engines, but for the bulk of searches it does not help much.

But, aside from not being a help, if you strung together a load of keywords and buy a URL based on them and then use that as your blog’s title, it can look a mess. Especially if you have to pad out the keywords with a few filler words to make sure that the title is actually readable.

It is far better to think about the subject that you are going to be blogging about and describe that. Think of it like naming a book and forget search engine spamming techniques. If your blog is going to be serious then the title needs to look serious. However, if you are writing with sarcasm and whit, then your title should instead imply your writing style to your readers.

In an ideal world, the best blog title will tell your readers everything about your blog before they come over to read it. Your blog’s title is there to appeal to readers, not search engines. You may be listing your blog on directories and in signatures, or people might see it through your avatars. They will see your title and immediately decide whether or not they want to visit your website.

There is no hard and fast rule that will produce your title for you, you just need to keep to the basic guidelines. And if you remember that you want to show your potential readers everything that your blog is about before they even come visiting, then you cannot go far wrong.

Once every week you should sign on to your blog, forget about posting and do some basic administration on the blog. Doing this keeps it up to date and safe and once a week is a great way to make sure that it is happening. Here’s what I suggest that you do:

1) Check for broken links – especially in a paid blog with a number of sponsored posts, are all of those links still working? Have any been dropped? Linking to non-existent websites can harm your reputation with the search engines. It’s not as hard as it sounds if you install a suitable Broken Link checker plugin first!

2) Check your comments – hopefully you are approving your comments every day, maybe even more. But are any good comments falsely caught as spam? Go to the spam folder and check that they are all indeed spam. Then save yourself some database space and make next week’s check easier by deleting the spam.

3) Update your blog – have you got a lot of plugins? Are some of them due for an update to a new version? Or are you on an old version of WordPress? It only takes a minute to update them if you keep on top of it – go and do it now!

4) Look at your site stats – have a look at the stats and look for trends. Great if traffic has gone up, ask why if it has gone down. But there is another reason for doing this and that is to look through the list of search terms that people have used to find your blog. What questions are people asking to find you? Do any of them shout out great new post names? Probably – so create a draft post with that title and store it until you are in need of inspiration.

One of the most annoying things in a blog is when it is full of basic spelling mistakes. It gives an impression of a lack of care for the readers. It looks as though the work has just been thrown up onto the page and forgotten about without even a cursory glance at the spellings. So, how can you spell check your blog?

One way is to draft up all of your posts in a tool such as Word. However, if, like me, you are often out when you are writing (how many posts did I write last year on the M6???) then your machine might not have such a tool, and it is a pain having to write it up and then copy it across. It is much better if you can add a spell checker to your blog.

Inbuilt Browser Spell Checker
Well tools such as Firefox do now come with the option of an inbuilt spell checker. It it great and I use it on one of my many machines. It underlines with a squiggle any errors. Within the Tools, Options, Advanced select the General tab and then make sure the box is ticked. If it is and you aren’t getting any warnings, right click on a text box and then look for either Languages or Add Dictionary. It could be that you have not yet installed a dictionary for you to check against. This is also how you can swap from the American English to the UK English dictionary.

Toolbar Spell Checking
If for whatever reason you don’t want to change browsers or just don’t like that spell checker, then grab yourself a copy of the Google Toolbar and install that. It also has a spell checker as part of it, but with this one you need to click the button at the end of the typing session and go through your mistakes correcting them.

The browser spell checker is, in my view, better as it tells you as you are typing and there is less chance of missing an error or even forgetting to go back to correct. However, if you are like me then there is no harm in using both. It is always nice to have Google tell you there are no spelling mistakes in the document!

Whichever alternative you decide to use it should only take you minutes to install and get using one of them, or both. They both highlight the errors and if you right click on the identified words a popup box shows you likely alternatives, making them both very quick and easy to use.

The only question really is do you want to check your spelling as you type, at the end or both?

Not every week, but on a good week by the end of Sunday evening I will have written and scheduled a few posts to each of my main blogs. Why?

It is all too easy when you are running a series of blogs to see the hours and days slip by and then realise that you have not posted to your blog for a few days. Maybe you rush a post or two out. However, this is not good for your blog.

So once a week I will look through the search terms that have been used to find my blogs and use these to generate a handful of article titles. Usually for me this is a Sunday evening. Then I pick a few and will write and schedule posts for the rest of the week. This means that I have a guaranteed few posts scheduled for the week. I know that my readers will have material to read, which is the aim of what I am trying to achieve.

It also means that my writing time in the week can be spent writing additional posts for those in between days that I have not scheduled posts for. These posts can be longer and syndicated to article directories and guest blogging systems, safe in the knowledge that I have unique content also appearing on my blog and am not in a rush to write a post that should have been published already.

A word of warning though – make sure that you don’t schedule the posts for the same time every day. Mix up the times so that you do not upset the search engines. It shouldn’t cause them a problem, but don’t give them any excuse!

Blogging is fun, it can be an interesting past-time and a way to make money. It can be a business, or a way to increase the traffic on your website. However, setting up a blog for free will probably make you feel even better than paying out for it.
By Keith Lunt, © HowToStartMyBlog.com

So, where are you going to start?
Well a lot of it is going to depend on why you are blogging and what you are intending to use your blog for? Business, hobby, interest, communicating with other people or inspiring you to train harder? These and many more reasons are why people get into blogging.

And to set up a blog for free is very simple. Just go to a suitable blogging website, create an account and start blogging. You are set up in no time. But where you go to start that process will depend on your intentions and needs. So here are a few suggestions.

Looking At Blogger
As part of an existing business you need to set a good impression. But getting blogging for free is still possible if you sign up to Blogger for your blog and then use their service that allows you to use your own domain name. This way, as long as you use a good looking style to your website, the Blogger name is hidden and instead visitors will see a private URL. All that you pay for is the registration of the domain name.

And Blogger can be used as a free tool for many other purposes as well, from hobbies to interests to earning an income. Plus, you can include Google Adsense adverts and you are (currently) allowed to partake in paid posting and other on site advertising, if these interest you.

What About WordPress?
WordPress.com is another useful blogging tool and in certain circumstances it can be very beneficial to use it. With a huge amount of plugins and themes you can have it looking just as you want to. However, with WordPress you are not allowed to include on site advertising, which also excludes paid to post schemes, so it is not useful for those wanting to earn money from their blogging.

But as the hosted version of WordPress is part of a community, it creates a community of people who might take an interest in your blog straight away.

Specialist Services
For those blogging about hobbies then there are also quite often very good specialist blog providers. For example, there are fitness and running blog providers. With these there is a very related community of bloggers all there to talk about the same interests and this can instantly drive traffic to your blog. There are even sometimes groups within these, for example for those bloggers training for a specific event.

Again, you might not be allowed to advertise, but if you want instant and in built traffic, it could be the way to go!