Part 1 of Blogging, at Your Website or a Public Site? suggested a number ways to drive traffic to your website.
An important reason for establishing a blog is to create buzz about you and your company. Creating buzz increases traffic. Increased traffic makes the search engines take notice, oftentimes resulting in more listings and higher ranked listings on the search engines results pages (SERPs). Higher rankings in the SERPs lead to increased traffic…and the cycle of positive energy flows.
Blogs drive traffic to the Source.
Establishing a blog at a public blogging site enables you to create buzz about your company and get your target audience interested in learning more. Your target audience returns to the source of the buzz – the public blogging site – to learn more, resulting in increased traffic for the public blogging site. You’re thinking, but they’ll click through to my website. Maybe, maybe not…If the information they want resides at the public blogging site, why click through? If they do click through to your website, they have already contributed to increasing the traffic on the public blogging site. This pits your website against the public blogging site for listings in the search engines, and, the public blogging site will almost always have higher ranked listings due to the traffic it accumulates from all the other blogs. If the keywords (search terms) exist in abundance at your website and not so much at the public blogging website, you have a better chance of rising in the SERPs.
Writing in a blog takes thought and effort.
What categories will you define? What information will you post in each category? What keywords will you use? How frequently will you post? Experts suggest that you write in your blog as often as you can; from several times a day to once per week. (Read Tips for Adding Entries to Your Blog for suggestions on how to write your entries in order to positively impact your website’s listings in the search engines.)
Recommendation
If you are going to put in the effort to maintain a blog, to think of entries that will create buzz about you and your company, do it at your own website so that your website is the source, your target audience returns to your website, and the traffic for your website increases.
Public Blogging Websites are Good for Practicing.
For the bloggers that I know, the greatest challenge has been developing the habit of writing in their blogs with consistent frequency. Given that, I recommend to new bloggers that they first establish a blog at a public blogging website in order to create the habit. Once the habit of writing in their blogs is established, then create a blog at their own website.
Happy blogging!