One of the reasons I teach my clients and community members to blog on a regular basis is because it generates SEO for your business. For those who do not know, SEO means Search Engine Optimization. This means when someone puts key words into Google, Bing or Yahoo search the better the SEO the higher you rank.
One of the best ways to increase your SEO is to blog and blog on a consistent basis. One of the things search engines look for is new changing content.
A lot of businesses set up free blogs on sites like WordPress.com, Posterous and even Blogger. Most people who do not bother to register their own domain and redirect it to their free blog. You end up with a name like http://rob.blogger.com .
The problem with this approach is all the SEO traffic is generated for blogger.com . In the long run this does not generate any traffic for your business. It generates all the traffic for Blogger. Not good for the small business at all.
The best bet is to to do your own hosting, register your own domain and then host your own WordPress blog. Hosting on a reasonable small plan can be had for $120.00 a year or less. The cost of a domain for a .com is between $10.00 and $15.00 dollars. All prices are in US dollars. WordPress is free to install. Now if you want to jazz that up, then you should hire a WordPress Designer/Developer. Remember this is your business and it requires investment to take it to the next level.
The key is once you setup your own domain and your own hosting, any SEO traffic you generate will drive back to your own web site and business. This means you will only be driving traffic for your business, not for a free service like Blogger, WordPress or Posterous.
Think about it, the choice is yours.
