Going back a few years, it was possible to throw a website together, optimise it for the search engines, stick it on the net and forget about it. Assuming you had put your keywords in the title tags, meta description, and had half decent content your site would rank reasonably well. A few decent inbound links with your keywords in the anchor text and you would certainly rank well.

The explosion of social networking and blogging changed all that. Nowadays everyone and their dog has either a web site, a blog or a MySpace/Bebo/Facebook/Squidoo (or whatever the latest craze is) account and new content is going on daily. A static site these days and you can forget about ranking well in the search engines and creating any sort of decent traffic levels.

It’s funny though that there is still a stigma attached to ‘blogging’. When I mention it to clients they laugh at me and think of spotty teenagers in darkened bedrooms posting about their collection of Doctor Who figures. But that’s not what blogging is about, not these days.

Blogging is simply frequently updated content (on a corporate site think news) and when you think about it, that’s exactly what your visitors want. Blogging these days is not about spotty teenagers with social issues, it is about experts sharing their opinions and access to the latest industry news as it happens.

How does blogging help your site? Quite simply, a blog is spider food. If you keep changing your site and adding content, the search engines will keep coming back to index and list that new content.

The other big benefit of regular blogging is networking and building links. Link out to other authors in your field and articles which add to the topic you are writing about. Find out who the experts in your field are online and network with them, join in their discussions, comment on their site and over time (if your content is good enough) you will start to be seen as an expert yourself. You will be amazed at the traffic and links this will bring to your site.

I personally run several blogs and have recently added a fashion magazine section to our Girlz Night website. These days a blog is an essential part of any successful website and with the internet more accessible than ever,  if you don’t embrace the change then your business is doomed to online failure.

Based in Glasgow, Thin Denim are experts in web design and e-commerce solutions. We work closely with our clients to ensure we build the web solution which is right for their business.

Find out more about our web design solutions. 

Thin Denim offer Internet Marketing consultancy services, which will give you and your staff the skills to successfully market your business online. Find out more about our Internet Marketing Consultancy services.

Teaching your dog to answer the phone may not be something that’s ever occurred to you before. For a start you may not have a dog, and even if you do then your top priority will probably be getting it to use the toilet outside.

If however you a) own a dog, and b) want to teach it some unusual tricks, then Party Tricks For Dogs will explain how to teach your dog everything from dancing and flipping its bowl, to barking on cue and even doing sums. We’ve just finished a small site for this great book from W.M.Houston, which includes a simple content administration centre and css/xhtml front end.

We can also recommend it as a great read, so dog owners take a look and soon your dog could be back flipping its way to fame!