Affordable (cheap) business blog host?

philx123 · February 21, 2010

I've got a blogger blog at the minute, but I read that for the purposes of boosting my Google rating, a dedicated blog is a good idea.
I was thinking of getting one, trouble is, I don;t know the first thing about blogs and how to set them up, other than typing away in blogger.
I read that Word press and maybe Godaddy is a good way to go, but how does that work? I'm guessing I create the blog on my PC, then upload it to Godaddy?
That seems a bit like hard work to me.
Anyone know of any blog hosts, much like Smugmug, I suppose, where the blog is hosted and you just type away, but which will register with Google (again, in much the same way as Smugmug does) for SEO, but where I can use my own domain?
And talking about domains. I already have www.philip-smith.com. Can I create a blog with that domain, or do I need something separate, such as www.philip-Smithblog.com?

Many thanks

Dedalus77 · February 21, 2010

I use a wordpress blog and it is just like blogger but much cleaner looking and offers more customization choices. Just like blogger it is all web-based with no need to learn any code or ftp anything. The GoDaddy blog also works much the same way but I found the interface less user friendly.

As for your domain, where did you register it? You should be able to set it up to point to your blog through the registering company. For example, my domain is through GoDaddy and I have it point to my smugmug site. You can do this with both wordpress and godaddy.

The real key to getting higher up in the search results is to have other blogs and sites link to you.

Kevin Kramer · February 21, 2010

I'm registered through Bluehost.com.

There is a simple script area that they have, it's like an affiliation, with wordpress. Once i installed wordpress with my own domain it was golden! They have so many SEO options available to you, plugins, themes that are so easy to install also.

Oh, and i think I only pay $110 for the year.

hope that helps!!

Enitsugua · February 21, 2010

philx123 wrote:

I read that Word press and maybe Godaddy is a good way to go, but how does that work? I'm guessing I create the blog on my PC, then upload it to Godaddy?
That seems a bit like hard work to me.
Anyone know of any blog hosts, much like Smugmug, I suppose, where the blog is hosted and you just type away, but which will register with Google (again, in much the same way as Smugmug does) for SEO, but where I can use my own domain?
And talking about domains. I already have www.philip-smith.com. Can I create a blog with that domain, or do I need something separate, such as www.philip-Smithblog.com?

GoDaddy does WordPress hosting. That means it works just as if GoDaddy wasn't even involved. See this page at GoDaddy. The only "hard work" is setting it up in your domain administration, but GoDaddy will walk you through that. After that, it's all on the Web.

You would use your own domain, www . philip-smith . com. Could be blog . philip-smith . com or www . philip-smith . com/blog[/url]. Again, GoDaddy can help you make that happen.

Other hosters also offer WordPress hosting. WordPress offers a list at this page on its Web site.

BradfordBenn · February 21, 2010

I also use Wordpress for my blog, something to consider when looking at all these solutions is what Themes and Add-ins they allow. Some hosting sites don't allow full unfetered access to the MySql database which can limit some of the tweaks you can do. I have been very happy with FatCow for my hosting (I am using them for my development site and about to change to FatCow as it is less expensive than my current host.)

Also take a look at what Theme you might want to use as that can help with lots of things. There are some that have better SEO and Google Analytics tools than others.

denisegoldberg · February 21, 2010

philx123 wrote:

I've got a blogger blog at the minute, but I read that for the purposes of boosting my Google rating, a dedicated blog is a good idea.

And talking about domains. I already have www.philip-smith.com. Can I create a blog with that domain, or do I need something separate, such as www.philip-Smithblog.com?

You can use a custom domain with a blogger blog. If http://www.philip-smith.com is pointing at your smugmug site, you can set up something like http://blog.philip-smith.com to point to your blog. Help page at http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55373.

I'd love to know why the blogger blog isn't good enough. Both my smugmug site and my blog float to the top of searches, and my blog is done with blogger.

--- Denise

vintagemxr · February 21, 2010

After almost 6 years as a semi-successful blogger I can tell you that starting a blog is the easy part. Keeping it going, keeping it fresh and interesting, is the real challenge.

You can use a personal domain with Blogger and the new Blogger interface is very easy to use. You can also tap into Blogger using Windows Live Writer which is even easier to use than the Blogger interface. I looked into using WordPress and a personal domain but it appeared that I was going to spend more time fiddling with the software than writing blog entries so I just stuck with my name.blogger.com URL.

Linking to other blogs and more importantly, bigger blogs or more prominent web sites is the key to drifting further up the Google rankings. I wound up with my motorcycle blog, which I started in 2004, having a Google ranking of 4 out of 10 before I retired it at the start of this year. Dgrin shows up as a 5 and amazon.com as a 9. I was told by someone I knew at a rank boosting service that it's tough to get much higher than 4 unless you really put a lot of work into promoting the blog or the site just gets big amounts of traffic within it's category as Dgrin does.

A big key to a successful blog is writing something people want to read, posting photos that people enjoy seeing + promoting the site like crazy. If you cannot do something that stands out from the zillion other photo blogs out there then you're probably just spinning your wheels and your time and money might be better spent promoting your business in a more direct manner. Do plan on doing a blog entry at least every 5 - 7 days and more often if you can. Stale blog entries from two weeks or a month ago are ancient items in our short attention span society.

Doug

philx123 · February 22, 2010

denisegoldberg wrote:

You can use a custom domain with a blogger blog. If http://www.philip-smith.com is pointing at your smugmug site, you can set up something like http://blog.philip-smith.com to point to your blog. Help page at http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55373.

I'd love to know why the blogger blog isn't good enough. Both my smugmug site and my blog float to the top of searches, and my blog is done with blogger.

--- Denise

I Used Website Grader's blog grader to grade my blogger blog (how many times can you use "Blog" in one sentence?) and it gave me this:

http://blog.grader.com/report/grade/philipsmithphotoblog.blogspot.com/

In there it tells me:

"You really should buy a domain name for your blog. You receive no benefit, whether for your business or personally, by having it hosted on a free site, and you don't have the ability to move hosts sometime in the future."

If you're interested, this is the grading my website gets on Website Grader. It mentions in there that a blog has been found, but bizarrely, it says it's under: www.philip-smith.com. Whether it's becasue I've simply got the link in there, and it expects to see blogs in there, I don't know.

http://websitegrader.com/site/www.philip-smith.com#SiteGrade

I get 77%, 1% higher that this time last week (at first I thought the idea was to get a lower number, but now I think the idea is to get a higher number, so I'm a bit happier than when I first saw it.)

If anyone can pick up anything else in the report that I can address, I'd be happy to have the input.
All the best

Phil

denisegoldberg · February 22, 2010

philx123 wrote:

I Used Website Grader to grade my website (unfortunately it won;t let me access the report right now), and it suggested as a way of boosting my rating I got a domain name for my blog.

You can get a domain name for your blog and still leave it at blogger. But honestly? I still don't think it matters. What matters is that you write often, and that you link from your blog to your photo galleries.

--- Denise

ChatKat · February 22, 2010

Blog to Smug
My blog is a blogger site, customized with my own blogname. If you leave my website to go read my blog then you wouldn't know it was separate from my website.

Dr. David at Wolfsnap set it up and customized it. My rankings are pretty high - 1st page on a few of my search terms.

philx123 · February 22, 2010

denisegoldberg wrote:

You can get a domain name for your blog and still leave it at blogger. But honestly? I still don't think it matters. What matters is that you write often, and that you link from your blog to your photo galleries.

--- Denise

So do you just buy the domain name, or will Blogger somehow let you drop the "Blogger" part of the address and insert the domain name you already have?

Thanks, Phil

denisegoldberg · February 22, 2010

philx123 wrote:

So do you just buy the domain name, or will Blogger somehow let you drop the "Blogger" part of the address and insert the domain name you already have?

Blogger allows use of a custom domain name. So no .blogspot is shown.

If you are using the domain that you are currently using for your smug site, you would need to specify the first part of the URL (instead of the www) as your blog prefix. So for example, http://blog.philip-smith.com. Look at Andy's site as an example: www.moonriverphotography.com. Take a look at the url when you click on his blog.

See blogger help page at http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55373.

--- Denise

ChatKat · February 22, 2010

My blog address is blog.flashfrozenphotography.com

You set up the info via your domain provider and have it point to your blogger address.

philx123 · February 22, 2010

Thanks, Denise, ChatKat, as always much appreciated.

Had a quick look at the turorial, and gave it a try, but according to Godaddy I can only have one www in CNAMES, which is Smugmug, so I'm not sure what to do now.
It's never easy, is it?

All the best
Phil

denisegoldberg · February 22, 2010

philx123 wrote:

THad a quick look at the turorial, and gave it a try, but according to Godaddy I can only have one www in CNAMES, which is Smugmug, so I'm not sure what to do now.

www goes to smug.
You need to set up blog.philip-smith.com to go to your blog.
I've done that with other Godaddy accounts.

The key is you are not setting your primary site www to go to your blog. You are setting essentially a sub-domain.

--- Denise

philx123 · February 22, 2010

denisegoldberg wrote:

www goes to smug.
You need to set up blog.philip-smith.com to go to your blog.
I've done that with other Godaddy accounts.

The key is you are not setting your primary site www to go to your blog. You are setting essentially a sub-domain.

--- Denise

You see, this is where my head starts to hurt.
So do I put "Blog" where I was trying to put "www"? Is that it?

thanks, Phil

denisegoldberg · February 22, 2010

philx123 wrote:

You see, this is where my head starts to hurt.
So do I put "Blog" where I was trying to put "www"? Is that it?

Yes.

www points to domains.smugmug.com
blog points to... follow the link to the blogger help page I referenced earlier. That will tell you what you need to do to complete the blog setup.

If you're having problems with the godaddy pieces you might try calling godaddy. They should be able to help.

--- Denise

philx123 · February 23, 2010

denisegoldberg wrote:

Yes.

www points to domains.smugmug.com
blog points to... follow the link to the blogger help page I referenced earlier. That will tell you what you need to do to complete the blog setup.

If you're having problems with the godaddy pieces you might try calling godaddy. They should be able to help.

--- Denise

Thanks for that, Denise. I did send them an email, just waiting now for a reply, but will have a go anyway with what you've told me and my own sheer dogged incompetence.
All the best.

Phil

philx123 · February 23, 2010

philx123 wrote:

Thanks for that, Denise. I did send them an email, just waiting now for a reply, but will have a go anyway with what you've told me and my own sheer dogged incompetence.
All the best.

Phil

Just to let you know, I got there with your help. I also ran the blog grader, and while the rating isn;t pretty, I did get this:

"It's good that you have your blog hosted on your own domain. This lets you build a reputation with search engines and build a brand as a blogger."
Which means you were right, I didn't have to buy one.

mr peas · February 23, 2010

So I presume you went with blogspot?

I use blogspot, but wordpress.com is also something a lot of people use.
Basically the best way to attract peopel to your blog is just to write a lot of blog! I used to receive plenty of hits when I kept mine updated everyday, its like allosteric regulation, the more you add the more they read. Enjoy and make it interesting!

philx123 · February 23, 2010

mr peas wrote:

So I presume you went with blogspot?

I use blogspot, but wordpress.com is also something a lot of people use.
Basically the best way to attract peopel to your blog is just to write a lot of blog! I used to receive plenty of hits when I kept mine updated everyday, its like allosteric regulation, the more you add the more they read. Enjoy and make it interesting!

Is it really that easy? How do people see it in the first place? I've tried sending it to people, and linking other sites to mine, but I don't think anyone has linked it, or even follows it.

Andy · February 23, 2010

http://blog.moonriverphotography.com/2009/07/power-of-p.html

Blogger blog

philx123 · February 23, 2010

Andy wrote:

http://blog.moonriverphotography.com/2009/07/power-of-p.html

Blogger blog

Yes, I saw your blog and was much impressed.
I'm about to embark on changing the header in my blog to match my website. I almost had it a while back, but then lost it all (luckily only a test page). So back to the drawing board with that one.

mr peas · February 23, 2010

I post random nothings pertaining to anything, for example, I posted a blog about LED bulbs for my car, and when I followed the referrals, it was because of LED bulbs. Now, understand that my audience is not towards LED bulb enthusiasts but what I'm saying is that your subject matter is what attracts people. If you're trying to acquire potential clients, I suggest you post blogs on weddings or other assignments you've recently done. Find something you can use as bait and then reciprocate the results. But the 1st thing you have to do is write write write!

Dedalus77 · February 23, 2010

The keys to getting people to read your blog are to include meaningful tags on all your posts and to have post titles that are searchable. It also helps to go to other people's blogs and post meaningful comments.

ColoradoSkier · February 24, 2010

philx123 wrote:

Is it really that easy? How do people see it in the first place? I've tried sending it to people, and linking other sites to mine, but I don't think anyone has linked it, or even follows it.

Yes, it is that easy. You won't have a lot of traffic at first, but the search engines will find you and become a long term goldmine of traffic. The most popular entries on my site are DIY articles about different gear I have built and used.

Other things you can do to accelerate the traffic:
- Post a link to your article on your Facebook page
- Make a post about your article on Twitter, and use the common hashtags #photo #photography and others as appropriate (did this yesterday for a #lightstalking post and had an IMMEDIATE lift in traffic, but don't abuse #lightstalking)
- Add a link to your blog in your signature at forums like this one.

It's like anything else, you have to market it some. But the biggest key is building that library of content, and it will become a search engine love affair.

Affordable (cheap) business blog host?

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