The truth is blogging takes time… a lot of time. You need to start your blog, consistently and frequently update it, and then have the time and money to promote it. And what if you have a business to run in the meantime? Not to mention, you may not even be a good writer!

Don’t get me wrong, there are many benefits to writing a blog. Namely, you can establish yourself as an expert, educate prospects on your business, and create a dialogue with your customers. Plus, the search engines will love all that blog content… so it can help drive traffic to your website.

But there’s that time commitment again. Figure you’ll put in eight to ten hours a week if you want a successful blog that keeps readers coming back for more. And you may not have much interesting stuff to write about (this is more common than not). Why not take a better approach which offers many of the benefits of blogging without the big time commitment.

Become a blog commenter instead of a blogger.

What’s the difference? You let someone else do the heavy lifting of writing and promoting their blog while you just comment on what they’ve written.

Here’s how to get started:

• Find blogs that your customers read. Target three to five blogs that cater to your customers… and which you’ll enjoy reading and commenting on. Where to begin? Go to blog search engine: www.technorati.com and search keywords you care about.

• Sign up with your real name and URL. Register for each blog using your real name and website URL so readers can get to know you. And guess what? They’ll read your comments and also check out your website.

• Create value for your audience. That’s right. You now have an audience of prospects willing to read your comments. So please make a good impression by writing smart and helpful comments… go ahead and show off your expertise!

• Comment often. Post comments at least once or twice per week (or more!) for each blog you read. Sure, you’ll spend a couple hours every week reading blogs and posting comments… but remember that’s a lot less time than writing your own blog!

• Build relationships with your favorite bloggers. They’ll appreciate your comments and be open to learning about you and your business. So make friends by offering them blog post ideas, feedback, and encouragement (c’mon we all need it!)

Are you ready for the added bonus? Bloggers who get to know you will write about your business… especially when you have interesting news to share. Or said another way… what a wonderful source of free advertising for your business!

So don’t worrying about blogging and start commenting instead.

It doesn’t matter what type of online business you have… just remember it’s all about the content. The text, pictures, and graphics of your website are responsible for informing, engaging, and prompting visitors to stick around and take the actions you care about… like signing up for a newsletter, giving you a call, or buying your products!

Once you realize how important your website content is then my next comment should be obvious: you’re actually a publisher. That’s right… a publisher. Why? Because publishers are always thinking about content and that’s what you need to do too!

Here are some guidelines to help you think like a publisher:

• Keep your target audience in mind. When writing your website copy, always use words and phrases that reflect how your prospects actually talk. When in doubt, just think about the conversations you have every day with people interested in your offerings and write like that. But please no “biz-speak”… you know, a formal tone with lots of big words that no one uses in real life. Unless your target audience really speaks that way.

• Write content that is engaging and personal. Always write in the “active” voice. For example, the phrase: “you can” is more engaging than “enable you to”. See what I mean? And write as if you’re speaking to an actual person. Notice how I use the words “you” and “your” all the time? I could instead use “one” or “a person”… but that’s so darn impersonal.

• Update and add website content often. This keeps prospects coming back to see what’s new and interesting. For example, you can update product pictures on your home page, add customer reviews and testimonials, provide tips and best practices, and even answer more frequently asked questions. Depending on your business, you should update and add content weekly or at least monthly.

• Grammar and formatting are important too. Please, please, please… no grammar or spelling errors. And keep paragraphs short and easy to read with lots of bullet points when it makes sense. Remember, people don’t like to read on the Internet… they browse and scan instead. Make it easy for them and they’ll want to read more!

• Do it yourself or have someone do it for you. There’s no shame in needing help with your content. Maybe you’re not a good writer or graphic designer. Why should you be? Just find someone that is for what you need help with. These days there are many talented people available and affordable too. Need copy writing help? Place an ad on www.freelancewritinggiggs.com, www.elance.com, or www.craigslist.com for starters.

Lots of good content (especially text) is also critical to keeping the search engines happy. And a happy search engine means prospects will find your business when searching the Internet.

The bottom line: when prospects and search engines like your content then a wonderful thing happens… you generate lots of business!

You’re ready to launch your website and have the world beat a path to your door. But how will you know if any visitors show up? Maybe you’ve been advertising your site but not getting many orders and wonder why. Or you just changed your homepage and aren’t sure of the impact. What can you do in each of these situations?

Answer: use your web analytics software to gain insight into what’s happening with your website. Simple enough… but wait… you’re using web analytics for your website right? Okay, so maybe you aren’t using web analytics software and don’t even understand what it is or why it’s important.

Let’s first explain what web analytics is with a simple analogy. Think how hard it would be to drive a car if you had no dashboad. That’s right. No speedometer, gas gauge, warning lights, etc. Sure you could still drive but… you get the idea!

So consider web analytics the dashboard for your website. And though the phrase “web analytics” sounds complicated it’s really not. I mean it can be if you have a complex website with thousands of pages. But that’s probably not the case here. Instead, just realize that web analytics represents a set of online reports (again, dashboard) which can help you understand the following:

• How many visitors came to my site?
• Where did these visitors come from?
• How long did they stay?
• What did they do while on my site?

This is important data if you want to get your arms around how your website is performing.

Now let’s talk about where you can get web analytics for your site. If you do a search for “web analytics software” you’ll discover there are lots of choices. We’ll make it easy. Go with Google Analytics. It’s not only first class web analytics software but it’s also free of charge!

Having said that, you still need to get Google Analytics installed on your website. This is fairly easy if you’re familiar with HTML. Otherwise, my advice is to have someone else do it for you. Usually the technical folks where you’re hosting your site can help. Google itself also lists authorized vendors who can lend a hand. And expect to pay a couple hundred dollars to get it going but it can cost more to set up if you want all the bells and whistles the software has to offer.

In any case, you should be up and running (and reviewing charts) within a day or so. And once you start seeing the online reports… you’ll wonder how your website lived without them!

Looking at the home page was giving me a headache since there were so many words to read. So I (politely) asked the question: “What were your thoughts in having so much text on your new home page?” The answer: “We optimized it for search.” And no surprise… fewer online orders were coming in.

Yes, optimizing for search engines by adding keywords to home page copy may help you generate more natural search traffic. But please keep in mind the following when you hear the siren’s call of optimizing your home page for search:

• Your home page tells users they’ve come to the right place. And you only have a few seconds to convince visitors that they’ve come to the right place. Your copy plays an important role in doing so. But if users think they need more than a few seconds reading your home page to figure this out… then just say goodbye!

• Your home page is about getting visitors to take an action. You want home page visitors to quickly and easily see your compelling call-to-actions such as “sign up now” or “give us a call”… and your text needs to be finely tuned to drive these actions. Don’t make users think the call-to-action really is “read more words”.

• Your home page is about navigation not keywords. If adding more keywords makes it harder for home page visitors to see your “shop” tab, notice the “contact us” link, or find the “search” box, then don’t do it. Don’t. You’ll only be making it more difficult for everyone… especially yourself!

• Your home page entices users to spend time with you. Remember the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words? And pictures are much more engaging and inviting than words. Too many websites act as if this rule no longer applies… simply because the words are now search engine optimized. Not so!

So go ahead and sprinkle the keywords that are most important to your online business into your home page copy. But if it comes at the cost of usability then it’ll do more harm than good. Just remember: optimize your home page for results not search!

I was recently chatting with a business owner who needed help marketing her e-commerce website. It cost $10,000 to develop and had a nice design, lots of dynamic pictures, and an integrated shopping cart. It was also search engine optimized with a home page that included the most relevant keywords. I was looking forward to helping out and asked the obvious question: “What’s the budget to market your site?” She said: “A couple hundred bucks a month.” Huh?

Turns out she basically spent all her money developing and keyword optimizing her website… and now had very little left to market it. Why? Because she thought the search engines would find her site (remember, it was search engine optimized) and the resulting Web traffic would guarantee her business taking off. Not much I can do to help now…

Here are some suggestions to make sure this situation doesn’t happen to you:

• Understand that natural search takes time. I don’t care how search engine optimized your website is. It will still take (a long) time before the search engines find you, other website owners link to your site, and your site listing moves up the natural search ranking so that prospects can find you when searching on the keywords you care about.

• Use a 50/50 budgeting approach. Sure, every situation is different, but as rule of thumb, you should expect to spend on marketing at least what you do in developing your website. So if you budget to spend $2,500 in creating your site then you need that much (if not more) for marketing your site. That means you need a total budget of $5,000. Does that make you rethink how much you should spend on your website? Good.

• Please… no bells and whistles. A simple website that meets your basic needs is what you’re looking for. Forget the “bells and whistles” since most of your visitors won’t even care about them. For example, if your goal is to “get the phone to ring” then a website that describes your service, tells why you’re great, and prominently displays your phone number is all you need to start.

• Don’t spend a lot on SEO. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of search engine optimization. With that said, if your website doesn’t have lots of content to begin with then there’s only so much you can do to keyword optimize it. Instead, buy an SEO book with great reviews on Amazon, put in practice what you learn, and then use the thousands of dollars you save on marketing your website.

With dollars in hand, you now have money to spend on generating Web traffic for your site!