Remember the great marketing strategy I wrote about some time back — the blog. Now there is even more fun, more bang for your buck, so to speak. I’m talking about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube — all the fun applications that can boost your site ranking, create a whole online community just for you — inspire people to follow you, to see what you have to say. Stay tuned — coming soon is a whole series on how these tools can work for you, should work for you! Brought to you by LisaDesigns . . .

And also, coming soon — All Things Fun in the Black Hills!

Why indeed? Let me tell you why — because blogs are like internet gold, that’s why. What? What am I talking about “internet gold”? What could I possibly mean? Well, hang tight. I’m going to tell you.

Blogs are the secret to getting to the top of the search engine rankings. And that, as we have discussed before, is the way to a successful website.

But how do they work, these blogs? And why is a blog so important to ranking?

Think of it this way. A blog is a frequently updated, naturally search-engine friendly addition to your website. Blogs are text-rich, link-rich and have very little extraneous HTML. It’s like candy for search engines. They love it.

Check this out. If I write a blog post about Rapid City — anything about Rapid City, South Dakota and start blogging away about this or that thing that is happening in Rapid City and how happy we are in Rapid City and how Rapid City is the best city to live in ever — how many times have I written about Rapid City? How many times have I spelled out R-a-p-i-d C-i-t-y? And how many chances have I given a search engine to find me using the search terms Rapid City? What if I did a blog post a month or a week or twice a week and talk a little about Rapid City? All of those posts get indexed in my blog forever. How many times have I mentioned Rapid City then? It’s like compounding interest for my blog. Pretty soon I have my place cemented at the top of Google’s searches for Rapid City. Lucky me. Smart me.

Wait a minute, you say. If I have a blog what am I going to talk about? What could I possibly have to say that would be interesting? Really, it doesn’t matter. What have I written about so far in this blog? You know about marketing your site, how to resize images, SEO optimization, Friday Fun links to Matt Harding and how to configure your kid’s laptop. Sure all those posts have useful information for you (except maybe Matt Harding) But that isn’t really the point of the blog. Does the content have to be useful, entertaining, engaging? Well, it helps. I am sure people are coming to this site to find out a few things about the specific information I offer. But all that is a bonus for my readers.

The truth is, content wise, it really doesn’t matter– as long as I keep blogging I can talk about underwater basket weaving for all Google cares. I’ll end up being ranked #1 for underwater basket weaving in Rapid City — I mean, come on, how cool is that?

Seriously, what is going to happen is that when they search for a web developer in Rapid City, I am going to be right up there at the top. And that, my friends, is really internet gold.

Updated to add: You’re gonna love this — go to www.google.com and type in underwater basket weaving Rapid City.

The Fedex man came today! This is a big deal around here. No, not because I am THAT starved for company, it’s because he was bringing my new computer system! And it’s a beauty. I finally made the jump to Vista. I thought I would be regretting this, but so far I’ve been very happy with the switch. For someone as visual as I am it is really cool to see the windows fade in and out with the nice ghosting effect. I spent a lot of time picking out my new system and deciding what to add onto it. After all that, I wrote this post the other day and placed it on my personal blog. I felt it was worth repeating here:

I work as a web developer, and in light of this, I’ve been buying top of the line computers for the past 10 years, upgrading every 3 years or so.

As I am sure you can guess, reading blogs is something I spend a lot of time doing. I was running through my normal blogroll the other day, and an article on upgrading your computer at Cash Money Life caught my attention. He recommends not buying the extended warranty on a computer. I beg to differ, and here is why:

My first internet connection was modem based, and something was really wonky with our phone line. I kept blowing out the modem on my system. Because I did buy the extended warranty, Dell sent a guy out to my house to replace that modem no less than five times. Definitely paid for itself on that system.

Next system. Somehow acquired a virus. Wiped out everything. Again, they sent a guy out to repair, wipe clean and re-install all my stuff. Even recovered the data on the hard drive. Cost to me? zilch. Paid for the warranty again.

Next system. Booted up to hard-drive failure. No idea why. The next day the guy came out again with a new hard drive, salvaged my data and I was good to go.

Finally, my laptop. I agonized over whether to get the “accidental if you drop it or if it is stolen we will replace it” warranty. I did, and was kicking myself thereafter for spending the money in a “moment of sales pitch weakness”. Until. Until lightning hit our house. Hit just as I was reaching behind the laptop to unplug it. The surge went through two surge protectors to fry my system, and I felt the “Zap” run up my arm. The computer? Totally dead. Can you guess? Yep, brand spanking new system in two days. Even recovered my data.

I am not here as a sales pitch for the extended warranty although it may look like it. I just felt it was important to maybe get another perspective on this. I never buy extended warranties for anything: cameras, cars, TVs. But, because my computer is my livelihood I made the choice to go that route on the computer every time. So far it has been a good choice.