Plain and simple, a blog can help your business; even people who are not bloggers understand the power of blogs.  If you’re thinking about starting an internet business without a blog… Think Again!

Most searches on the internet are informational based, and blogs help quench the thirst for information and knowledge by providing visitors with topical information on demand.

Plus, blogs have a host of other benefits.

One in particular is the power to boost your rankings in the SERPs (search engine results pages) by providing fresh unique content that’s regularly updated.

Also, blogs allow visitors the opportunity to interact with the author of the blog and the community on a social level; this increases confidence and trust amongst visitors to your site.

Probably, the greatest underlying factor of owning a blog is its ability to generate hordes of traffic on autopilot.

You see… a newsworthy blog has the potential to go viral and absolutely swamp your server, even if your site is not ranked high in the search engines.

When you make a post that’s creative and controversial on an interactive platform — watch out — readers will begin to link to your site, bookmark it, and recommend it to friends, family, and other members in the community.

If this happens, you’ll experience an increase in organic rankings, and an unbelieveable traffic surge for free.

Alright, we’ve established that blogs are very important to a site, and play a major role in customer loyalty and traffic spikes.

However, there is one dilemma… not many people like writing articles.

Many website owners would rather spend their time on something else, besides writing articles that take 2 to 3 hours to perfect.

And… plagiarism or copying articles from directories, without leaving the links in place, is frowned upon and could easily get you into trouble… worst case scenario; a hefty fine and jail time.

So what are the other options?

Well — for starters — if you hate writing articles and you can’t afford to hire people to write… then don’t.

Get free articles from the public domain.  This will eliminate the problem of plagiarism and copyright infringements associated with using other folks work.

Public domain articles are free to the public, for public use, and you can do whatever you want with them.

For example, edit them as you please, place them on your website, or put them in your newsletter for distribution.

Just remember to choose articles that are relevant to your site, and be sure to do your homework on the public domain so you don’t violate any of the rules.

I know you’re probably jumping for joy, but hold your horses, there is a downside to public domain articles.

The problem is they are free for everybody, and many of your competitors may have access to them as well.

Now this is a problem because duplicate content raises a red flag with the searchbots, the little spider like creatures that crawl and review websites, and every site needs to be original and unique.

So, here’s what you must do.

Edit about 30% of the content and place your keywords and keyword phrases into the content to make it better.

I know this requires a little work, but it’s better than starting from scratch.

Another easy way to get content is to allow other sites, that are relevant to yours, to submit articles to your site.

However, this would only augment your existing content, because these articles would be linking to other sites.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of placing other people’s articles on my site, but if you don’t like writing this is a legitimate strategy.

O.K… Here’s one option that’s gives you great bang for your buck.

Hire an article writer.

You can get good articles that are keyword rich for pennies on the dollar.

The investment is well worth it, because you hold copyrights to the articles, and you’ll be able to use them anyway you want.

It doesn’t get any easier than that.

Now, go out an build your first blog and make your mark in cyberspace.