Blogging and the Innkeeper (including the Small Business Owner

There has been much discussion regarding Blogging. Please take a moment to read the information below to become more familiar with…
• What is a Blog?
• Why Blog?
• How to Blog with SEO in mind.
• Blog Product / Services Comparison
• Fallacies regarding WordPress vs. Google Blogger
• Final Advice and Comments

What is a Blog?
A Blog (a contraction of the term "weblog") is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a Blog.
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

Why Blog?
The main reason Acorn recognizes for an Innkeeper or Small Business Owner to Blog is ROI (Return on Investment). If you establish your Blog properly following the step-by-step instructions from this attachment, and maintain it weekly at a minimum, and create your Blog Posts with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in mind, your Blog will work at its optimum ROI level (listed below) with minimal time and cost investment.
a) Increase your Page Count in Search Engines such as Google.
b) Increase your Inbound Links to your Website, which increases your web presence popularity.
c) Be found for the topic spoken about in the Blog as an individual search result in Search Engines such as Google.
All 3 of these results will increase your ROI because not only are you publishing additional information to be seen on the search engines, but your Blog is building stronger presence for your original Web site.
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How do you Blog with SEO in mind?
Just as we are able to prove that a well written, search term infused Post Title and Content will get higher placement in the search engines, we also know that innkeepers do not have time to waste doing anything on a consistent manner that doesn’t add to the bottom line. Process for writing a good Post…
a) Choose your topic
b) Go to a Search Term lookup tool and see what the human Web surfers are typing in regards to your topic. Free Products are available such as: http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html or https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Example: Pretend you are an inn in Breckenridge, Colorado, and want to write a Blog Post on the Arts Festival. So you simply go to one of the Search Term Lookup Tools and key in Breckenridge Art Festival. What you will see returned are things like: breckenridge july art festival, breckenridge arts festival and breckenridge art festival. Now you have exact match phrases to include in your Post so you know you are targeting the right key phrases. It’s a short, but very important step so that you are going to get the highest return on your investment of time.
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Blog Products / Services Comparison
Many blogging products are available to the small business / innkeeper Blogger, including Google Blogger, Typepad, WordPress, and many more.
Currently, Acorn customers are experiencing high success with no ongoing maintenance cost using the Google Blogger product. Products such as WordPress are noted for being FREE Open Source products, but if you (or your webmaster) install this product on your Web server, it requires maintenance. That maintenance may be included in your monthly Hosting Fees, or it may be separated out. But it is not truly FREE. Anytime any type of software is loaded on your server, it must be maintained from time to time by someone. So be careful to discuss the definition of FREE with your service provider. The cost may be absorbed elsewhere, possibly in hosting or maintenance fees, but it is definitely not FREE.


WORDPRESS HOSTED VERSION

WordPress allows you to keep your Blog posts directly on your web server as a subdirectory of your web site.
WordPress typically stores their posts as follows.
Example: http://www.innname.com/blog
Pros: You or your webmaster has complete control of your Blog storage, but keep in mind that cost is incurred somewhere for that maintenance.

Cons: If you have your WordPress Blogs stored on your server, should your WordPress be hacked, not only are your Blog posts in jeopardy, so are your web site files when your Blog posts are stored on the same server as your web site. You are at the mercy of your hosting company for maintaining appropriate security, backups, hacker clean-up and restoration of your site and Blog files. Such cleanup usually includes downtime of both your Blog and web site.

The Chart below shows the number of recorded Vulnerabilities into WordPress per year.
Platform 2005 2006 2007 2008
WordPress 11 18 49 34

Reference Site Link
Is WordPress vulnerable to Hackers? You be the judge. In version 2.7.1 automatic updates are available, but Hackers will more than likely find a way in to that version just as they have with all previous versions. Software Security is only as good until the next hack.
If you consider web pages as an indicator to Security issues between the two products, try this…
Go to Google and type in the search box:
• WordPress Security Issues
(35+ million results)
• Google Blogger Security Issues
(1+ million results)

GOOGLE BLOGGER

Google stores your Blog Posts on Google Servers. Using the CNAME setup Google treats your Blog posts as if they ARE part of your site, but keeps them physically off your server. Keeping your posting software off-server is a much safer choice at this current time, until WordPress becomes more stable to vulnerability hacks. See Chart to left.
We DO NOT recommend using “Google Blogger Blogspot” setup. Example: http://innname.blogspot.com This will not connect your posts to your Web site. The way for that to happen is to set up a CNAME resulting in a sub domain Blog.
Example: http://blog.innname.com This is proven to work well, and possibly better than storing your Blog posts in a subdirectory off your main Web site. It is also following Google’s lead with all their sub domain systems such as: http://maps.google.com, http://images.google.com and so forth.
Pros: You do not pay for maintenance to Google for storage or for upgrade maintenance issues. Google Blogger also provides efficient download of all Blog Posts to your own hard-drive for backup precautions which takes 5 minutes. You then are in control, not Google or your webmaster. You will have copies of your Blog at your fingertips when you backup.
If Google Blogger gets hacked, which is more rare than WordPress, it WILL NOT cause your Web site to go offline because they are not physically on the same server.
Cons: Some people believe that Google has too much power already and that they might try to “control” your content or take your Blog posts off line. There are many discussions to this topic. Here’s the bottom line. If you are told this is the reason WordPress is the better choice, ask the company saying that: Do you host your own Web Statistics? Or, do you use Google Analytics? If they don’t host them on their own server (most do not), then they are already trusting Google to handle their customers’ Web stats. If they trust Google for storing and managing their Web stat data, then they have no argument in regards to trusting Google with their Blogger post data. Same Company, Same Rules.

Final Advice and Comments
Acorn supports and hosts hundreds and hundreds of customers on our numerous servers. We take security issues very seriously and hesitate to jump at installing product, no matter how well marketed that product may be, when there is a less expensive and equally useful alternative available to benefit our customers’ bottom line.
This is not to say we think either WordPress or Google Blogger is necessarily “better” for our innkeepers’ bottom ROI needs. But, we hesitate on the side of caution on behalf of our clients to not install a product that will add overhead to their current low hosting fees. And don’t be fooled. Competitors may say WordPress is FREE, but that’s simply not true. It’s no different than winning a new car in the lottery. You get to take the car home clear and free, but you still have to put gas in it, pay for insurance and maintenance.
So, until we are more comfortable with the WordPress Security track record or Google Blogger is proven not to have the functionality needed by our innkeepers -- based on our experience being both 9-year veteran innkeepers and currently owners of Acorn Internet Services, we choose to take the conservative path at this time.

http://bloggerorwordpress.blogspot.com/2009/07/blogger-vs-wordpress-blogs-1st-2nd.html