The hype surrounding blogging is absolutely amazing! Everywhere you turn there is another story about the exponential growth in blogging. It seems as if everyone from middle school students to senior citizens have their own blogs and article after article promotes blogs as the internet’s current “big thing.”

The hype is well-deserved. Blogs are not a mere fad and they are an exceptional means by which one can operate a profitable online venture. The reason for the success of blogs is not found in their current “hot” status. Nor is it the byproduct of some other mysterious property. If one looks at the underlying nature of a blog, they will discover why these sites offer so much potential.

At its core, you see, a blog is simply a website. What differentiates it from a traditional static website, however, is its organization and powerful content management system. By examining a blog from this perspective, it is easier to understand why these sites can be so profitable.

It all starts with a single word: content. Content is what makes the internet world go ‘round. Content refers to information and material and it is why people go online in the first place. Surfers are looking for content. They may want to be informed. They may want to be entertained. Regardless of their motivation, however, they are searching for content.

Search engines, in turn, reward content. Google and its cohorts exist with one primary purpose in mind: to deliver surfers to the information for which they are searching. In order to do this, the search engines rely on algorithms that rank the probable value of sites. At the core of these search engine algorithms is the very basic and accurate assumption that sites providing more content on a particular subject are likely to be just what a surfer needs. Thus, content produces better search engine rankings, and thus, more traffic.

Traditional static sites can offer content and can be regularly updated to display new information (another activity smiled upon by the search engines). However, this process can be sufficiently time-consuming and inefficient to make updates less regular than what may be desired. Blogs, on the other hand, feature a design that makes the addition of new content on a regular basis incredibly easy. There is no need to convert text to HTML. There is no requirement to manually upload a revised page to one’s server. Instead, the blogger need only insert their new post and click their mouse. The software that serves as the blogging platform does the rest of the work.

The end result is a content-rich site that offers regularly updated information. The search engines find the material quickly, index blogs regularly, and reward them for their content with higher placement in search engine results.

Those who argue blogs are nothing more than a passing phase and that “blog” is just the buzzword of the moment often fail to understand that the underlying nature of blogs is the real driving force behind their success. One should not be afraid that by blogging they are only attempting to cash in on a passing fad--blogs are a sound way of creating a profitable website quickly and easily.