To Blog or Not to Blog.. and where?

"Blogger Bashing" is quite the rage these days. Just ask around in any forum and you'll hear a loud choir of voices saying that Blogger blogs are yesterday's news. That they're only for newbies or people who are too "technically challenged" to set up a "real" blog, like WordPress.

So you want to start a blog! You have a topic in mind..be it a "mommy blog", political, entertainment, sports, hot topic, marketing or sales...you have a name picked out and have ideas for your first posts all set..but the big question you must answer first.. Where to host it.?? When I first started blogging on Blogger lots of people told me I'll never do well in the blogging world because I use Blogger. To be a "real" or "serious" blogger, you have to have it hosted on a real server, like Word Press or such..or have your own domain for your blog. I have several domains, but none that I want to host my blog on. First of all, I'd have to sign up for a service and pay for it. Why would I want to do that? I'm financially challenged enough as it is..and plus Blogger makes it sooo easy and quick to set up and get your blog ready to roll.

People will tell you Blogger is dead and you're not a real Blogger if you use it..
But guess what? They're wrong! Dead wrong.

You see, the Blogger snobs tend to leave out one simple undeniable fact... that Blogger is owned by Google, the king of search engines.

So... If you're a smart blogger, and whether you're looking to have a personal blog or a marketing blog, and you're looking to get your web pages spidered, indexed and have lots of keyword rich backlinks pointing back to those pages...which makes more sense? Creating blogs owned by the biggest search engine in the world..the ones who process more than 100 million searches per day... or creating blogs that let you use themes and plugins?

Blogger used to be a lot plainer, with a lot less bells and whistle options, but the new Blogger has all kinda things. It's still not that simple to make it look all fancy and pretty, unless you really know what you're doing, or pay someone to make a template for you, but it has some very much improved options, that make it pretty dang comparable to what you'll get in the other blog services..and much simpler to figure out and navigate for the inexperienced user. If you want pretty with skinnable skins and lots of plugins..then maybe you need to look at another service..but if you want a simple, easy to use format that will be indexed quickly by Google and consequently many other search engines, much easier and faster than with the other services, and really, that will be how you get traffic, and that will be how lots of people will find you.. not to mention the surfers who use the blog surf feature..then Blogger is the way to go.

Remember, if you think for a single solitary moment, that Google isn't going to give more love to one of their own... then you are sadly mistaken. They have spent more than a years' time and tens of millions of dollars upgrading the entire Blogger platform..you will be indexed, and gain valuable traffic from being with Blogger.

These days, it's a given that blogs should be an integral part of any online marketing effort. They are SEO friendly, offer rapid indexing and inclusion... and are a great way to get your other domains spidered.