Five years ago, if you wanted to start an authority site, your best bet was to build a portal with a specialized directory at its core. Three years ago, you were better off starting a forum with a resource section attached to it. Last year, your top bet was a feed-enabled content management system, especially as more parts of content management systems began to have content feeds related to them. (I have 12 feeds for each of my PHP-Nuke based sites, though they don't work as well with Google Tap.)

Now, if you want to be expert, you want to start a blog.

If you're blogging consistently, you have a hub of information collected that will inspire return traffic. You have a collection of links to articles, sites, and tools. You can constantly write up your own opinion editorials on each of these items, as well as fact-based analysis of news and events that can help your audience make better choices.

As blog software matures you can now categorize, and alphabetize your links, and with ability to ping multiple sources as well as leave trackback links to other sites, you can send your readers through a ring of related, freshly updated information that ultimately leads back to you.

Spend less money on advertising as your blog becomes more popular

I can’t promise you that you’ll never spend another red cent on advertising costs. However, amount of free advertising you get from having your blog link or RSS feed listed in dozens of search engines and directories, and popping up in feed readers is not to be underestimated.

You’ll probably still want to do some ezine advertising when your new ebook or software release is debuted. But you may not need to buy as much advertising or purchase as often.

Then there is fact that many newsletters that are also published to RSS feeds have wider reach. I’ve found that it’s worth extra money to appear in both versions – ask your favorite publisher for details. For publications that allow this, it’s normally only 20% extra

Save money by retaining visitors

You’ve probably heard a thousand times that it is easier to sell repeatedly to an existing client than it is to find a new one. So how do you get that visitor to come back, and possibly buy again?

A constant stream of new information on a particular topic work is enough to keep people buying a daily newspaper, subscribing to a magazine or viewing a television series.

Frequent updates can work same way for your site.

With bloggers being named People of Year by Time magazine last year, if you’re not blogging in 2005, you’re going to be left in dust by other sites in your industry that do. It doesn’t have to take up a lot of extra time, and time it does takes is made up for in money you can save.

Some directories ask a fee for inclusion. If you can afford a few, we highly recommend it, as this will count big time towards your search engine rankings. Be careful not to submit you site to insignificant, low traffic directories - go for big ones. A proper internet search will put you on track of better ones.

Step 2 : Acquiring relevant links to your site

In essence this boils down to establishing better reciprocal links. You will do this over a period of weeks, months and even years. Put an amount of time every week aside for this purpose. It will be a very good investment in end ! This long term link-acquiring program will eventually yield dividends. The trick lies in finding sites related to yours, but not directly in competition with your site or target audience.

You will need to "show cause" to other site owner why it's advantageous to link to yours. Start by compiling a curtious email link request message that you can use over and over. Make message personal by addressing it to a specific person whenever possible. Remember, more relevant links pointing towards your site, higher your search engine rankings will be. Coupled to good related content, it will not surprise me if you eventually reach a number 1 position on a major search engine for more than one keyword phrase !!