With a massive audience of blog readers and 175,000 new blogs launching every day on the internet, this new global phenomenon can be used as a great way to drive traffic to your site.

By design, blogs quickly and easily attract traffic. The instant you publish a blog on the internet, search engines automatically search for keywords and update the public for you. Here are some great ways that you can use your blogs to attract traffic.

Long Tail Keywords are specific words or phrases related to the topic of your blog post. It is important to keep from using generic or broad terms that will put you in direct competition with larger businesses. For example, if you are writing a post about wine tasting in Florence, Italy, using a keyword such as “travel” would bring up large travel sites such as Travelocity.com. Rather, use a whole phrase that is more specific to your topic – something like “wine tasting in Florence.” With long tail keywords, your post is more likely to show up in a search.

Onlywire is a service that lets you automatically bookmark your blog post on multiple sites that generate a lot of traffic. Once you subscribe to the free service, click a button on your browser, enter in some keywords, and submit. Your content and articles will be distributed to the web's top social networking sites and available for millions of readers to view.

Leave Blog Comments with your link on other blogs in your niche that receive high traffic. To find these high traffic blogs in your niche, simply run a Google search on your topic. When you leave a comment, use an enticing name or keyword so that people are inclined to click. Make sure your comment is both useful and thoughtful, and not just “spam” so that you aren’t blocked from leaving comments in the future.

Press Releases made up of valuable content can be great for generating traffic. If you fill your press release with information that is actually of importance to people, then it can spread around the internet rapidly. The best way to find valuable content is to poll your readers on what they want to see and then compile the data.

I responded by asking him if he had tested his web site for conversion.  It turns out that his web site is not yet live – it is in production and will be produced by a friend at no cost.   I just took a look and, yes, the domain is registered, and the "in production" version of the site is there.  The designer is using a template downloaded from Free Website Templates, and the site looks to be about 10% complete.

Now let me stop right here and say that I have nothing against a free website template.   In my view money spent on expensive design is often money wasted as one can have a very effective web site with a free template that displays good content.

My point here is simply that before my friend even thinks of signing on for $3,000 per month of pay per click traffic, he needs to have a live web site up and running and he needs to test that site to verify that live visitors are responding appropriately.  If live visitors don't like your site, and if they don't follow the path that you have set out for them, you are wasting your money with paid advertising.

I explained to my friend my concerns about marketing for personal injury online and that in my view his target ought to be the "researcher" type who will spend hours online looking for a vendor who will provide extensive information.

I also suggested to my friend that he should capture names and email and add a sequential autoresponder to his site to communicate with past, present and future clients.

Now, my friend is a very smart and successful lawyer.  But this episode shows that even smart, savvy, trained minds can fall prey to the hype of a good salesman and the excitement of wanting to tap into the Internet gold rush.  My friend needs to either educate himself about how the Internet might work for his practice or he needs to associate a consultant like me to advise him.  Otherwise the $9,000 he plans on spending will do him no good at all.