better understand why, it’s important to understand two things: 1. What an authority website is An authority site has high credibility and high search results placement. Think of it like a person that can be trusted to give you what you’re looking for. Google places a lot of emphasis on authority websites. Typically an authority site has lots and lots of inbound links because other sites on the net are pointing to it as an authority. 2. Alexa Traffic Rank <– click on the link to get their toolbar Alexa ranks how popular a website is. This ranking also helps google to determine how trusted the information on the site is likely to be. If you plan on getting paid advertisers on your site, the higher your Alexa Rating, the more they’re willing to pay to advertise on your site. This youtube video does a great job explaining Alexa and a couple other tools: So how do these two things play into your decision on where you blog….IF your intent is to make $ blogging or to build any kind of online business? It’s the difference of opening a brick and mortar shop in a busy downtown area or deciding to open your business out in the middle of nowhere – location…location…location! People need to be able to FIND your Blog or other online business In the video you just watched, you heard him say one of his website was ranked 109,000; another 280,000 and the third that he’d just opened the week before was ranked at 1,000,000. That doesn’t sound very impressive – unless you have a site like I have that I started last summer – http:// www.tellingyournewstory.com/ and it’s Alexa ranking is still at 13,254,125. I didn’t only build my business in a remote location, mine is on an island……and if traffic is any indication, I’m the only one living on that island I built it on the WordPress platform. WordPress is a fantastic tool, this site you’re on now is using WordPress. When I made the decision to start blogging, I could have added a blog page to that site and blogged there…..but somebody would have had to swim out to it. There wasn’t a chance it was getting “stumbled upon” on the internet. I would have had to do some serious Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to it to get it seen – and I knew nothing about SEO. If you build it they will come…or not? I think you can understand by now – this isn’t the case. If we use the brick and mortar example again, starting your blog from scratch is the same as starting a business offline from scratch. You need to get listed in the yellow pages, run ads in the local paper, send out mailers – anything you can to get your name in front of people. What if instead, you purchased a business that already had a healthy following? That’s what you’d be doing if you decided to start your blog on an authority site like the Empower Network. When we start a blog here, our blog becomes a sub domain of the Empower Network – allowing us to take advantage of this sites power. Here is a snapshot of my Alexa ranking on the Empower Network: Based on what you just learned about an authority site (lots and lots of inbound links) and the Alexa Ranking, I think you can start to understand the benefits of choosing to blog here if you want your message to get out. With a ranking of 516 and 38,293 links in, you’re way ahead of the game the minute you start blogging here. If you check the Alexa Ranking for Google’s free blogging platform, or WordPress – they’re also authority domains. So why aren’t we part of that when we get a blog going there? Why is my other site listed at 13 million after more than 6 months and this one was at 516 on day one when they’re both using the WordPress platform? Because when we set up a blog here, it’s set up so our blog becomes a sub-domain of the Empower Network blogging system, allowing us to benefit from the power of their site. There are 10′s of thousands of people blogging on this domain each day, sharing their blogs on the social media sites, linking their blogs to other sites. Each day that goes by with thousands of people blogging on it, linking to it, it becomes an even more powerful place to be if you want your message to be heard. Only you can decide if the power of the platform is worth the $25.00 a month it costs to get a blog here Not sure what to blog ABOUT? I was in the same boat. In my case, I was trying to build an online presence for my business and blogging was a necessary