A website that sells ordinary household products has shown how blogging can be good for business. Alice.com launched in June and by July had doubled its traffic to 387,000 unique visitors – and apparently most of this traffic came from word-of-mouth blogs.

While other social media networks, such as Twitter and Facebook, no doubt also contributed, it was blogger.com that was found to be the biggest traffic driver. Blogger accounted for 18% of Alice.com’s referral traffic in July, and that’s before other blogging sites were taken into account.

Of course, to get valuable blog traffic you need to give bloggers something to talk about, and obviously Alice.com – an American site that sells items such as toothpaste, nappies and washing powder straight from the manufacturers – has something that many people find worth talking about.

However, it’s worth remembering that Alice.com will need to keep consumers happy. It would be just as easy for the site to become unpopular if dissatisfied consumers started blogging negative reactions.

Still, this site does go to show the power of blogging as an e-commerce business driver.

Blogging is big – but good blogging is not as easy at it might seem. And if you do not write a good blog then no-one is going to bother to come back to read more. So, in the end, one badly-written blog can be the end of the start of your blogging career.

And, remember, that a good blog with a strong following can also be the basis of a great business website.

Here are the top tips for writing the perfect blog.

Keep it relevant: If you’re writing a fitness blog, or a fashion blog, or a design blog, keep your postings relevant. The type of people that follow your blog will want to read about your topic area, and not about your latest domestic fiasco or the colour of your new car. (Unless, of course, you are writing a blog about domestic fiascos or car colours!)

The title: A title is like a label on your blog posting and the more specific and interesting it is the more people will want to read it. Think about how the title will look as a standalone item on an RSS feed.

For starters: Give the first line or two some impact. The more engaging the first line is, the more chance you have of people reading on.

What’s the point?: Make sure there is a point to your posting, rather than allowing the post to become a general ramble. It’s best to have a start, a middle and a finish to all postings.

Make it happen: Encourage readers to interact with your blog by posting a comment.   The more dedicated blog followers you have the better.

Quality control: Just like when you were at school, always read over what you have written and check for punctuation, spelling and grammar mistakes. Many readers are put off by a poorly written posting, even if it is an informal blog.

Keep on talking: If someone comments on your blog then take the time to talk back. Dialogue is the key to a good blog following.

Keep on blogging: Many bloggers start well but then they quickly run out of steam and only blog every once in a while. A good blogger will keep their site regularly updated with relevant and interesting postings. While this does take time it is worth the effort in terms of blogging disciples.

A new study reports that women keep their personal and business lives separate when it comes to social media. According to the 2009 Women in Social Media Study, while women see blogs as a good source of info about products and purchases, most (75%) use social networks solely for keeping in touch with family and friends.

The survey also revealed that a third of women who use social networks are loyal to just one, for example Facebook or Twitter.

In another revelation, it appears that following a purchase women bloggers are twice as likely to share a positive purchase experience on blogs and message boards and about 40% more likely to share a negative experience.

So Google Blog Search has changed the way it indexes content.

Instead of  indexing content from RSS feeds, the search now focuses on full content from pages.

According to those in the know at Google the indexing change has “improved the results for a lot of queries, both because we have the full content of the page and because we extract links that are missing from the feeds”.

But change rarely comes without a niggle or two. Some users have reported problems in a Google Groups post when a person’s blog name drew results based on blogroll content, too.

The Google team member does admit that “there have been occasional complaints about the use of the feed content, particularly the problem with partial feeds”.

Google also revealed that it had expected some problems from blogroll matches, but that they “may have underestimated the impact on searches using the link: operator or where the query matches a blog or blogger’s name”.

However, Google is working on fixing this glitch and plans to use the full-page content for searches, but exclude the content that isn’t actually part of the post.

The search engine supremo is hoping to have the problem sorted by the end of this year.

If you write a web article or a blog first and then throw on a headline you could be making a huge mistake.

According to research on average 80% of people will read a headline, but only 20% will read the rest of the copy. Therefore, what you write in your headline has the power to attract or put off readers.

Listen to the facts

In some cases a good headline could be the difference between a few hits and hundreds of thousands.

An example of this was an article on Condomunity (www.condomunity.com) reporting statistics showing 19 countries and their respective prices for Durex condoms.

The headline on the site read: “Cheap Condoms, Expensive Condoms”.

But then another website, Environmental Graffiti picked up the story and changed the headline to “World’s Most Expensive Places to Have Sex”.

Now doesn’t the second headline seem so much more enthralling and interesting?

It certainly proved to be the case: While Condomunity received five to 10 visits a day for their headline, Environmental Graffiti had 100,000 visits and 3000 links in three weeks.

First impressions count

A headline is the first, and perhaps the only, impression you will make on a prospective reader and without a great headline or post title the rest of your article may as well not even exist.

So, it’s vital that you write your headline first, before you embark on the full article.

Your headline will also gain a wider audience if you make it strong and focused. Ideally the header should sum up the story in a concise and compelling way with minimum words but maximum impact.

It is not necessary to be clever or smart with a headline – and the puns that you’d most often see in tabloid newspapers do not usually work on the internet where you have only a few seconds to grad a reader’s attention.

And don’t lie. A headline that promises something but then fails to deliver in the copy will not have a reader coming back to your site.

How to write a headline

The best way to write a headline is to keep it simple. Tell the reader what it is you want to sell, write about, inform them about.

Seven of the best headline styles:

Direct headline: Get straight to the point.

Eg. Car for sale – £6,000

Indirect headline: It’s more subtle but very intriguing.

Eg. Tesco Butter Up Young Shoppers

News headline: This informs the reader about a current hot topic or must-read news item.

Eg. SNP leader Alex Salmond interview

What Google’s Matt Cutts see in 2009

Company sues Google over copyright infringement

“How to” headline: Everyone wants to know “how to” do something new.

Eg How to write a winning headline

Question headline: This asks a question but also prompts the reader to empathise with the topic.

Eg. Would you ask a stranger where he bought his cowboy boots?

Are you ready to become a singing superstar?

“Ways to” headline: These are intriguing to a reader because they offer a list and

added value.

Eg. 20 ways to stuff a turkey

Quote headline: These offer a testimonial, and therefore make readers feel there is more to a product or a topic.

Eg. “I wouldn’t eat any other kid of egg,” says Jamie Oliver

“I swear by xxxx tennis balls,” confesses Venus Williams

“WebCreationUK is top of my Santa list,” says Bill Gates

Get the headline right and 80% of people will read on. Get it wrong and you’ve lost 20% of web visitors. Try it and see.