The popularity of weblogs or blogs has gotten a lot of attention from the media recently. In fact, "blog" was picked as the word of the year by Merriam-Webster, a U.S. dictionary publisher.

There are many ways you can start your own blog. One of the easiest ways to set up your own blog is to use Google's free Blogger.com (http://www.blogger.com).

Blogger lets you choose and customize your blog template. With just a few tweaks, you can easily integrate your blog into your existing website. By doing that you can also use Blogger as a website builder.

Here are 8 good reasons why you should consider using Blogger to build your website:

1. A sitemap is instantly generated for you. Each page you create automatically gets added to the list of created pages either on the left or right sidebar. All the individual pages are linked from the main page and link back to the main page. This link structure is optimized for the search engines. You can change the title to read "Sitemap" instead of "Previous Posts" which is the default setting.

2. Get your pages spidered quickly. Do you have a website that has been created for months and you're still waiting for the search engines to index it? Believe it or not, blogs with frequently added content get visits from search engine spiders a lot faster.

3. You can easily change the entire look of your website. Just by changing the main template, you can republish your entire site to have a new look. You don't have to manually change each page.

4. Each page or entry is automatically optimized for the search engines with the appropriate page title.

5. Generate income with Adsense. Adding Adsense to your website is simple. If you have an Adsense account already, you just have to paste the code into the template and the ads will automatically show up on every page.

6. Get more traffic. Submit your "blog" to blog directories. People will find your website through the listings in the appropriate category. Having your blog listed in blog directories also provides your site with backlinks.

7. Automatic notification. Using a free service such as Pingomatic (http://www.pingomatic.com), you can notify the most popular blog directories that you have new pages added to your site.

8. Syndication. With RSS, you can syndicate your blog to many readers. This will help you increase the traffic to your site. You can use a free service such as Feedburner (http://www.feedburner.com). You can also create email or forum signatures that link to your blog.

So start thinking out of the box and look into using Blogger as a niche website builder. If you already have a website, consider creating a blog that complements that website. Use the blog to drive traffic to your main website as well.

Hock Ng is the founder and editor of The Marketing Tools Review website (http://www.marketing-tools-review.com) and newsletter providing tips and tools for internet and affiliate marketers. He also maintains an active marketing blog.