Blogs are becoming a widely used platform for publishing information on the web. They can be used either to communicate general information or as a marketing tool to promote products and services. Although the blog format has been around for a number of years, the way it is being used is always evolving.

The most distinctive thing about a blog is that it is “content-rich”. Most blogs consist of a number of posts entered on a regular basis. These posts can be short references to some other resource on the net (connected by a link), or long posts which are essentially articles or essays on a specific topic with embedded references to other related sources on the web. This makes them ideal for writers, reporters, journalists, as well as marketers wanting to systematically report on current activities, news of the day, or the features of products.

They are also increasingly used by marketers who want to promote certain products and enhance the search engine exposure of specific websites. If you have a website or are promoting a website on behalf of a client, then planting references to it in blog posts is a very good way of bringing it to the attention of search engines.

Blogs are useful marketing tools because the major search engines pay close attention to them. The structure of blogs makes them easily spreadable, so the major search engines — Google, Yahoo, and MSN, etc. — tend to view them as sources of “news.” The more active a blog is, the more frequently it will be indexed. If a blog contains new posts every day, it will get indexed every day — and sometimes more than once a day.

That means that the information in an active blog will show up in search engine indexes much more quickly than changes made to ordinary static websites. Many people think that simply making a change to their website — for instance, posting a news item on their home page — will result in that chance of being picked up by the search engines. But this is not the case. The search engines can only reflect that change after the site is indexed. And unless a site has a history of being constantly updated, the search engines will only index it occasionally.

Therefore when it comes to influencing the search engines, blogs can serve two useful functions.

First, as we have seen, an active blog gets indexed regularly. So as long as it remains active a blogger can expect a regular visit to their blog from the search engines to see what is being reported. New posts will get indexed almost immediately and will start to show up in search engine results. Even older posts will also show up over time, as the search engine spiders visit to see if there is anything new. 

Second, a blogger can use his or her blog to influence the search engines themselves. Search engines look for new information and make changes to their algorithms based on what they find. Thus if a blogger reports that Google’s panda algorithm has changed — for instance, instituting stronger penalties for black-hat SEO techniques — that blogger’s post will be indexed more often than, say, a static news item on the Google blog. Search engines are likely to give a lot of weight to information from bloggers who write about SEO trends.

There are two fairly straightforward ways to take advantage of these important features of blogs.

The first way is to start your own blog. It is surprisingly easy to become a blogger. Many sites offer free blogs that are part of a larger “community” of blogs. For instance, go to blogger.com (owned by Google), sign up (for free), and you can have your blog up and running in a matter of minutes.

The problem with this approach is that you may not be a writer, you may not be interested in making regular posts, or you may simply not have anything to say on a regular basis. In that case, you might try to find someone who will let you make posts every now and then in their blog — or at least create links pointing at your website.

Another interesting alternative is to pay someone to review your site, or feature your products every couple of weeks in their blog. That way you get all the marketing and search engine advantages of blogging without actually having to do any of the work.

The beauty of blogs is that they are generally free to create and maintain. If you like to write, but can’t find the time or inclination to make regular posts, then blogging is an excellent option for you. You’ll get all the benefits of a blog with little work on your part. And if you don’t want to post regularly, but would still like some visibility in search engine results (or just want people visiting your website), using guest bloggers is another good way to go about it. For instance:

Guest blogging can be an important part of a successful search engine optimization strategy. Whether you use your own blog or someone else’s, guest blogging is a great way to share content with others and drive targeted traffic to your website.

For instance, lets say you market golf clubs online. You’ve been running your own blog for quite some time with great success, but you want to reach out to others who might like what you’re doing. In that case, it would be an excellent idea to start guest posting on other golf blogs where there is a built-in audience of readers interested in the topic. Although it will take more work initially to create unique content for others, the long term benefits of building links to your website are well worth it.

In addition to targeted traffic from search engines and other bloggers, guest blogging also has important implications for search engine marketing (SEM). Guest blogging can increase your “link popularity” which in turn will help ensure that your site shows up higher in search results.

Another good thing about guest blogging is it helps develop relationships with bloggers who will not only promote your product or service, but also link to it.

I could go on and on with specific examples of bloggers who have been able to use blogging as a stepping stone towards being hired for a job (or full time employment), writing an Amazon best selling book, developing into a globally recognized social media powerhouse, and much more. 

Good blogging also leads to you being picked up by various bloggers in other niches and then getting a link from them or even guest posting in their blogs as well; this is powerful backlink building that will help your search engine rankings and make you stand out from the crowd of wannabe online marketers.

First, if you want to have something reflected quickly in search engine searches, writing about it in a blog is the best way to accomplish this objective.

Second, since the search engines follow links, placing quality links in your blog posts to other sites to which you want to draw attention to is a good way to get them indexed as well. For instance, say you introduce a new product on your website. The best way to have the search engines visit your site quickly and reindex the changed pages is to make an announcement in an active blog. The scrapers will visit the blog, follow the links pointing to your website, and index the changes to the website.

This is why links placed in blog posts are generally the most effective way of drawing attention to other targeted websites.

In short, blogs serve as excellent vehicles for both promoting a business and influencing search engine results. To achieve these goals it’s important to develop blogging strategies that will attract the attention of both potential customers and search engine spiders. Search engines are likely to rank websites higher if they have links from bloggers who report on issues related to a website’s industry, so it pays to try and build relationships with those bloggers and ask them for links. Search engines also look more favorably upon websites that get link backs from high-authority bloggers, so it’s important to try and attract those types of sites as well. Search engines are also likely to pick up new information from blogs much more quickly than they do from other sources, so it makes sense to use a blog as a format for delivering new content.

However you choose to approach blogging as part of your marketing strategy, it’s important to remember that blog content does not replace the need for traditional SEO techniques. Search engines will likely pick up the information from blogs much more quickly than they would a page on a website, but since most bloggers do not have the ability to influence how search engine spiders see their websites, blogging cannot be used as an all-purpose replacement for SEO.

If your blog is active and updated regularly, you can expect that it will show up in search results very soon after new content is posted. Search engines will also give more weight to the opinions of bloggers who report on trends in the industry, so it makes sense to use blogging as a way of influencing how search engine algorithms see your website.

Blogging is an excellent way of influencing how search engines perceive your website. As soon as new content is posted, the blog will show up in search engine results very quickly and it can serve to generate interest for a topic that may not have been heard about before due to its exclusive nature or lack of promotion online. It also provides readers with topics they are interested in and send them back to your site where you want them!

Blogging has become increasingly popular among many different groups over recent years, but few realize just how useful blogging might be when generating traffic – especially when trying out creative marketing strategies such as product placement or viral advertising campaigns which depend on word-of mouth from bloggers who report trends within their respective industries. If you would like

Once you have enough traffic to your blog, the possibilities are literally endless for you in terms of building upon it and turning it into a full time job if that’s what you want to do.