Was just reading through the latest from Practical eCommerce and I wanted to share some of it as it reinforces what I tell clients every day. If you are looking for an easy, cheap (free) way to generate more natural SEO “juice” for your site, you should be blogging, and blogging regularly.

Blogging is a means to share your companies opinions, experience and point of view with your audience, and through comments, your audience can interact. The great bit of it is, if you set up your blog correctly (the articles recommends a few free tools you can add to your blog) the content you post will be well optimized for quick pick up with Google.

Search engines also love fresh content, and blogs, by definition, are constant sources of new content. If written correctly – or more specifically interestingly – blogs can also provide wider link bait and garner links from outside the blogosphere. Search engines, of course, reward for good, inbound links regardless of whether they’re from other blogs.

Also keep in mind that part of the equation is based on links and especially links from relevant sites with good Google PR scores.

As Stephan Spencer underscores “SEO: Blogging Your Way To The Top”, search engines’ ranking algorithms revolve around links, and the blogosphere revolves around interlinking. As a result, adding corporate blogs is a great way to garner links.

As to the question of whether you should host your own blog or use a free service like Blogger, I agree with the opinion put forward in the article. Find a platform that you like (the author and I like WordPress for a number of reasons) and host your blog on your own servers. You will have better control of branding, more options in terms of themes and plugins, and you will be attracting SEO “juice” to your own site.

Who should blog for your company and how often should they update? That is up to you to a large degree. I’d look for someone who has a real talent for expressing the company point of view with some panache. The more engaging your blog content, the more likely you are to connect with your audience and inspire interaction . Depending on the culture at your company, this could mean that posts can be funny, controversial, serious and academic, or a combination of the above.

Go forth and blog - if you need some guidance, please get in touch with me and I will be happy to help.

God Bless,

Wade Tonkin