First of all it important to look at why we would want to create our own blog?
A blog is your very own space on the internet to catalogue your thoughts, ideas, opinions & suggestions on absolutely anything you want.
You might ask ‘Why would anyone want to hear my opinion on xyz?’ but I would then ask you to answer this question: ‘Is there anyone else out there who has had exactly the same life as you?’
The answer is a resounding no. You are unique, which means that the your experiences and viewpoints your learning and outlook will be different to that of anyone else and therefore will be something that other people will take an interest in.
Whatever your interests are, by creating your own blog you can share your experiences of them with other people and who knows, someone might even learn something.
If you are promoting a business online a blog is a great way to increase your SEO by increasing the number of links back to your main site. It is also a place for your colleagues, affiliates and downline to visit you and is a great way to confirm your position as a leader in your field when you provide them with regular, good quality content.
There are many blogging services online and I strongly recommend that you have a look around and find the best one for you, I did and that is how I came across http://Blogger.com This is one of the easiest systems I have ever come across and you can actually have your own blog up and running in a matter of minutes. Here’s how:
Step 1 – When you arrive at the home page click on the ‘Create Your Blog Now’ link in the middle of the page – or take the quick tour first if you want to.
Step 2 – You will be redirected to the ‘Create an account’ page where you will need to supply blogger with 5 bits of very basic information. Then read and accept the terms & conditions and click on ‘continue’
Step 3 – You will then be taken to the ‘Name your Blog’ page where you will need to… that’s right, name your blog.
The name you decide to give your blog should be a simple catchy description of the purpose of your blog. If it is for business purposes then keep it clear, professional and direct; if it’s for personal/social use then you can probably afford to be a little more creative 
You will then need to decide on the blog address, again if it’s for business use then remember that you will be giving this address out to people so you want it to be something appropriate. – Once you have typed in the blog address, which will look like this: http://YOUR-ADDRESS.blogspot.com click on the ‘check availability’ to confirm that it is available. Once it has been accepted type the characters you see in the word verification field and proceed straight to the next page. (There is an option for advanced set-up, but unless you are already quite techno savvy it‘s something you can come back to later.)
Step 4 – Next you will be asked to choose a template for your blog. This is a chance for you to put some of your personality into the blog so take your time and search through all the templates. Imagine the kind of content you are going to publish and what sort of background you would like to have that framed by. There are 12 to choose from and you can make more changes at a later date if you want to.
Confirm the template you want to use and click continue.
Step 5 – Congratulate yourself! That’s it. You have just created your first blog ready to display your articles, thoughts and suggestions to the world.
Click on the start posting arrow and that will take you into your blogger back office where you can add information to you profile, upload a picture or just start writing.
Once you are ready to present you blog to the world you will need to ‘ping’ your blog. This is not a solo version of the table tennis game instead ‘pinging’ is how you let all blog sites know that your blog is ready to be listed, without this no-one will get to see it.
The great news is that pinging your blog is even simpler than creating it.
Go to http://www.Pingomatic.com and fill in your blog name and address, then scroll down and select all services to ping, then all you need to do is click on the ‘Send Pings’ link and that’s it. Now all those blog listing services will become aware of your blog and be able to list it. Every time you update your blog with another article or thought just go back and re-ping in the same way.
This very simple to set up and use system is a fantastic way to keep you and your business right in the public domain and all it costs is a few minutes of your time.
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Deep Arora asked:
The development of a website for promoting your business online is a necessary part of the modern day business. Having a website doesnt simply end there, when you create your website you need to start the process of getting traffic to your site; in particular you need to get search engines to find your site so that you can increase your page ranking. It is widely acknowledged that the more links you can establish to your site, the faster and higher your site will go in the page rankings. The dilemmas of finding quality links can be the major stumbling block of many businesses. One way that you can overcome this is to create your own blog.
The benefit to having a blog is that you can automatically link it back to your webpage, giving you one of those all important links. The other great advantage of blogs is that they generally get higher importance from search engines. Like website SEO, blog SEO is becoming a key concept when marketing your blog and driving more traffic to your site.
Some of the key advantages of having a blog to improve your SEO is that aside from linking back to your website, it demonstrates that you know your stuff. When you give your visitors great information at the blog then you instill more confidence in them, making your business preferential to them. It can also be a great way to receive information about your customers, develop a rapport with them and also to improve your sales and marketing by getting a stronger understanding of your customers.
When you establish a blog you have the ability to demonstrate your niche skills and to create quality content that complements the scope of your core business site. The internal linking as mentioned before is also of great benefit. You can ensure that a good quality link exists from your blog to your web pages, a great way to increase web traffic and boost your search engine ranking.
Why a blog is good for SEO?
o Using a blog is a good boost for your SEO practices, because they can potentially reach your customers and boost your search engine ranking the fastest. When you are creating a blog for business and to improve your SEO, there are several things you should try to consider.
o Select a series of keywords or keyword phrases that you would like to include in your blog and focus your postings so that you can post additional information that centres on these key words each day. When you incorporate these key words, then you should be clear about what the keyword is, and it is worthwhile including it in the first paragraph, within the first 25 words or thereabouts. Be sure to place a hyperlink to you website using the keyword as the starting point, this is then able to help guide the search engines to your site, as well as driving traffic to your site.
Getting your blog started quickly and easily
o To create your own blog is a straightforward process. First of all go to an blogging site and signup. Finding out the reputable sites is a simple step but will be well worth the effort. You will be asked for routine signup information, such as email, password and username. Once this is done you can select a blog URL and template; this can then be customised as much or as little as you see fit. When you get to this stage you are just about ready to go live. All you need now is to write your first post or article and publish it.
Once your blog is ready a good tip is to keep your posts at length of around 250 words. This is considered a good compromise between a length that is suitable for search engines that prefer to find longer texts, and a length at which you will keep the readers interest through to the end of your writing. So now you know why and how to establish a blog for improving your SEO, what are you waiting for? A blog is a quick and efficient way to boost your web presence; and when you see the results you will be glad you started one.
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IC asked:
e primary activities in SEO that will arguably have the most impact on your sites position in the search engine rankings is link building. A web pages position in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) is largely dependent on the number and quality of other pages linking to the page. Here we present some of the more common link building techniques to increase your inbound links.
1. Directory submission: Link directories contain pages of categorized links. One method to obtain back links involves submitting your site to these link directories. Directories can be either paid, free or requiring a reciprocal link. The most well known directories include the Yahoo directory and dmoz.
2. Article Submission: Submission of articles to article directories is another common link building technique. At the bottom of an article you submit to an article directory is an author’s bio where you can include links to your site, as can be seen at the bottom of this article. One of the positive traits of this form of link building is that you can word your author bio as you want and therefore, have choice over the anchor text of the link.
3. Social Bookmark Submission: Social bookmark sites allow you to bookmark web pages online, and when you do a link is created to the page you bookmark. Submitting pages to social bookmark sites is another common method of link building.
4. Blog Posting.: Similar to article submission, you may be able to contact owners of blogs relating to your niche and provide them with quality content for them to post on their blog. In this content you may put a link back to your site. The key here is to provide quality content so that it is worthwhile for the owner of the blog to post your content.
5. Link Exchange: Some sites participate in link exchanges, where you link to a site in exchange for a link from their site. It is important in link exchange to exchange quality links in limited numbers. There is not a lot of value in much of the mass link exchange some sites engage in that have many pages of links devoted to their link exchanges.
6. Link Bait: This involves the writing of content, of posting of pictures or other interesting posts that other webmaster will find interesting and worth linking too. If the content is of high enough quality if may be featured on sites such as digg, potentially attracting a large number of organic links.
So here we have presented a number of the more common link building techniques. There are many others and a good way to keep up with current link building trends is to become active on one of the many popular web master forums. The key is to try different methods and attempt to get a feel for which methods are more effective through monitoring your sites position in the SERPS. You may want to establish several sites and explore different link building techniques with each site, thus allowing you to observe which technique provides better performance.
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Justin Briggs asked:
In the world of Web 2.0, link building has shifted to social bookmarking and social media sites. People produce high quality content in hopes of baiting social media site users to link to them. Webmasters are also using social bookmarking sites to generate easy one-way back-links. Many people quickly forget the benefits of Web 1.0 link building. Although Web 2.0 spurred the creation of many new forms of sites, Web 1.0 did not die. Website link directories, although not what they once were, are still all over the net.
Link directories organize links to hundreds or thousands of sites. The most popular of these are the DMOZ, Best of the Web, and Yahoo directories. For a long time, webmaster used this as a method of link building. Over time though, webmasters used this site format to spam links. The result is that many directories have been discounted. Many internet marketers now ignore them as a link building method.
Directory submissions should be used as one method in your overall link building plan. These links are low quality, but they are one-way keyword anchored back links. These links do not provide massive authority to dominate competitive niches, but they can provide a significant amount of juice to niche sites focusing on long tail keywords.
An important part of link building is to create a diverse link profile. Directory links allow you to increase the size of your link profile by generating links from a variety of new sites. Do not discount this age old method of promotion, because many skilled internet marketers won’t.
The most important part of directory submissions is to generate good back links. You will not be receiving any quality direct traffic from these directories. Their purpose is to generate links to improve your rankings. With this in mind, you need to evaluate the quality of the directory. Many spam directories link out and promote gambling, porn, and Viagra sites. You want to avoid these directories, since they may create a negative association with your site. Look at a directory’s pagerank, the pagerank of internal pages, the number of pages indexed, and the sites that directory supports.
There are two important tips to remember when doing submissions. First, this is for anchored links. Try your hardest to get an anchor that includes your main keyword. Second, you need to vary your anchor text. Having too many links with the same text does not look natural. You should make effort to mix up your anchor text when submitting to web directories.
Simply put though, directories are a solid option for those building links to long tail niche sites. When combined with other link building methods, they can be very effective.
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