Introduction
Step 1: Get a Blog
Step 2: Write for Your Blog
Step 3: Create an RSS Feed
Step 4: Link Your RSS Feed
Step 5: Use Technorati Tags
Step 6: Promote Your Blog and RSS Feed
Summary

Introduction

Blogs are a hot topic these days. You see references to them in all forms of mass media and news outlets. And “blogging for business” has become of particular interest as corporate America looks for the next “big thing” in marketing on the Internet. However, actually putting blogs to work in a business setting is far from obvious.

Most corporate blogs are written by company insiders who give user and customers a glimpse inside the organization. Perhaps they provide customer support or enable customer feedback on a personal level. For companies that have the time and resources, this can be a very effective marketing tool. But I want to take a different look at using these same tools to help your marketing efforts.

We all know that search engines play a critical part in getting users to your web site. The process of getting a good ranking on a search engine is often long and difficult. This is especially true for Google where one of the most important factors in search engine ranking is getting other quality sites to link to your own. For many companies, this is the most difficult part of search engine marketing.

Another important activity in search engine marketing is getting your site listed in prestigious web directories such as the Open Directory Project (http://www.dmoz.org). This process takes months, as human editors must review each submission.

What I am about to present is an adjunct strategy for search engine marketing and placement. It won’t replace the basics, but with the rules changing all the time, new strategies can be an effective supplement to the basic techniques.

I also feel obligated to note that I believe that the window to employ these techniques will be short. As spammers latch on to these ideas and abuse them, the search engines will develop counter measures accordingly. I am adamantly opposed to abusing these techniques though I realize that providing this information will certainly help those unethical few who will use these ideas in an abusive manner. However, I believe that the good of providing this information to legitimate marketers outweighs the potential harm.

With that, we begin.