There are a lot of reasons to blog, including voicing your opinions, doing a public service, and more. A more “insidious” motivation to start a blog is to make an impression on Google, providing updated content to your site continuously (not to say there is anything wrong with romancing Google!) This is because Google does not look favorably upon static websites and gives higher ranks to those which are updated more actively.

Where your blog can be posted/published: If you don’t already have your own web site, many blogging services are available online. Blogger and Wordpress are two of the most used applications. Yahoo.com has also started getting some of the action in blogging. You can insert a blog on your pre-existing website, which is a fairly common practice. It would be similar to mydomain.tld/blog/

Blog Software: If you have a website and hosting readily available, you may want to try Wordpress for your blog. In addition, you can create your blog articles using Blogger and have them posted on your individual website. There is a convenient FTP setup feature in Blogger that once set up, al you have to do is click a link to publish.

Content: Original blog entries (your own words, not copied from others — an exception to this rule is when you use a brief excerpt from someone’s article), and current information with engaging content are all essential in making your blog effective.

Reader interaction: You can let readers leave feedback by setting your blog to allow it. This gives you control over your blog and comments. This facility is necessary to protect you from current and future spammers. In addition, those who disagree with your opinions may post unsuitable comments.

Making your blog visible:

1) ensure the content is updated often and original,

2) Backlinks to other sites

a.) Become a member of a webring

b.) Use social networking (Myspace, Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

c.) Become a member of various forums whose interests are similar to yours. Forums (communities) can be located at Google, Yuku, Aimoo and many more.

3) Make a submission of your URL to the search engines Google and Yahoo. There is an XML Sitemap generator plug-in available for free if you use Wordpress. It’s a free program, but donations are welcome.

4) Use HTML “tags” in your articles. Place keywords in the tags (Title tags, H1 and H2 tags, etc.) so that your blog articles will be placed in the correct categories by web crawlers (spiders).