Over the past 2 years I’ve been speaking to many clients about setting up blogs to enhance their SEO campaigns. So I thought I’d share some of the key ideas.

1. Ensure the blog is on your main domain. Having your blog as another site pointing into the main site defeats the main reason for having a blog. Ensure your blog URL is something like mydomain.co.uk/blog. WordPress seems to be the most flexible at setting this up in this way. Put WP in the root directory and change the themes to match the layout of the website.
2. Blog on a niche subject. If you are running a search engine optimisation campaign you should know what key phrases you are optimising for. Using the principle of the long tail (as discussed in a previous post). Look at the niche key phrases pertaining to your products and services. Planning the blog posts around search phrases which people are searching for, will undoubtedly mean that the blog posting will be ranked in the search engines. So you blog post becomes the entry point into your site.
3. URLs search engines can read. If you have a site which has nasty query strings, using a blog will open up the content to search engines. 
4. Blog Frequently. Google looks at an algorithm around content velocity. This is how frequently you add content to your site. So ensure you are committed to blog as it will assist your rankings.
5. Comment on other blogs. Get your Google Alerts and Google Reader set up, so you can follow blogs around your key phrases and subject matter. These will create inbound links into your site.
6. New content gets ranked higher than old content. In Google one of the ways rankings are prioritised is that the newer posted content will appear higher than older content. So looking at themes and trends when you are thinking about what to blog around is a good strategy. 
7. Link to other content on your site. If there are other blog posts or pages which are relevant to the blog (worth writing so you can drop one or 2 in) ensure you link to this content. Linking themed content does wonders for the search engine spiders which will boost your internal linking strategy. 
8. Write Sticky content worth reblogging. An even better strategy to get inbound links is to write some very factual, relevant, new ideas / content that gets retweeted and will eventually get re-blogged.
9. RSS feeds– if your blog is syndicated or cited on other sites, any links will drive traffic – and create another inbound link.

There are other obvious reasons to blog – such as thought leadership, sharing a personal experience / journey or keeping in touch (if you are overseas traveling). I personally started blogging as I wanted to share some of the knowledge from the past 12 years on digital strategy and marketing – and how these relate to modern Digital Darwinsim.

What other reasons have you got for why blogging is good for SEO?