Best Blogging/Content strategies for SEO

[southafrican]

Hi,

I am curious what is the best way to leverage the content to beneift SEO efforts.

1) Blog hosted by the likes of blogspot with inbound links to my site and receiprical links to related sites.
2) Blog posting to my existing website, building the size of the site and relevant content.

Additionally, what is the best blog template to use? I am using Blogspot?

Thank you!
sa

[MikeDammann]

IMO wordpress is the most professional one, but then again I am still using my blogger template ;) It really all depends on your information on the blog. So many templates are alike, but whether your info is worth reading or not, is most likely to determine success rather than the look :)

I would host the blog on your site and not on a free blog hosting subdomain. Just for the fact that you will be stuck with that blog service once the url gets ranked. Yes, you can do a redirect like 99zeros does, but I think it is way more beneficial for you to do it on your own domain name and strengthen your entire site :)

Just my own 2 cents.

Mike

[I, Brian]

Here are a couple of potentially useful links:
http://www.stuntdubl.com/2005/08/29/mr-ploppys-monday-morning-tool-list-volume-xxiii-blogger-tools/
http://www.wolf-howl.com/2005/08/blog-news-scrapes-fakes-and-remakes.html

Ideally, you need to have a clear idea of both your objectives, and how you are planning to meet those over the short to long term (depending upon how long you plan to invest for the project).

Hope that helps.

[southafrican]

http://clsc.net/research/googles-2-rankings.htm

Very very very worth reading through. :D It is about a patend google has. Good insight into Algos as well as there tiered ranking process!

READ IT ;)

Rgs,
SA