For bloggers

For bloggers

If you have a website but don't have a blog, consider creating one: A blog is a great way to connect with people who share your interests, or to publicize your site or product. Blogs are easy to create and update, and rich, useful, and original blog content will encourage readers to come back to your site. Here are some tips for making the most of your blog.
Create great content

* Write well and often. A frequently updated site encourages people to return - as long as your content remains relevant and engaging. A useful post once a week is better than low-quality content published daily. A great idea is to search Google for subjects of interest in your field. If you can't find a good answer, create a blog post about the subject - chances are that other people are searching for the same thing.
* Follow the webmaster guidelines. Just like with any other site, make sure you follow our webmaster guidelines for creating rich, relevant, and useful content. Similarly, check out our recommendations for using images, Flash, and other rich media in your blog.
* Categorize your posts. Labels and tags are a great way to organize your content, and encourage users to browse your blog.
* Make sure users (and crawlers) can easily find your blog. We recommending prominently linking to your blog from your home page, and from other key pages on your site. Consider hosting your blog on your regular site (http://blog.example.com or www.example.com/blog).
* If necessary, limit comment spam. Enabling comments on your blog can help create a sense of community and discussion. Unfortunately, some spammers use the comment functionality to flood sites with spam. If this happens to you, check out our guidelines for reducing comment spam.
* Check our tips for affiliate sites. Google recommends that all webmasters create websites with original content that adds value for users. This is particularly important for sites that participate in affiliate programs. If you do participate in an affiliate program, there are a number of steps you can take to help your site stand out and differentiate it from the crowd. More information about affiliate programs.

Make sure readers and crawlers can find your content

* Create descriptive titles for each of your posts. This makes for a better user experience. In addition, the post title is often used to create the unique URL for each post, and this can give search engines valuable information about the content of your page.
* Connect with your online community. There's almost certainly a rich network of bloggers already talking about the subject matter of your site. Visit these blogs, comment on posts, and participate in the discussion. Contribute to web forums devoted to your subject matter. The key is to bring something to the table: Thoughtful comments with useful information will make readers more likely to visit your site.
* Publish a feed of your content. We strongly recommend publishing feeds of your content, allowing users to be notified whenever you update your blog. You can generally do this via a setting in your blogging software. Most services give you the option of publishing a full feed (users can read the full content of your article in their RSS reader) or a partial feed (users see a teaser paragraph in their reader but have to go to your site to read the full article). Rich, full-content feeds make users happy because they can view your content with minimal effort. They may result in a short-term decline in visits to your actual blog, but the long-term gains of increased readership and mindshare are typically worth it. Ultimately, keep in mind that a regular subscriber is more valuable than an occasional visitor.

Your blog and Webmaster Tools

* Add your blog to your Webmaster Tools account. Adding a blog to your account is easy: Just follow the instructions for adding a regular site. If you use Blogger, you can add your sites to your account by clicking Webmaster Tools under Tools and Resources on the Blogger dashboard.
* Verify your blog. To see detailed stats and diagnostics about your site, verify your ownership. You can verify your site by uploading an HTML file with the filename we specify, or by adding a meta tag to your blog's template.
* Submit a Sitemap. Sitemaps are a great way to tell Google about content on your site we might not otherwise discover. Google prefers Sitemaps created using the Sitemap protocol; however, we'll accept several different formats. If you publish an RSS or Atom feed of your site, you can submit the feed URL as a Sitemap.