It seems to me, blogs and search engines are a match made in heaven.

Search engines like fresh content, and blogs make it easy to produce fresh content on a regular basis. Search engines like text links and good navigation structures. Blogs produce these things automatically, without any extra effort on your part. Search engines like websites that are networked and linked with similar-themed websites. The active, social nature of blogs actually encourages this kind of "neighborhood" networking.

But while search engines like many things about blogs, the burden of ranking still rests upon the blog's author. By itself, a blog will not propel you to the top of the search engines, the way some people seem to think. You have to be a dedicated and active publisher to accomplish such feats.

You have work to do if you want to increase your online visibility. Blogs just make that work a lot easier to do.

The Many Benefits of Visibility
Any blogger can benefit from higher search engine ranking and traffic levels. This is especially true of business bloggers, for whom the blog equals profit and growth.

When a blog has higher search engine ranking, it enjoys higher traffic levels as well. And blog traffic is the first step to connecting with your audience, spreading your ideas, and selling your products or services.

Fortunately, there are a number of effective ways a dedicated blogger can increase his or her blog's search engine visibility for certain phrases. To help you get started along this path to visibility, I've put together a list of effective techniques.

1. Blog Daily
Most blog applications save your blog posts as unique web pages. That means if you were to blog daily for a year, you'd essentially have 365 pages of web content. This kind of publishing schedule delivers two things that search engines love -- frequently updated content and sheer volume of content.

2. Blog Your Key Phrases
First, use a service like WordTracker.com or KeywordDiscovery.com to research the key phrases your audience is searching to find the kinds of products / services you provide. Next, start blogging about these topics on a regular basis. Keyword-rich content is the foundation of good search engine visibility. Sure, you need to have inbound links to that content (covered below), but it all starts with the content itself.

3. Blog Well
Some people will argue all day about which blogging program is the best. I offer this point on the matter. Which bl
ogging tool you use is not nearly as important as how you use that tool. What you blog about, and how you do it, will determine your overall blogging success. So regardless of technical choices, be sure you add quality content to your blog. This will make people more inclined to read your blog, recommend it to others, link to it, and other things that affect your blog's visibility.

4. Socialize with Others
Blogs are much more "social" than regular websites. Most blogs allow readers to comment on the posts, which makes them more of a dialogue than a lecture. So find like-minded bloggers and leave thoughtful comments on their blogs. Trade links with them. Share ideas. Start a dialogue. The more you tap into the social aspect of blogging, the more you'll be helping your search engine cause.

5. Create a Resource
Inbound links are important for good search engine ranking. An inbound link is simply a link from another blog or website to yours. Creating resources is a good way to acquire inbound links. When I say resource, I mean something truly helpful and informative that other bloggers would like to share with their readers (by way of linking to the resource).

For instance, one of my blogs is about direct mail marketing. I once stumbled across a direct mail glossary on another website, and liked it so much that I linked to it from both my direct mail blog and website. The author created a valuable resource, and in doing so earned a lot of links from me and other bloggers.

6. Use Blog Directories
We just talked about the importance of inbound links to search engine ranking. Blog directories are another source of links. A blog directory is basically an online library of blogs, categorized by topic. Some blog directories offer free submissions, while other require a submission fee. When you submit your blog to a well-established blog directory, you earn a valuable link that will help with your search engine ranking.

7. Convert Posts Into Articles
Here's another tactic for building up your inbound links. Take one of your blog posts, expand on it, shape it into an article format, and then publish it through article directories such as EzineArticles.com (with links back to your blog). Now repeat this for your other blog posts as much as possible. You can begin to see the endless potential of this approach.

Related Resource
The author has just released a blogging guide that shows you how to increase your blog's search engine ranking with a simple (but effective) three-part strategy. You can learn more about this guide by visiting http://www.ceoblogwatch.com