Weblogs have been around for a long time now but in recent times more and more webmasters have been using them to influence their PR in an attempt to acheive better rankings.
Blogs are given a large amount of weight by search engines so it was only a matter of time before webmasters would add blogs to their ever growing arsnal of tools.
There are two methods I have seen being used in order to acheive this, one ethicle and one not so ethicle.
The black-hat way is similar to the old link farms we saw spring up some years ago. Someone creates a large network blogs that are all linked together and contain huge amounts links pointing to their main site. This does not add any benifit to the web and just clogs it up with muliple spam blogs. Any webmaster found using this technique by search engines are running the risk of being penalised.
The ethicle method is creating a blog that contains useful information to it's readers. If the blog is good enough other webmasters will link to it purely for it's content, creating strong one way links. One way links give a higher amounts of weight than the over popularised recipracle linking stratergy. Combine this with a link from your blog to main site on each page and you can see why it is called "bloging for PR". It doesn't end there, creating a good blog will also keep surfers coming back day after day to read any new content you have posted.
Blogs are fast becoming my favourite way of genarating traffic and if used in the correct manner should be able to boost any sites traffic levels.
About the Author
James Anderson is an SEO Consultant for Podium Solutions Limited Internet Consultancy