Not only do blogs offer a bunch of SEO benefits, but they are also a great community building tool, and building a strong community  lets an affiliate attract and retain new customers. So when you run a blog in the right way, it can become a great addition to your affiliate site, or even make for its own, separate affiliate portal.  But running a blog properly also requires proper blogging etiquette.

Blogging for Community

Just like a forum, blogs let users express themselves and interact with one another by leaving comments. So by publishing product reviews and news, and reporting on special promotions, you can build a community of users looking for a reliable source of up-to-date information. And as these users discuss your content and share their own ideas, they'll build relationships with one another, and that kind of interaction will keep them coming back.

Blogging for SEO

A big part of SEO is getting your site content frequently indexed by search engines. Because of the way that blogs publish content, they can help you get your site indexed more often, and possibly rank higher in search results.

First, using categories and tags, a blog structures content, and that help search engines better index it for the right keywords. Second, blogs let you create structured URLs that contain keyword-rich title information. So as long as your post titles describe the post content, these structured URLs will help let search engines determine what your content is all about.

Finally, blogs provide you with a platform to easily update your site with fresh content, and the more that a site is updated, the more that a search engine will index that site. You see, search engines regard frequently updated sites as more authoritative because their information is more recent. So by blogging on a regular basis, you can help your site (1) get indexed more often, and (2) gain more authority with search engines.

Best Blogging Practices

Of course, if you're going to use a blog to its full potential, you should also respect the medium for what it is. First, blogging is a social medium. This means that its potential lies in the relationships it helps you build with users. So if you neglect this relationship component and simply use your blog for its SEO potential, the results are going to be limited.

Second, you should take care to properly format your content . Make sure to make full use of categories and tags, and write keyword-relevant headlines for your posts. Also, if you don’t post original content at least three times a week (although five is preferable), you’ll miss out being frequently indexed by search engines.

If you incorporate a blog into your affilaite portal and start posting regularly, you should start seeing the first SEO returns within a couple weeks. And if you don’t let up, make an effort to build relationships with your users and participate in the conversation, over time you will build a veritable community, and that community will represent a defenisble and sticky source of return traffic.