First things first, you need somewhere to deposit your thoughts. You need to decide how you want to attack this. Your choices are: - To use a blog hosting service such as eBloggy (http://www.ebloggy.com) or BlogEasy (http://www.blogeasy.com). - To host a blog yourself on a server of your own choice.

Both options have their free or paid subsections. The blog hosting services mentioned here are free but there are paid services out there. MSN now offer ‘Spaces’, which are essentially blogs attached to your MSN account and may be of interest to some. Web hosting can also be free or paid but you’ll find it difficult to find a free service that will offer you features you’ll need to run a blog backend. One place to look is your Internet Service Provider (ISP) that may offer some free web space. This web space often contains as many features as many professional web hosting packages although it offers less space. Blogs tend not to take up a whole lot of room so this shouldn’t be a problem. The advantage of hosting your own blog over using a service is that you have greater control over how it works, how it looks etc. You also don’t have to put up with there being ads on your page (unless you find some free hosting which usually has advertising put at top of your site). The downside is that it can be a bit more complicated to function.

If you’re going to host your own blog you’ll need to find yourself a blog backend. This is program that runs on server and allows you to upload new journal entries while allowing other people to view them. You’ll have to either choose a backend that fits within your web hosting package’s limits or a hosting package that meets backend’s requirements. The general requirements are PHP and MySQL but you can get some backends that work solely with PHP or even Java. It’s important to make sure that you can change read/write permissions of PHP files on your server (using CHMOD or an equivalent, talk to your host—they’ll know what you’re talking about). There’s a nice breakdown of many different beckends and their features and requirements that can be found at, http://www.asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm. I personally use Pivot because it doesn’t require MySQL and it has RSS distribution, which is nice.

Several Webmaster Forums have indicated belief that “Reciprocal” Links hold less value than “Generic” links in more recent Search Engine Algorithm changes. “Generic" IBLs or BLs as they are frequently being called, are incoming links that you don’t exchange a link with. We believe that link swapping to gain more links has been shown to promote Sites without proper relevancy. Recent history is replete with “Gray Hat” and “Black Hat” SEO shady practices exploiting that Search Engine algorithm deficiency.

We believe that there is sufficient evidence to indicate that recent SE algorithm changes have started diminishing value of reciprocated links, as they also seem to have been relegating multiple links under one top domain, such as in forums and blogs, to help decrease “Spam”.

The Search Engines maintain user popularity through perceived search relevancy. Search Engine users democratically select which Search Engine they feel yields most relevant returns. It only stands to reason that most relevant will be most popular, garnering larger “slices” of revenue “pie”, estimated at $12Billion USD in 2005 by some sources.

The 5 best methods to build low cost "Generic" IBLs are:

1) Keep adding content depth and uniqueness. – This is oldest, most stable proven "White Hat" SEO (Search Engine Optimization) method. Provide content uniqueness and depth on a timely basis and not only will you find that your Site statistics reveal more return visitors than SEs deliver but you will find that links to targeted Site are picked up automatically, without costly effort. For most part, when you think you have enough well written authoritive content, you probably don’t.

You will also find that freshness plays a key role. The Search Engines tag your Server’s “If Modified Since Header” and key on updated pages for Site “spidering” frequency and depth. This is clearly stated in GOOGLE Webmaster Guidelines, (Technical Guideline #3) at www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html .

2) Submit to Relevant Directories, as many as possible. Two good places to start are:

A. The GOOGLE Directory at: http://directory.google.com .Click on any targeted topic of interest and you will find a relative “Directories” Category under each.

B. There is a long running Forum entitled “High Ranking Directories” In WebProWorld Search Engine Discussion Forum that has proven valuable to many readers at: http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=21900 .

Find Directories relevant to your Site and Submit until your fingers are sore, and then do it all over again and again, until you see results you want.