If you conduct any business online or maintain a website to compliment your offline business, then blogging is quickly becoming a mandatory part of your future. And if you are not currently blogging, chances are after realizing the potential of these traffic-enhancing goldmines, you soon will be!

Blogs, derived from the words "web log" were originally thought of as simply online diaries a place for people to record their thoughts and inspirations. At first, no one took blogging very seriously and these collections of online thoughts were simply passed off by many as hobbies or creative outlets and nothing more.

But then Google came along and started to recognize the unique and original content that these trite little sites presented and the rules of the game suddenly changed. After all, unique content is what makes the Google world go round, and what better way to command the attention of Google than by creating a dynamic environment with content that is solely your own.

At this stage, a whole new SEO world emerged and in the process, brought with it traffic opportunities like never before. People began blogging on more than what they had for dinner last night. They started to blog about new products, exciting travel adventures and all things related to online commerce.

The evolution quickly continued and today, with RSS feeds, sites like pingoat.com and many other content clearinghouses, blogging is big business and not to be overlooked by hungry entrepreneurs looking to establish a web presence.

What currently makes blogging so attractive is the sheer speed with which blogs and blog posts are able to get indexed in the search engines. It is a simple matter of static versus dynamic and the search engines love the dynamic.

Let's take two different scenarios to see how traditional websites and blogs differ in their index-ability:

Scenario One:

One person creates a website to advertise gardening products and services. Each page of the site contains the traditional information about the company; it's founders, the services they offer and the products they sell. Maybe, at best, the site has articles and content that is updated with some small frequency that are relevant to the avid gardener. When visitors arrive at the site, they have the option of signing up for the company newsletter and receiving valuable tips and new offerings.

In this scenario, the Webmaster or business owner will need to tend to many SEO related tasks in order to get and maintain high search engine ranking for a tight list of selected keywords related to the gardening niche. Not only will this activity require great skill, it will also involve many hours to achieve the intended results.

Scenario Two:

The same business owner as above also creates a blog to supplement their company website. Now, instead of focusing on simply one set of tightly selected keywords, the blog itself remains a broad overview of the gardening niche, while each individual post reflects a drilled down topic within that same niche.

So when the business owner writes a blog post about the benefits of "organic vegetable gardening in backyard containers," this individual post becomes a keyword rich, targeted wonder and when indexed by the search engines has a far greater opportunity to bringing highly targeted traffic to the blog based upon that single post.

Through time, the blog expands with many similar posts that are targeted to sub niches within the broader gardening niche and can even be categorized from inside the blog structure itself. What has now been created in Google's eyes is an extremely dynamic, naturally evolving site that is content rich and niche specific.

When properly constructed and promoted, each time the business owner posts to the blog, that individual post can get indexed in anywhere from two to twenty four hours on average. This opportunity is far greater than any options available at the static website.

Additionally, when the business owner endeavors to have a visitor signup for a newsletter, further segmenting can occur and subscriber lists can be refined and targeted. And because the blog is the front-end showcase to the original website, each blog post has the opportunity to link back to specific and relevant products at the main site.

When properly structured, blogs are the biggest SEO asset to a website that currently exists. The wise business owner will recognize these benefits and when implemented, will enjoy many opportunities that do not currently exist with traditional websites alone.