IT contractors helping firms with search engine optimisation should incorporate blogging into the company's website function, it has been suggested.

According to Navigate Consulting's founder Nick Baggott, blogs are about creating content that other people will link to from their sites.

Opinion pieces can create comments and discussion, which act as "bait" for other sites, working well with search engines, he claims.

"Blog content tends to get more comments and be linked to by other sites because it's more interesting and less sales focused. This makes it more search friendly," he explained.

With this in mind, it can be easier to move a blog up search engine rankings than a website, Mr Baggott concluded.

This follows advice issued by Google search quality strategist Kaspar Szymanski.

Via the Google Webmaster Central blog, he told web users that a good marketing technique is to "get involved in the community around your topic".