With millions of websites on the internet, if you have a small website, it's difficult and sometimes costly to promote your site successfully. You may be tempted to participate in linking schemes or other frowned upon avenues to promote you website, but this is not a smart idea and in many cases can have your site banned from search engines. Two ways to promote your site that work together well are blogs and RSS feeds.

Blogs are simply online journals. They may contain articles you've written, articles written by others along the same topic, or other general imformation about your website that lends not only a personal touch to your website but can enhance it by providing more relevant rich content about your site. Blogs can also allow visitors to comment on your website enhancing its value even more.

In terms of blogs, RSS feeds are syndications of your blog postings. They are useful because people who find your blog interesting can subscribe to your RSS feed and may be more inclined to visit your website if it provides useful information or a service of need. Most of the major search engines allow you to upload your RSS feed for placement on personal pages by anyone.

Blogs and RSS feeds have two advantages in terms of getting listed in the search engines as well. For one, blog sites generally have a high page rank, which ads value in terms of search engines to your site. Secondly, if set up properly, every time you post on your blog, blog listing services are pinged about changes to your blog. Some of these blog listing services are connected to the search engines and may allow for faster indexing and updating of your site in the search engines.

Blogs and RSS feeds may help in site promotion, but in the end it will all depend on the quality of your site and whether you follow the webmaster guidelines for each of the search engines.