In the past, we've discussed the various SEO benefits to running a blog on your site. They've ranged from crawlable URLs to being inbound link magnets. But it would seem that if your goal is to rank on Google real quick, there's an additional benefit to using a blog. Jeremy Luebke at Marketing Pilgrim explains:

With [new] site launches I have noticed some interesting patterns. All of them which I set to ping Google blog search were spidered within minutes and the site was in their index within days. On the sites which I did not ping Google, the sites took weeks to get indexed, even when I pointed strong links towards them.

Indeed, we've discussed the online marketing benefits of pings before, but this finding is illuminating. Mind you, come to think of it, this seems almost self-evident -- but hindsight does tend to be 20/20.

In any case, we've included some additional resources on the SEO benefits of blogging below. If you won't take our word on it, we've linked two other sources, and then provided you with some of our own tips on how to go about setting up a blog the right (and easy) way.

Further Reading
Blogging for SEO @ AnAesthetic Media
SEO Benefits from Blogs

Related Posts
6 Simple Steps to Blogging
5 Thing You Should Know Before Blogging
15 Blogging Mistakes
Blogging is a Conversation