The quickest way to get large amounts of high quality search engine traffic is to start a blog. As sure as night follows day, blogging will attract the attention of the search engines, especially the current Daddy of the bunch, Google.

For many bloggers it is enough to know that this is a fact. They blog, the traffic comes, success follows, rinse and repeat.

But for the skeptical, or those sitting on the fence, not sure whether to jump into blogging or not, the following plain English explanation may be helpful.

Picture a school, full of children of varying popularity. Just like any other school in any part of the world, there are the cool kids with lots of friends, the geek kids with their own, often smaller, groups of friends, the sporty kids, the sickly kids, and all the other kinds of kids you can think of. And, an important point for later, there are the bullies.

One day one of the cool kids brings a new toy to school. All of his many friends want to look at it and play with it. And they tell their friends and generally run around the playground telling everyone who will listen how cool their cool friend is with his new toy.

Next day one of the geek kids brings in a funky new calculator. All of his geek friends go nuts and tell everyone who will listen about how their friend is going to be the next Albert Einstein, such is the power of his new gadget. Geeks from all over town have their ear to the ground, waiting for an exciting morsel of news, perhaps a photo this new gadget, or better still, a full and detailed review of its capabilities.

Blogging is bringing a new toy to school. People with similar interests to you will want to see your new toy. They will want to read your new blog post. And Google is clever enough to have worked this out.

Google knows that people want to see what new toys have been brought to school so it makes sure that each new blog post gets indexed as quickly as possible, ready to be served up to anyone making a relevant search.

Ok, with me so far? Good. But now, just like being at school, just when you think you have settled in nicely, it gets a little more complicated.

How can Google decided which blog to give the most traffic to if there are millions of them and thousands at a time might be writing about a popular topic, a new Mac application, an iPhone update, or maybe a new Moleskine or GTD method.

Simple. Google lets the kids decide.

The kid that manages to bring the coolest toy to school and really wows his or her peers gets the most attention. And the blogger that attracts the most links from other bloggers gets the highest priority from Google. In the playground this is known as being popular. In the blogosphere this is known as Google Page Rank.

Bring the really cool toy to school, the one that no one has ever seen before, and all the kids will tell all their friends about it. This is no different in the blogosphere. Be the first to write about something, all your contempories link to it and Google takes notice and makes sure your blog gets priority.

But, just like in school, the bullies try to spoil things. In the blogosphere the bullies are the search engine optimization companies, trying to force bloggers to part with their cash in return for false guarantees of traffic. The way they work is simple. You pay them money and they point thousands of their own links, on their own websites, at your blog in a stupid attempt to up your page rank.

This never works. It’s bullying. No different to a bully running around a school trying to force people to pay attention to something that they really couldn’t give a damn about. The bully may manage to get a few of the more frail kids to do their bidding but to anyone outside the school, and to the kids themselves, it’s obvious what is going on.

Google can spot a sudden influx of irrelevant links as easily as spotting a clowns nose on an otherwise normal face. And Google ignores the links, ignoring the action of the bullies and doesn’t give any increased priority to the site that has suddenly, and undeservingly, got a bunch of links out of nowhere.

Success online is all about one thing. Attention. If you have it you can be successful. And the more you have the more successful you can be.

Want to be the coolest, and the more successful, kid? Start blogging.