Blog Anchor Text SEO Query

[jannkuzel]

Apologies if the following is a basic question but I am just starting out with SEO and I have seen this quite a lot recently on sites I have been on.

My question is if you have a self hosted blog e.g. blog.site.com or site.com/blog and you use keyword anchor text in your blog post does that bring SEO benefits in itself or does the blog post have to be shared/commented by readers to have an effect? I have seen/heard of many sites spending a lot of money getting copy done or spending their own time and resources starting a blog but the blogs remain unshared or comment-less.

I am starting my own blog to go with my social media and website so I wanted to establish the basics.

Thanks in advance guys.

[Elchanan]

This is my school:

1. Make the blog "do-follow". The default is "no-follow".
2. Install all-in-SEO plugin.
3. Submit it to do-follow directories.
4. What do you want, more indexed pages, or more links? - Do it /blog for more pages, and blog.site.com for more links.

[Greenman]

When you create a blog you should first choose a "target". what is your blog' s purpose?

1. If you wanna have a blog just for getting visibility, you should write almost 1 article per day and post it in your blog. 
    Write article that follow the topic of your site but "dropping" most searched keyword in your content

2. If you wanna have just backlink, use your energy and your content posting your article in guests blog.

I see a lot of blogs that set theirs link "do-follow". If you don't want to see your page rank improve and don't let your blog
being filled of stupid/no sense fake (SEO) comments, i think that you should keep no-follow setting.