While great content is also an important aspect of a blog, sometimes it takes more than that. Now, basic blog SEO is pretty easy to do and there are a few steps that you can follow in order to achieve it.

Some of the most important rules of SEO are as follows:

Make sure if possible that you are using your primary keyword in your blog’s domain. Regardless of whether or not you choose to host your blog in a blogging service or in a separate domain, you have to make sure that your URL has the keyword that you are optimizing it for. For example: if you are optimizing your blog for anything retro then your URL should look something like this:  beyond-retro.com or use the keyword in a sub-domain such as in:  clothingandstuff.com/retro

Remember to use your main keyword in your blog’s header tags as well as in the title of your posts. Just like what I mentioned above, if your main key phrase is “retro” then you have to make sure that the word retro appears in your blog headers, in both the H1 and H2 tags, as well as in your post titles.

Those are just 2 simple blog SEO tips that you can try to help optimize your blog further and get you a higher ranking in the search engines. Good luck!

Needless to say, the process goes on and on, day in and day out. This is why the database of major search engines can have so much data. In fact, both Google and Yahoo have said that the daily amount of data stored in their databases rival that of the data contained within the US Library of Congress which is roughly around 150 million items.

Knowing how these spiders work and how they read and collect the information is the more complex side of basic SEO. These spiders are created to read your blog’s content the same way a person would read a newspaper. They start from left to right and if it finds a link that can be followed, it would make a record of that link and send another spider to copy everything that can be found on said link.

It’s a lot like a little army of information gatherers, in a sense. They follow every link and record everything that they encounter and it’s only safe to assume that if you have a link on your blog that a spider can follow, then it would surely go to it and do the exact same thing over and over again. Tough job, but someone’s got to do it.

The best way to make sure that you’re doing it the right way is to put yourself in the shoes of one of your readers. If you are talking about Wikipedia in your post, do you really have to include a link to the website? The thing is, if you are discussing a website that is known by everyone and their pets, then you can safely assume that no link is needed. But if you are referring to a specific page or subject in the Wikipedia archives, then you would need to include a link to it.

A link is also required whenever you post a quote from a fellow blogger on your site. This is simply proper blogging etiquette and it’s a lot like giving credit to the author of the quote. The same goes for photos and videos that you have up on your blog.

As for advertising, the rule is to never put up ads or AdSense (for that matter) if your blog is in its “new born stage”. Though it is unfair to “judge a blog by its ads”, some people might find this a bit of a turnoff and click away before even reading your posts.

You wouldn’t want to put some kind of limitation to the people who view your blog just because of these ads that won’t really earn you anything unless you have established yourself and have a good amount of readers. So keep the blog ad free for a while.

Now, with that said, your keywords or other words related to them should be placed within your blog post in a natural way. Only write them where they are needed. If you overdo it, you’ll end up with pages that appear like spam and are most likely going to get low rankings in the search engines. Blog SEO, when it comes to blog posts is simple. Never overdo it. Have your keyword appear a good 3-5 times in an article and that would be good enough.

Now, when it comes to navigating your previous posts, make sure that your navigation bar or menu is present in all of your pages. Also, see to it that your archives are accessible from any page in your blog because doing so would make it easier for the spiders to see. Wait, spiders?

I’m talking about search engine spiders that “crawl” through numerous blogs and websites day in and day out looking through the blog’s content. These spiders relay all the information to the search engines so that whenever someone searches for something in particular, the engines would know where to find them.

So how do you keep these “spiders” happy and get to the top of search engine rankings? Update your blog frequently using the rule above. Spiders love regularly updated content and if you keep at it, you’ll get to the top ranks in a short amount of time.

Blog SEO Do’s:

- Customize your title tags. Remember that every page should have a title that is specific to that page alone.

- Do proper keyword research. No optimization can be done if you didn’t do the research needed and have no idea just how the whole optimization is going to pan out.

- Remember to use webpage filenames that are relevant to your webpage’s actual content. If you name your pages accordingly, people would find them easier and search engines would rank them higher. For example, if that page is about apple pie then it should be healthyrecipes.com/apple-pie and so on.

- Have a well organized directory. Don’t dump all your pages in your root folder and refrain from using one too many sub directories. Keep things simple and yet very organized.
Blog SEO Don’ts:
- Don’t mess up your codes. If you have on page styles, excess tables as well as JavaScript’s, then get rid of them pronto. Keep your code minimal and clean.

- Don’t put numerous links in the footer of your pages and if you do add links, choose them wisely and think about the value that they might have for your visitors. If there’s no value, then it’s not worth the link.

 -Don’t settle for any old stock content. If you develop your own and take time to actually research and write it, you’ll be able to create your own unique point of view that people will surely love.

First, you have to know how to choose the right blog software for you. Choosing the right CMS (content management system) for your blog can actually have a significant effect on your blog’s success. If you want to be different, you can create a customized blog solution which is customized to satisfy your users. Typically, blog CMS providers such as Blogger, TypePad, Wordpress and MovableType will be sufficient. Personally, I prefer Wordpress as it had by far the most plugins, themes widgets and that sort of thing available.

The best CMS would be one that is easy for the author to use as well as one that has all the features that would allow the blog to develop further. When starting from scratch, think about the way you want the categorization, sub-pages, comments, archiving, user accounts as well as multiple feeds to operate to help narrow down your options.

It is also advisable to host your blog in your own domain simply because doing so would attract links, publicity, trust, and attention as well as search rankings.

Remember that there are topics you should post about and some you should stay far away from. The rule here is simple. Never stray from your blog’s topic. If you are all about books then talk about books. Don’t go astray one day and start posting about cats, because while they sure are adorable, they are most certainly out of topic for your blog and this would confuse people.

Next, do note that while there are topics that are worthy of discussion by every single blogger in cyberspace, most topics aren’t. Keep in mind that not every “big news” about your niche or target market is worth writing about. Leave that to the bigger and more popular blogs that are expected to provide regular updates.

If you’re just starting out, the best way to get people’s attention is through being unique. Offer them something different to read about without straying from your chosen topic.

When it comes to comments, its better to launch your blog with the comment option turned off. Have you seen a blog that has good content but has 0 comments on each post? Nothing is sadder than that but luckily there is a good fix for that problem. Start accepting comments once the number of your unique daily visitors starts to increase. Open up the comments section and at first, you’ll see little activity, but give it time and I’m sure that plenty of your readers would be eager to leave you a note or two.

Blogrolling is one method which you can use to start building links to your blog. Basically, blogrolling is a service that acts like a link list manager for your blog. It provides you with a piece of JavaScript code which would then “call out” the links for you.

Other options available to you include submitting or adding your blog to various online directories and blog search engines. You can also have a link exchange with blogs who have similar content or related content as the one you own. This could also be referred to as networking.

Lastly, you may also choose to use trackbacks. However, free blog providers such as blogger don’t have the software that would do this automatically. You can use a free service like Haloscan to automatically add trackbacks as well as comments to your blogger blog. With a bit of effort and some time, you can actually build a good backlink list that would help boost your blog’s current rank.

Next, you would also want to keep in mind all the search engines when you create titles for your post. These search engines help bring people into your blog  so a great way to make sure that they rank you in a good position is to write the post and your title first, and then run a couple of searches to see if there is a variation of a similar title that could help you increase your search engine ranking when you use it instead.

Other ways that would help bring in more traffic to your site includes a bit of networking. Sure, SEO is significantly helpful but if you want to do more, you can also join forums or blog networks that are related to your blog’s content and topic. Getting in touch with the community or market you’re targeting would definitely help in getting the word out about your site and if your blog is well optimized, these people would be able to easily search for it and visit it. So don’t wait till it’s too late, optimize your blog now for a better search engine ranking.

Also, keep in mind that pagination when it comes to blogging can be quite harmful to your search traffic instead of being beneficial. However, it can also be very useful for the users who want to continuously scroll down your blog to read more of your posts. As such, do consider having a “no index” tag in your blog’s Meta tags or have it in your robots.txt file to help keep your blog spiders where they ought to be.

As for having smart URLs, keep in mind that the best structure when it comes to URL’s is to have them as short and as memorable as possible while still retaining enough info that would give the potential reader an idea as to what the blog might be about. Having a long and extremely hyphenated blog would do you no good as not only is it too lengthy to remember, it would take time for a reader to type it and knowing most net surfers, their patience is a little short. So keep it short and snappy.