Optimizing your blog for search engines is an easy thing to do if you start doing it right from the beginning and take the extra few minutes to follow through each time you make a post.

When you write a post you want to make the title of that post very search engine relevant to what the post is about. If you are writing a post about pulling a transmission from a 67 Mustang make the title of the post “Pulling a transmission from a 67 Mustang” or something like that. Don’t call it, “How I bled on a transmission and ended up drinking 9 beers.” While the later is funny (and maybe true) it tells the reader and the search engine nothing about the post. When the post is indexed the title (if you are using the All In One SEO plugin) of the post becomes the title tag and will show up in the search engine results. You want to be ranked well for Mustang transmissions not blood and beer so you want those words in your title.

As you write you posts remember to sprinkle in your keywords. If your blog is about restoring your 67 Mustang then you will have a list of the keywords you want your blog to rank well for. Use those in your posts. You don’t have to use them a lot because if you update regularly the cumulative effect will really build and do the job. If you overuse them in each post it will make your blog seem spammy and could cost you in the rankings. Using them 1-2 times per post depending on how long the posts are should be enough.

Optimize you images for the image search engines. This is very easy to do. Just name the image whatever you want it to rank for then when you put the image into the blog post use the alt text feature while inserting it to make the alt tag of the image a description of what is going on. For example if your picture is of your 67 Mustang’s transmission you might label you image 1967mustangtrans.jpg and in the alt text you will write “1967 Ford Mustang Transmission.” When Google and Yahoo crawl your site they will see the image and index it and it may then come up if people are doing an image search for that term.

Use the robots.txt to disallow certain areas of your blog. You might want to disallow the search engines from crawling things like your rss feeds, trackbacks and some directories in order to help cut down on the chance of getting duplicate content penalties.

Lastly, use the timestamp feature. This feature will allow you to write multiple posts in one day and then post them over the course of days or weeks. It has been discussed that posting one posts every other day for two weeks is more beneficial to your rankings than making seven posts in one day then nothing for the next thirteen. The timestamp feature will let the blog update with your fresh content and then it pings the search engines and it gives the appearance that you are personally updating every day. If using the timestamp feature, you will probably want to delay pinging until the post goes live on the site. Try Smart Pinger.

Writing good, unique content is really the best SEO you can do for your blog. If you write quality, unique posts, update regularly and sprinkle your keywords throughout the posts you should find yourself being rewarded in the search engine rankings. Blogs, like all sites do benefit from internal links, outgoing links and incoming links so working on those while writing good content will kick your blog up a big notch.

Talk to Got Web Host for SEO consulting and writing services.