Steps

1. Find a decent blogging provider that appeals to you. The most popular providers include LiveJournal, Blogger, WordPress.com, and Xanga. These sites are pre-made with templates and push-button publishing that don't require much technical know-how.
2. Once you sign up, you'll have a gallery of ready-made templates to choose from. With these, you can pick a color scheme and layout for your blog.
   • Most sites come with a set of predefined layouts and schemes that you can choose from. Select one and personalize it. Then add your name, interests, images, etc.
   • If you want to, get a more unique template, there are some sites up that have many of these that might make it look better. For example, PimpMyProfile.com or Pyzam.com.
3. Add blogging freebies like buttons, images, blog chalks, imoods, tagboards (for example, myshoutbox.com), guest maps, guestbooks, comment boxes for readers' input, etc.
4. Explore other blog sites that offer more features for a small fee, such as Typepad.com and ChoseIt.
5. Decide whether you want your blog to be private or public: do you want any Internet visitor to be able to read your blog, or do you just want your friends and family to be able to read it? Most blog sites offer the ability to password-protect your published posts so only those who you approve of can view what you've written.
6. After you've set up your blog, write a few posts to test it out, and make any adjustments to the layout or style that you see fit. Like if you just got a new template, you'd check your blog to see if you like it, right? At first, it will seem tough to figure out what to write, but once you get into a routine of daily blogging, you will find it addictive. Write about your day, your thoughts, events, ideas, fears, pleasures, the news, current affairs, art, or anything you are interested in!
7. Visit other blogs to build a blogging circle. When you leave comments, add your blogging address so they can visit you too. (Note: This will not work if your blog is private)
8. Publish your blog by sending the URL to your friends or publish the URL on your website. Add the URL to posts you make on other blogs.

Tips

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  If you update your blog frequently, more people will return on a regular basis to read it. Establishing a reader base will motivate you to write more and in turn more people will read your posts.
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  Get into a routine of blogging. Make it part of your day. Soon, you will notice things during your day and think, "Hey, I'll blog this."
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  Personalize your blog. A pretty blog always catches the eye. Visit blogger.com for ideas; they have a list of their 10 most recently updated blogs.
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  Example
  You could Google for "blog California" or "blog Shakespeareans" (or anything else), depending on location, interests, etc. For instance, if you have a blog on lawns, you may want visit allaboutlawns.com's forum and other similar type blogs. Circles of interest are the essence of blogging, and it can start to develop you as an authority in the "blog-o-sphere" on lawns or whatever area of interest you choose.
• Keep the posts interesting. Try to avoid focusing on things that most readers won't find worthwhile (such as "I went to the mall today and saw Kelly.") Write about things you noticed, thoughts you had, and feelings or ideas. Blog about a recent trip to Spain. Write about the chemical explosion during class.
• Spell check your writing before posting.
• Some sites allow you to make money off your blog by using an Amazon Associates ID or by placing Google AdSense advertisements. If popular enough, your blog could start to pay your bills.
• Don't feel bogged down if no one visits your site for the first few months. As with communities this large, it will take some time for your blog to get noticed.
• Find blog aggregators. They will place a link to your site on their webpage and/or have a feed running from your blog so that every time you post something, it will show up on the blog aggregator homepage. Also, this can help increase readership.
• If you want a broad (international) readership, do not use too many abbreviations or slang terms that might not be easily understood by people who are not from your country/area.
• Get interesting news from Yahoo Oddly Enough..., other Yahoo! stories, Crayon.net and other websites that you frequently read.
• Blog on a specific subject. You can't please everyone, so target a specific audience and go with it.
• See also How to Write a Famous Blog.
• Pictures are also a great idea.

Steps

1. Research the keywords. Decide what search queries you want to show up for. Do some research on how many people are actually searching for your site. Many times it is best to consult a "natural search engine optimization" professional during this process. There are several tools available from Google, Overture, and third party software developers that can make the keyword research process easier.
2. Think outside of the box. Don't just focus on your main keywords. The first thing to realize when targeting keywords is that it is not all about ranking for the most popular keyword. The most successful search engine marketing and optimization campaigns target the most relevant keywords. For example, if you are a realtor in a particular area, don’t just optimize your site for “real estate." Optimize your site for dentist, florist, movie theaters, etc. You would be amazed how many unique visitors will come through to your site when "outside of the box" thinking occurs.
3. Focus on the end user. If you spend too much time trying to please the Search Engine Spiders, you may forget about the end user. Think about what your target market needs to accomplish their goals, and then put it on your site so that they can find it. The phrase "content is king" was born about 6 years ago, and it still holds true today. If you want to be relevant for specific keywords, than you need superior or at least highly competitive content. Write about 225-300 words of copy for each keyword and plant it on your site each day. Grow, grow, and grow. On average, one can target between 3-5 like keyword phrases per page. Make it as natural as possible and the Search Engines will reward you with a first-page ranking.
4. Make sure that all the pages of the site have custom titles and descriptions. If your site is using the same tags for all the pages, you are not helping search engines figure out the subject or relevance of your individual pages. Regarding Meta Tags, there are 2 very important fields:
   • Title Tag - arguably the most important SEO tag for any website. Google supports approx. 60 characters in the title, while Yahoo allows for up to 110 characters in the title. It is important to target the most critical keywords in the Title. Every page should have a unique Title.
   • META Description Tag - These were once important but are no longer. Some engines do display the description defined, while others do not. Some search engines do read the description tag, and do utilize the content found within in the ranking process. Google, MSN and Yahoo give very little weight to no weight for these.
5. Keep the structure, navigation and URL structure of your site simple enough for search engines to follow. Remember that search engines cannot parse your navigation if it's using flash or javascript. So try to stay close to standard HTML when it comes to Navigation. URLs with dynamic parameters (?, &, SIDs) usually do not perform when it comes to search engine rankings.
6. Create a site map that tells people where everything is on your site. You will get about a 1% click through rate to your site map. However, it will do wonders for those who know what site maps do, and the Search Engines will like it as well.
7. Build up your popularity. So now you have determined the right keywords on the right pages, you've created all of the necessary content, and you've optimized all of the content to the best of your capabilities. Congratulations - you're now in the top 80th percentile (from an optimization standpoint) of the websites listed for the keywords you're trying to target. So how do you get a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd page listing? The answer is quite simple: You have to be the most popular, too. That's right, it's a popularity contest. In other words, how many other websites know you (link to you), and how popular are they? This is typically referred to as link popularity, or called PageRank by Google. The more sites that link to your site the better, and the more popular the site linking to you the more value you will receive for your link popularity. The best types of "link building" are directory registration, text link advertising, and press release distribution. Try to offer valuable information or tools so that other people are motivated to link to your site. Well-linked sites (that don't use spamming) do better in search engines.

Tips

1. Search engine algorithms assess the relevance of your page to any particular keyword by the content on your pages. For instance if you are selling "widgety widgets" on your site and you do not mention "widgety widgets" on your page text, search engines have very little to work with. Also make sure that you are not spamming search engines by using the same keyword over and over.
2. Although not as important as they used to be, reciprocal links do still matter with Google. Reciprocate with similar websites and include keywords near the links on your site.
3. If you want to optimize well for your city, state etc., make sure to sprinkle geographic search terms throughout. Include it in text as well as set apart. Search engines do not know where you are unless you tell them.
4. Bold and italics can make your keywords stand out more with the search engines.
5. Interior links within your site will improve SEO; Sitemaps are a great way to generate internal links and make your website better too!
6. Correct broken links, search engines do not like dead ends.
7. If you have over 30 keywords that mean business to you, then you might want to hire a Professional Search Engine Copywriting firm or outsource it to freelancers.
8. Anyone who can go to google and type in "keyword research" will find very many tools that mixed with common sense should suffice quite well.
9. Now when digging deeper to understand the traffic patterns of certain keywords use Wordtracker’s GTrends Tool. You can get an idea on the amount of competition on Google compared to the amount of searches. Now these numbers are far from accurate, BUTTT if you can kind of step back and take a broader look at things, don’t worry so much about the numbers but compare the trends since it shows the past history. See if its steady traffic, traffic that is going extinct, or traffic just starting to peak. By using this tool, you can many times find some golden opportunities.
10. It really comes down to just using common sense. Just sit down and think, "What would other people search to find this? What would I search for to find this?" Try phrases in your keyword research tool to get new ideas and find the higher trafficked most targeted phrases. DO NOT look at the numbers spat back out at you by these programs as accurate numbers, they rarely are. You can still use these tools to get ideas on new keywords, search patterns of users, and many other things, that mixed with the information of trends in that area, can really help you. .