Do not be afraid to blog. Content, especially fresh original content will not hurt you. The Gods of SEO will shine upon you as you blog your way to SEO nirvana.

Nirvana… really?

Yes… really. Search engines love content. Meta tags, image alt tags and URLS are all great stuff but content is king. You see a long time ago an upstart little company came along and decided that the tags were not enough to figure out what a web site was offering. This little company found that by looking at the content their robot was better able to categorize the sites place in the keyword listings.

Almost forgot, before I move on… the little upstart company’s name is Google.

Getting Started

There are many free blogging web sites out there, Blogger.com stands out in my mind but there are others. This can really help you jumpstart your blogging endeavors. The memberships are generally free, they offer great tools and make it very easy to ease into blogging.

Not easy enough… OK, you can try microblogging. This only requires entries of around 125 characters. Surely you can afford the time to do that! Try Twitter.com or (if Google ever opens it up again) Jaiku.com.

Personally I write my articles during slow parts of the day or a slow day of the week. I then review them a day or so later to make sure I still like the post. Then I read it one more time before publishing to my readers. It really isn’t that hard, I’m a software engineer and I can do it. You can do it too.

Going big time

When your ready to go big time setup a Wordpress blog. Wordpress is the gold standard. Your hosting company should have no trouble helping you set up the basic software, it is free (GNU License) and there are hundreds of free plugins to do about anything you want.

This blog is in Wordpress. I picked a template, redesigned large portions of it over time and even wrote some of my own code to improve it. Wordpress lends itself extremely well to customization. I know of at least two web sites (product sales) that used Wordpress as a starting point.

The online administrative interface is simple and easy to use, I have been told there is software available to make it even easier but I have never felt the need to go look for it so I cannot comment on it. If you know of any please leave us the information in a comment.

An entry a day

Once you have setup your blog, free, wordpress or micro, you have to feed the beast. An entry a day is a good minimum requirement. New content on a daily basis will keep it fresh.

Do not be tempted to buy content, you may pay more than the sticker price if it is duplicated elsewhere. Search engines take exception to duplicate content. Don’t tempt fate. Use a good word processor, spell and grammar check your writing. Tell us something we may not know or just tell us about your experiences. There is something you can write about so get started and remember to keep in touch so I can read your blog!

Promotion

I use a mix of social bookmarking sites, microblogging and embedded SEO to promote my blogs. Since I do not use my blog as a revenue source these suffice however there are as many ways to promote a blog as there for web sites. I know many bloggers that make a living from their blogs (in my opinion a tough way to go) and they would know more about it than me so I will leave it to them to explain on they’re blogs.



Get out there and show the world what you know. Join the global conversation, or just tell us all what your doing. Remember content is its own SEO reward.

1. johnny, December 30, 2008:

   ohKP6r Thanks for good post

2. marcusdxs, February 3, 2009:

   Keep working ,great job!
   

3. blogosphere face, April 27, 2009:

   Thanks for the tips. Its not very easy to find blogs like yours. Really enjoyed reading and will certainly bookmark this post. Will also subscribe to feeds.

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5. pink sheets, September 19, 2009:

   Of course, what a great site and informative posts, I will add backlink - bookmark this site? Regards, Reader.

6. Milagros, October 3, 2009:

   I am really glad I found this blog. Great Job!

7. Gabriel, October 7, 2009:

   I was going to write a similar blog concerning this topic, you beat me to it. You did a nice job!

8. Jude, October 9, 2009:

   I was lucky enough to find your website through google. I have been searching all day for this information, Thank You.

9. Yosef, October 25, 2009:

   You made some good points here.

10. Lila, October 30, 2009:

    Does it cost much to make a blog?

11. Tim P., November 25, 2009:

    Is it expensive to start your own blog?

12. Kaitlynn, November 29, 2009:

    I wrote a similar article on this subject but you nailed it here.

13. Cathrine Gilcreast, June 11, 2010:

    I don’t usually post but I enjoyed your blog a lot.

14. mbt shoes, July 9, 2010:

    Thanks. Good job! Write more. It seems like I become regular visitor