Blogging is considered to be one of the greatest ways of getting the attention of search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and others. However, it has to be done in the approved manner. At the same time, your aim will also be to attract the attention of human readers who would be influenced by your blog to buy your product or services.

To start with, select an SEO friendly blogging platform

Even though there are several SEO friendly blogging platforms, Google’s Matt Cutts seemed to be much in favor of WordPress, which he defined as a “fantastic choice”. “WordPress automatically solves a ton of SEO issues bloggers might have’, he argued. “Google cares about relevancy and reputation”, added the Google guru by elucidating the issue further. “Reputation is external; it is what people say about you and how people link to you from their websites and social media. But relevancy is internal; it is the stuff that you write. If you want your blog to be SEO friendly, Mathew ‘Matt’ suggested that you need to:

• Generate quality content – In order to gain reputation and good links, there is nothing like high quality, linkable/sharable content.
• Do not think about text only, videos are equally important. They are sharable and linkable. What is more, by digital promotion they spread fast while tending to rank well in Google’s search engine results.
• Draw a mental picture of your target audience to comprehend their likes and dislikes in order to select the topic on which to write. Do the thinking in plain English so that your topic may be written in plain English too.
• For keywords, use Google Keyword Tool for providing you with various keywords that are in demand. Once you can determine the keywords you plan to target, include these in a natural way when creating you blog post.

Creating Blog Post Content

Since you have already chosen your keyword, you can start writing your article in right earnestness. But make sure that the flow of writing remains unbroken all through. The reader, while going through the blog should never stagger or trip; confronted with an alien word or sentence. A good write up, incidentally, may be compared to any good music – if you miss a beat or come across a word that does not fit into the stream of the writing, it would be a waste of time and energy. Also, make it informative and interesting. Punctuate it with humor, if you can, provided the wittiness somehow relates to the topic. Remember, if users are not inclined to go through your blog, Google will also follow suit and as a result you would be left in the lurch. Another relevant tip, especially important after the recent Penguin and Panda updates that will save you from Google wrath includes keyword stuffing. Never, ever practice this in the hope of getting better ranking. Effects could be fatal, if you care to indulge in this evil performance.

Optimizing for search engines

So far as the length of the article is concerned, you may aim for 800 words but anything between 650 and 700 will also do. But mind you, the whole of these words must generate from your own grey cells. In other words, all of your content must be 100% original and not copied from any other source or sources. As for keywords, you may include these once at the beginning and then at the end of your article, although synonyms may appear in between. Marginally altered keywords for online SEO can also do the trick. For instance, if you are optimizing for Pre-owned cars, you may use keywords like “Pre-owned Cadillac in Utah” as also “Utah pre-owned Cadillac sedans” in your article. Incidentally, Yahoo and Bing pose no indexing problem for 400 words articles, but Google insists on 800 word aircraft carriers.

 Creating you blog post title

Try to keep your title length to about 66 characters. While other search engines may display up to 120 characters, Google will only show the first 66. So be concise and include your keyword phrase. In case you aren’t sure how long your title is, copy and paste it into this free character counter to see the result. If you need a free application to count your characters, you can use this one, at http://www.lettercount.com

Posting your blog and making it viral

In the event of your using a platform that allows you to routinely submit your new blog posts to an RSS feed there is no problem. Otherwise, Google’s Webmaster Tools would help you create a sitemap of your website so you can notify Google about your new content. This in turn would communicate to the search engines that you have provided new content, as a result of which it would get indexed much faster. AI’s (Alternate Image) blog and news applications would routinely submit your new articles and blog posts to your RSS feed which can result in quick indexing by search engines. So, why worry?