To get the learning started, here’s the list of 10 for the basics. Guest post by Jerry of Web Hosting Secret Revealed.

1. Pick the right war – research well on your keywords

First thing first, the most important preparation for any SEO campaign is keyword research. By studying your keywords well, you’ll get valuable information about your targeted audience and competitors. You’ll get to know what’s demanded (and what’s not) and what’s supplied (and what’s not); and position your blog in a strategy position in the search engine war. The keypoint is to be a big fish in a small pond – avoid unbeatable competitors and focus on a niche with sufficient demands.

Some keyword research tools to be bookmarked:

• Google Keyword Tools
• Google Insights
• Word Tracker
• Keyword Discovery

2. Make sure your blog URL is index-able and keyword-rich

I do understand that a blog name should be catchy and able to deliver the right image to your readers. However, there are indications that a keyword-rich domain name will boost your search engine rankings. Considering this factor, the smart way is to give your blog a keyword-rich and yet memorable domain name.

For other existing blogs where the domain name is already fixed, make sure your article or blog post URLs are keyword-rich and index-able. Avoid complicated dynamic URLs with excessive query variables. You should always have SEF URLs enabled, and more importantly you should install sh404SEF and configure it to use your .htaccess file.

3. Host your blog on its own domain name and web hosting

Why host your blog at free platform when it costs less than $5 per month to have your own hosting account? A blog on Bloggers.com or WordPress.com is hard to be branded – it projects an amateur (or hobbyist) image on your blog and most website owners do not want to link out to a free blog. If you are serious with your blog, go get your own web host.

4. Spread your keywords to several pages

It’s insane to hope your blog will rank well for 20 different keywords at once. Search engines will give top results to sites that have optimized their pages for very specific search terms. Make sure you distribute your SEO efforts to a few keywords per page, spreading your topics and keyword phrases over several different, targeted articles.

5. Fully utilize your onpage elements (alt text, headings)

When I talk about onpage elements, I mean your alt text, heading tags (h1, h2, h3), image tags, as well as internal links. Make sure you have relevant alt text for each of your images; make sure you run your heading tags correctly (sh404SEF will automatically help you here); make sure you link back to your blog post (with related keywords) whenever possible.

Another point worth noting is that many web designers often misuse heading tags (

Categories

) on sidebars and widgets, which don't really provide much SEO value. Make sure that these irrelevant titles are at least

or

tags, not

or

.

6. Quality incoming links are gold, get as much as you can!

Search engines pay a lot of attention to incoming links – the more quality links you have, the higher your search engine rankings. Make link building as one of your routine tasks. Guest posting, blogroll exchange (only with related blogs), directory submission and press releases are some basic methods to gain links.

The right way to build links is to alter your anchor text as much as possible. Also, do not be too aggressive if you are engage with link exchange. You need as many incoming links as you can get, but you have to be sure that you gain links in a 'reasonable' way. Gaining thousands of links in just one day would definitely raise suspicion.

7. Write resourceful content that builds incoming links

We heard that “content is king” all the time, but it’s only partially correct. What’s better than king in SEO is content that helps you to build traffics and incoming links. First, when you write valuable blogpost that creates real values, you increase your blog creditability and increase the chances to be linked by your readers; secondly, when you write resourceful content, your readers might help to promote your post via social networking websites (like StumbleUpon and Digg). That’s two birds in one stone!

8. Do not overlook Universal Search

While ranking your blog high is our main purpose, we shouldn’t overlook other methods to drive search engine traffics to our websites.

Nowadays Universal Search is getting more and more attention and it ranks better than ever on Google. Bloggers need to be creative in order to leverage such situation – create related videos on YouTube as well as making your blog listed in Google News will certainly increase your search engine traffics.

9. Run your blog with an XML sitemap

A XML sitemap assure search engine spiders to crawl better at your blog. Based on my personal experience, a XML file helps blog to rank better in long tail keywords (as there are more page indexed in the search engines). You can create a XML file with Google Webmaster Tools, or check the Joomla Extensions site for a simpler solution.

10. Don’t just be about the money, have long term plans

{cbauthor}Last but not least, don’t just be about the money when it comes to blogging. I often see bloggers build up tons of paid posts and on-site advertisement before they build sufficient readership. While having excessive advertisement might not hurt your blog ranking directly, it certainly harms your traffic-building effort in the long run. Nobody wants to wade through invasive advertising, no matter how good the content is.

I know money is important but if you wish to stay long in the business, have a long term plan and avoid overselling.

Article by Jerry Low
WebHostingSecretRevealed.com is a website where you can get honest web hosting reviews. Not only does the web owner (Jerry) write detailed reviews but he does extensive research, signs up for accounts, and tests the support staff at each host so you don’t have to.