Blogging software is really a simple Content Management System (CMS) that easily adds new pages and integrates them into your site's navigational structure and linkage.

Blogs and blog posts are naturally search engine friendly because they are text-rich, link-rich, frequently-updated webpages that use stylesheets or CSS, and have very little extraneous HTML.

Optimizing a blog is very similar to optimizing a website, and optimizing a blog post similar to optimizing a web page. But depending on blogging service or software you use, results may look somewhat different.

If you follow some simple rules for search engine optimization, your blog can rank much higher than static website pages in search engine results pages.

Here are most important rules to follow to get your posts listed for keywords of your choice.

1. Use your primary keyword in your blog domain

Whether you purchase a separate domain (recommended) for your blog, or host it on a blogging service or a subdomain of your own site, try to ensure that your URL contains primary keyword you want to optimize for.

For example, if you want your blog to get found for keyword "rss" get a domain with keyword "rss", or use keyword in a subdomain as in http://ebizwhiz-publishing.com/rssnews/

Getting a domain name with your own name might make for good branding, especially if yours is a personal blog.

But if you're doing it for business and want targeted traffic to flow your way, keywords in domain or subdomain are a move in right direction.

2. Use your primary key phrase in your blog header tags and title of your posts

If your primary key phrase is "business blogging" make sure that word business, or blogging, or both, appear in your blog headers (the H1 or H2 tags) as well as title of each of your posts.

Most blogging software will take keywords in your post title and put them into file name of permalink posts it creates.

For example, if you have a blog on Blogger and title your post "Search Engine Optimization For Blogs", Blogger will automatically create a page with your post and name file "search-engine-optimization-for-blogs.html" or something similar.

With other server-side software like Wordpress and Movable Type, you may require mod_rewrite command to save title of your entries as a permalink.

3. Use your secondary keywords in body of your post

If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in body of your post and pepper your blog titles or links with them appropriately.

Don't overdo this or your posts will end up sounding unnatural and spammy to readers.

4. Use your keywords in anchor text of links

Keyword in links have more importance than simple text.

Use your primary and secondary keywords in anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages on your main site.

Because of popularity of this search engine, it is critical to get your website listed in Google and achieve a high ranking in search results. There are two types of listing you will find in Google search results: free listings and sponsored listings.

» Free listings

To have your website listed on Google search results for free you firstly need to submit your website to be indexed at http://www.google.com.au/addurl.html. Google is a spider-based search engine that automatically visits web pages to compile its database. After you submit your web site, your site will be first stored in a "temporary" database. Then Google will send a "spider" in a regular time to "visit" your web site to decide whether it should be indexed. This process is called Search Engine Submission.

However, successful submission does not mean your website will necessarily rank well for particular terms. Making your website Google friendly in order to achieve a good ranking can be done through Search Engine Optimization (which will be explained later on in this article).

» Sponsored Listings (Google AdWords)

Google also sells sponsored listings through its advertising program Google AdWords. Those sponsored listings appear on top and on right-hand side of regular search results.

Once you sing up for Google AdWords program at www.google.com/ads, your listing appears on Google almost instantly and impact on your website traffic and sales is practically immediate.

Sponsored listings often represent a great alternative for new websites or websites having difficulties to get indexed by Google.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The majority of internet users search information by using search engines. A query on Google often reveals thousands or even millions of matching web pages. Therefore, it is difficult for user to find your website if it is not listed between top 10, maximum 20 search results.

The purpose of search engine optimisation is to make a website’s content highly relevant in order to get listed on top of search engine results for free. This can be a quite daunting task so let’s take a look at some key optimisation guidelines:

1.1 Selecting and Positioning Target Keywords

People search for stuff on internet by typing certain words in search box. Words that are relevant to your website are your target keywords. Your job is to make sure those target keywords appear on crucial locations on your website such as across your title, meta tags, and body of your web page.

There is a good source of optimisation tips at http://www.dynamicwebsubmission.com/tips.html.

Tip: Your target keywords should include at least two words. This is simply because lots of websites are relevant for a single word, for example “flower”.

1.2 Relevant Website Content

Imagine search engine as a library and your website as a book. The library only wants good quality books to be included in its collection. The content of your web site is therefore most important element for search engines to terminate if your web site will be listed and ranked well.

If your web site contains only images, flash, javascript etc, it will be ignored by search engines because they can’t read those graphics. Please remember to provide valuable information not just “good looking” image. Whenever possible, use HTML text on your web pages that will make your site more relevant.

1.3 Link Popularity – Google Page Rank

Every major search engine uses link popularity as a part of their ranking algorithms. Google’s algorithm -- Page Rank – is a quite complicated mathematical formula that determines a relevancy of web pages.

Very simply explained, it uses structure of links between web pages to assign a score of page that reflects its importance. In effect, each link from one page to another is counted as a “vote” for destination page, and each page’s score depends on scores of pages that link to it. But those pages’ scores, in turn, depend on scores of pages that link to them, and so on.

In conclusion, link popularity of a website is determined by:

The number of relevant web sites that are linking to your site The popularity of those web sites The higher relevancy of website better is its listing in Google results.

From what has been said, it is quite obvious that for brand new websites it may take about a month before they get listed and ranked well by Google. As mentioned earlier, paid listing can provide an excellent solution to cover this “waiting list” period. Google will set your website live within few hours and impact on your site traffic is practically immediate.

2. Paid Search Advertising (Pay-Per-Click, PPC)

This unique form of search engine advertising gives your website an excellent opportunity to achieve guaranteed top position on search results. Paid listings are used not only for websites that are not indexed or waiting to be indexed. They are (or should be) widely used by marketers in overall internet marketing mix when launching new products, targeting a specific market segment or enhancing sales of a product that has not been doing well lately.