knowing your market is important, do you know who is looking for your site? what information they may be seeking, what problem are you solving and is there a market for it? what are the trends

Doing some sort of market research is important before you jump into an SEO campaign or even a business venture I’m not going to get in to how to actually do your research because this is general, I will be posing some questions to ask your self.

before I start an SEO campaign I like to ask myself:
1) who is my target market? - kids, adults, teens, mothers, men, women… More than likely they will search on different terms this is good to keep in mind as you’re looking at the traffic on a keyterm
2) how do users search terms on the web? - If you are trying to get traffic for your children’s game, a child may search on a specific game such as Xeko where as an adult may search on the term children’s educational game which term should you choose? which makes more sense in your contents context? which has higher traffic? who is going to get you the sale?
3) where are the communities on the web that are centered around your search term? - If I were SEOing for Vacation Rentals, what communities might I want to interact with on the web? what good quality information can I offer them? will they allow me to post contextual links within my content?
4) who can I contact or read about to verify my assumptions about my target audiences behavior? - I ‘m looking for free market research, look for events in your area that may be happening, that you can attend that your target audience is attending. Ask individuals you think are in the know around your audience. online magazines about your target audience. (think library) scour the web for reputable resources.
5) what are the general market trends around the keyword and audience? - do you follow market trends these may be hard to find for some keyterms and target audiences, and definitely worth the effort. this will help you anticipate what and who to target next.

much of this is common sense, go down the path of asking questions and looking for answers. before you get rolling. this will save you a lot of headache in the end.

**sponsored by VRBO, People finders background check and web design St. Louis

The Online Ad Story in a Picture - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

The article above from the New York times discusses the trends and facts of the Online Advertising numbers, Why? The talks of Yahoo and MSN is not just important to SEO Services people, but to all advertising and marketing people. Here is a quote from the article, we are covering this as the SEO landscape will dramatically change if Microsoft and Yahoo combine.

“Of course Google is booming and the traditional portals are struggling. But the numbers are stark: Last year, Google’s advertising revenue of $6 billion was roughly the same as that of Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft combined.

Google’s growth is slowing, but it continues to be a juggernaut. EMarketer estimates that ad revenue at Google will increase by 32 percent this year. That makes it the only one of these four companies that will grow faster than the ad market as a whole, which is estimated to expand by 23 percent this year. (To be sure, the uncertain economy makes any predictions especially suspect this year, but the relative trends appear stable.)

So as we try to second-guess the mating games of the big Internet companies, this graph raises the question: Does combining two past-their-prime giants that are both losing market share really solve any problems?”

The reason we are covering the recent news about the Microsoft and Yahoo is that this combination could greatly impact your SEO, SEM, and Marketing strategies. The combined search advertising and organic results, if that is what the solution will be, will be difficult for most small marketing people to ignore. Large marketing departments and advertisers do advertise on Microsoft and Yahoo, not just Google. They could quite possibly be the driving force behind another big option, not just being too dependant on Google. So our hypothesis is that a bigger advertising network other than Google is needed, and we support Microsoft as we are from Seattle.

As always we are just trying to provide you simple information for marketing your blogs and web sites. And, mixing in some shameful self promotion of us and our SEO services clients and marketing products of our strategic partners. Reminder, that is why I like blogging so much, and we created this free blogs site MyTypes.com. We found SEO advice all over the place, but we wanted to provide people a blogging tool, that would them actually SEO their blogs and websites. That is also why we finished our Marketing book, about the power of blogs for SEO and search marketing.

So we are going to plug in our web design St. Louis client, ArtWorksDesign.com, and we are also launching a sister blog at MyTypes.com/WebDesign where we will talk about the web design techniques especially as far as they relate to SEO. Last year we launched, GreenIsBetter.org for the energy saving infrared heaters, and air purifiers by Steril Air purifier. We think the web design blog will essentially lead to a portal or blogs or forums of sorts for SEO savvy web design topics. We have incorporated our end to end SEO and blogging techniques in our marketing book, so this should just be a continuation of those topics, only with more focus on web design.

As we started to sell SEO services a few years ago, we knew that we had to work with third party web design firms. The owners of the website simply did not have the capabilities to make the small changes needed to SEO the site. These minor changes have to do with proper Meta Tags, content and footer links. The majority of the web design companies now days know the basics of SEO, but SEO Services provide a lot of off-site services such as content and link popularity assets. This is why most companies large and small need to use an SEO services firm. Usually off-site SEO work will yield better results faster, once the basics are done. But, that is coming from Internet Marketing experts at MyTypes.com, we did write a marketing book on blogs, SEO, search and Social. But how well do we rank, you ask? We are only ranked top 10 in Google and other search engines for very competitive keywords, such as “Create a blog“, “Blogging”, “Free Blog“, “Wordpress SEO“, and we are usually ranked #6-#13 for “SEO“.

Why is there such a thing as Shameless Self Promotion looked down upon? People who promote themselves are fine, But if it is business related, promotion is required so people are fine with it. We write a lot of blogs about SEO, Search Engine Marketing and Internet marketing, but a lot of times, I write about subjects I love, and of my personal opinions. Our goal is always simple, we SEO our clients, this involved promoting their businesses.And some times we even promote friends companies without them being clients at all, via writing blogs to SEO their website. As in the case with our writing last week of my friends Dan’s company PeopleFinders.com, which provides People Search products. Think of them as the search engine to find people, people search is really about having the best database and providing the best services. I write blogs about political topics, business topics, tech news, tech personalities. I write to provide my opinion, my insights, I have been a technologist since 1988, I have a degree in MIS, and I have had nothing but a laptop since than. I have made millions, I have lost millions, I enjoy innovation, and I love blogging, period. I write a lot on my blackberry, as I am doing right now, from my blackberry.

I am watching Nascar, which I never ever do. It gave me the idea to write about Self Promotion, and business promotion. Any one watching Nascar knows, that this sport has the most promotion of any sport. In writing a book about “Marketing is a Contact sport”, one has to mention Nascar. Super Bowl from the NFL probably has the biggest company making promotion. And Tennis is one of may favorite, especially as SonyEricsson, one of my good friends is a Director of Marketing there too.

Well talking about SEO and self promotion, I have to plug in some more businesses. One our mentors is a retired Colonel from the US special forces, and he owns and runs the best Air Purifiers company. You may have heard that Sharper Image has been hurt by the Air Purifiers, that produced Ozone. Well these Air Purifiers don’t do that, thank god, and Keith Jill and Bennett will start to market these Air Purifiers on Green Shop our GreenIsBetter.org.

News from Nascar, the race I am watching is called Sprint Cup, at Telladega, from Alabama has 250,000 fans watching this race, never even heard of this race. Now I have heard that Nascar has huge fans, but being a Obama fan, I don’t think the Nascar people would have a lot of love for me. I am glad to see Toyota’s in there along with the Chevy’s. I have always loved the Impala’s, they would be the classic car that I believe is the all American car. Talk about contact sport, these guys are going out at it, almost crashing in to each other. 30 some cars, all within 2-3 seconds of each other, within 16 laps to go, go Nascar go. They just showed Joe Gibbs the previous coach of Washington Redskins. They are going head to head at 195 miles per hour. Now there is a crash.

Let’s close this post, we write blogs, not novels here right. This one is like the minute by minute blogcast on Sprint Cup Nascar race. So what other companies do we SEO for? Their is the Silver Jewelry company LoveRelic that provides Designer Jewelry, but at the moment is just Cross Necklaces, Cross Rings, and Cross Jewelry. Jill Brahms is the designer, she is amazing, she is actually an ex-Boeing marketing manager. Wow from Boeing to Designer Jewelry that has made the cover of Maxim Magazine. Let’s see, I have covered friends from a People Search company, PeopleFinders.com.

I have talked about the Air Purifiers from Steril Air Purifiers and the colonel. Oh I did not talk about the Barter company, ITEX. That is because they don’t need any SEO help, they are ranked so high for their SEO keywords. We don’t really have any vested interest in Seattle Real estate for UrbanTango.com. But we should talk about some of Blogging keywords, such as free blog, blogs, create a blog, and blogs. Oh yes the SEO services, what a wonderful world that we have to work for clients and fit them in our blogs.

All of this would be called shameless blogs promotion, because it’s business promotion via SEO, it really is not Shameless self promotion. We do have to feed our kids and promote our blogs and businesses. So go buy an Air Purifier from Green Shop at GreenIsBetter.org, Silver Jewelry at LoveRelic.com. Oh, and go find some people at the people search company PeopleFinders.com.

A fews weeks ago, I wrote a blog about why I don’t know as much about SEO, as I thought I did. This was just after I learned about the Matt Cutts video about White Hat SEO tips. At that point, I did this in a tounge and cheek sort of a way, as that day I thought about writing an occasional SEO tip blog and making that a regular column of this site. I have been humbled once again, and this time by my friend Mark, who is a SEM guru, and knows a ton about about Internet Marketing, Marketing and sales. Thank god he does not know about SEO as much as I do, but no matter how much you know, you can always learn more. This is what he helped me learn yesterday, yes on a Sunday, we met tod discuss why it is so difficult to measure the return on investment for SEO, especially when SEM or Pay per click ads work so well so quickly. No matter what you do, you have to SEO for the proper keywords with high enough traffic, otherwise you are just wasting your time. This leads us to our SEO tip #4, which is to use the Google Adwords Tool, keyword Estimator to see the size of the traffic. I have used this tool before yesterday for our SEM campaigns, but not as our SEO Keyword Tool, and I think everyone should use it to figure out the right keywords to SEO for.

So what exactly is the difference? We all know that we need to SEO our websites or blogs for the best and highest traffic keywords that target our customers. In the past to get accurate keyword numbers on a monthly basis, we use to recommend Overture/Yahoo’s Search Marketing tool. We stopped recommending it last year, as it was inaccurate and did not seem to provide consistent data. Most Keyword Search tools are still using it and are therefore inaccurate. So SEO Tips #4 is that you need to use the Google Adwords account, and go to the Tools section, and use the Keyword Estimator to see how many clicks you will get for your keywords. For our purposes of building the business social networking site for b2b lead generation for ITEX, we are contemplating targeting the keywords business versus marketing. We just saw some major differences in traffic, as the keyword Business could get a whopping 30,000 clicks in a day, while marketing can get about 6,000. These are still huge numbers compared to even keywords such as SEO and blogging, which we focus on quite a bit. Which get about 100 to 500 clicks a day, so which one’s should we target? Go ahead and comment let us know, I will tell you out bias, at the bottom of the post.

Not that I want to beat this keyword thing to death, it is important to discuss the far reaching effects of this SEO tip of targeting high traffic keywords. Folks you have to drive enough traffic for your business, that is the bottom line, and we all have to focus on driving sales for our companies. And, that usually means our SEO efforts have to lead to higher targeted traffic leads. This world of lead generation and business marketing usually has to do with b2b and b2c companies. We as SEO experts are dealing with the ultimate goal of any website, to get any many leads as possible for the business. Which ultimately leads to more sales. Some times and often sales are conducted on the website without having to lead to leads, sales are the ultimate goal, leads don’t matter as much, and that is usually the case with b2c sites. So other than the world of b2b business products for businesses buying and selling things to each other, things usually fall in to b2c, which deals with business to consumers, rather than b2b which is business to business. You have undoubtedly seen that SEO is discussed in many SEO blogs for both segments and makes a difference for both types of websites.

For our personal Internet Marketing business, we are trying to decide which keyword to target, both marketing and business related keywords are being discussed internally. As they are probably the top 5 most related keywords to grab business related traffic. So who is searching for this kind of traffic and why should we care? First of all, SEO which stands for Search Engine Optimization is part of SEM, which stands for Search Engine Marketing, which is part of Internet Marketing, which is part of Marketing, which is one of the biggest components of Business. All of this makes sense if you are an SEO company which we are, so we belong in the world of business, but isn’t it important that we target the world of marketing first? Yes, it seems like I am thinking out loud, isn’t that the purpose of blogs, to make our journaling part of the interactive conversation with our self and our readers:-)?

So for marketing to be effective, it has to promote the business to sell products and services. And, for SEO to be effective it has to look at keywords from Google Adwords Traffic Estimator tool, and the bigger the targeted traffic the bigger your sales. I did need to confirm this SEO Tip and hammer it home, you need to target high enough traffic keywords.

So don’t get ranked high for the wrong keywords, as you won’t get the traffic, the leads or the sales. This is what will happen to you even if you did a great job as an SEO. I hope all of this makes sense, this is what I was trying to do to provide a wholistic view of SEO in the grand scheme of business and marketing. If you found this topic boring or too confusing drop me a line, I will go back and read and edit this article again, it was difficult for me to write.

Yesterday, I finally made a decision to start this series, by discussing the 4P’s of Marketing.  Why didn’t we do this before, you ask?  Simple answer is, we just weren’t ready.  We were trying to match our message with our target customers, which is easier said than done.  Our internal debate is over, we now know what to call the book, which customers to target, and how we want to differentiate ourself.   This background work is often the most ignored and most important marketing task, and it is called strategic positioning.  Some times it can take months or years to get it right, but if you don’t get this part right, you will get everything else wrong.

By the end of this blog, you will understand who your target customer’s are, how to find them, and who you want to be known as to them? Wow all that, after reading one blog article?

To make the process simple, we have to answer simple questions. So that is why we are focused on eSuccess, a wholistic approach to your blogging, marketing, website and search marketing. The key to your success is the right keywords it takes a long time to figure that out thought. And finding the right keywords is the “secret” to your eSuccess.

The world Secret is so over used right now, It is a bit controversial and successful at the same time. So a part of us wants to take advantage of this new world created by it. But, the other part wants to be original, and use the word “Key”, as that is more us. So we will be us, and you be you. But we do like to unveil the industries hidden secrets, not to mention, we love the Movie. knowing the secret keywords is not enough, you have to blog about them every day or as often as you can. What? The secret to your eSuccess is as easy as blogging? Well yes, but I have to spend a lot of hours explaining this to you in detail, with specific examples, and show you the results of why it is so. Otherwise, you won’t believe me, will you?

Than and only than, your pragmatic side, will understand the world of Search Marketing. It’s too bad, that you can’t buy the DVD yet, we actuallly started it already on “The Secret Key to your eSuccess”. Yes we did, but it’s not hollywood style and not-dramatic enough, yet. Till than, you are stuck with stupid looking text, no famous actors, no music, and no dramatic productions. But you might tell all of your friends and invite them to blog on MyTypes.com if our Key helps, you, and it will. And maybe, just maybe, our specific advice will help you promote your business and gain more customers? It will, if you do some basic easy work.

It’s all in a word as they say, “Secrets” or “Key”, or “Naam-Hindu for God and Om” and “Jesus”, “Allah”, and “Jew”, these words mean so much. The Keyword we choose is as important as the business online, keywords or words you choose to target for your business are everything. That is what the search engines will define you as. That is why it is the key to your eSuccess, eMarketing, SEO, and search marketing.

Why do large companies and smart people usually get to the top, not just the top of the search engines? The successful people understand strategic direction, they know who they are are, and they target the power of words.

To tie it back to this world of “The Secret”, it really is simple you have to use the keywords. And especially as the SEO industry is so secretive, it’s not that hard, they just want you to think it is. Isn’t that what techies do, they hold things a secret so that they can feel important, ouch–I really don’t like that. Everything you do in search marketing and eMarketing, and eSuccess has to do with the most appropriate keywords for your business. Believe it or not, all blogging platforms not just ours are your #1 SEO tool. You never thought it was that easy, hunh, well check out any great SEO they will have a blog won’t they? imagine that, all this for a 4 letter word.

So what are the proper keywords for your business? This process of fully understanding the remification of all aspects of your business target customer and their searches is called key word analysis within search marketing. Can you believe some companies charge up to hundreds of dollars for doing this for you, and/or sell you expensive software tools that are free to most SEO search marketing firms by Google, Overture, Yahoo etc.

It isn’t enough to know your keywords, but you also have to know their search volume traffic by Google. Yes, Google, and only Google at this point. Sorry MSN Live, and the other search people, you are not driving the new economy yet. Google is the search marketing king, please don’t waste your Search marketing dollars on most SEO Tools, if they are not free don’t use them. Also, don’t do any thing, well spend money on a SEO company, or Search Marketing Agency or Search Marketing Firm, until you are done with this series. Simply said, MSN, Yahoo, and all others just don’t have the traffic and web tools for the market research right now. If you are in the midst of making a SEO company decision email me, and I will give you my 2 cents object advice. I am trying to be a third party analyst on giving people objective advice on Search Marketing Firms. Therefore, I will write about them quite often in a blog.

So after the proper “Keywords, or Keyword”, you will need to focus on competition of advertisers and their search results. The secret unveiled of right keywords is not just not enough, as you already know, it is hard work getting to the mountain top. So if you expect it to be super easy, you may go home now. But, we do make it as easy as blogging. The key is you have to do it every day, and promote your blog, and write with real important content of proper keywords. You may have to work less if you use MyTypes.com blogging platform. Because we do a lot of this for you.

Sorry, but I had to cut this article in half, 4 more paragraph had to move to part 2. So to summarize, you need to find the proper keywords for your business and do a keyword analysis. Remember, if you don’t plan for your eSuccess and develop a plan, you won’t be successful. I heard this from Anthony Robbins back in 1992-3, in Minnesota. If you don’t plan for your success, you plan to fail. So the first thing in your plan for eSuccess is a keyword analysis. Come back tomorrow and we will go in to it in detail. If you want to get ahead go read up on it at our SEO tools area at LinkMint.com.

This isn’t so much a blogging tip as it is a life tip - pay someone a compliment today.

Doesn’t receiving an unsolicted compliment really brighten up your day?  Why not spread some of the joy around?   

Is there a blogger whose work you read and enjoy regularly?  Compliment them in the comments or though email.  If you’ve been following a blog for a while and admire the writer(s), tell them!  You might make a new friend in the process, or even if nothing comes of it, compliments cost nothing.

At a loss for something to blog about today?  You could take this idea even further and write a post complimenting someone in your niche, whether they are a blogger or not (of course, if they do have a blog or website, be sure to give them a link - so they get the SEO benefit of an incoming link and they might notice your blog through their stats).

After all, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

Promotion and marketing are usually the main motivations that business bloggers have for starting their blogs.  Yes, they may want to join the conversation in the blogosphere in order to learn more about their niche and interact with other smart people, but in the end, their goal is promote their brand - and there’s nothing wrong with that.

However, many business blogs focus on how wonderful the company is, or how awesome their products are - and while that may be true, a company may provide top-notch services and their products may indeed change users’ lives, these bloggers are neglecting to realize that they are not taking full advantage of their presence in the online community.

In order to really promote your brand, you have to take the focus of you, your abilities, and your products.  You have to make the reader the hero.  Tell your readers what you can do for them, use your blog to provide value by sharing your knowledge, and show them how you, your company, and/or your products can improve their lives.

Testimonials from happy customers can help accomplish this goal, as long as they give a concrete reason why you’re great - be sure each testimonial offers specific examples instead of generic praise.   For instance, if you’re a real estate agent, you would want to feature a testimonial about you found your client their dream home in an ideal neighborhood and helped them negotiate an excellent price, not a testimonial stating “X is a wonderful, hard-working agent.”  If you are going to use testimonials, have your customers tell the blogosphere how you changed their lives.

But while testimonials alone can make your blog good, teaching and helping your readers improve their situations can make it great.  From self-help bloggers like Steve Pavlina (”Personal Development for Smart People) to career bloggers like Deborah Ng (Deborah Ng’s Freelance Writing Jobs), bloggers have used their sites to promote their expertise and brands by helping others.   They’ve made their readers their heroes, and because they truly want to see them succeed, they’ve achieved success themselves.

Making your reader the hero can also lead to a boost in terms of word-of-mouth marketing.  After all, if you help someone solve a problem, they are that much more likely to tell their friends and family about your blog and your business, because people tend to share content that they consider useful and valuable.

In conclusion, remembering that it’s not all about you can have a positive effect on your blog and your business. After all, if it weren’t for your clients, customers, and readers, you wouldn’t even have a business - so make sure they get to be the hero by focusing your blog on their wants and needs.

Okay, you know the importance of placing your keywords and phrases throughout your posts, especially in the titles, bold headings, and tags.  Now I’m going to go into more detail about techniques for seeding them throughout your blog in a natural manner (no one sticks around to read a blog that’s stuffed full of keywords and not much else.)

First of all, place your keywords in titles, headings, categories, and tags. Anytime you’ve got a chance to label something with a keyword (or two or three), do so.   This one’s a no brainer - the search engines consider these things more important than your other content, so be sure to treat them accordingly by labeling them with your keywords.

Next you have to write your content, and of course you want to be keyword rich.  You can either keep your keywords in mind as you write your posts and add them in as you go, or you can write the whole post freely and go back through it to see where your keywords will fit.  There’s no right or wrong way to do it, so you’ll want to try out both methods and see which one leads to your best results.

If you want some extra help with keeping your keywords in mind while you write, you can also keep a list of them on another open document on your computer, or even on a piece of paper on your desk.  You may find that glancing at the list helps you come up with ideas for new angles and ideas to write about as well.

Concerned about your posts sounding unnatural or overly formal?   Try reading them out loud to yourself or a friend- this is one of the better ways to work on developing your writing voice.   Remember that blogging is a casual medium - I always encourage people to write like they’re having coffee with a client or friend, so you don’t need to give a lecture or write highly academic articles.

Another good way to generate high quality, keyword rich posts is to read what other people are writing about your keywords.  Of course, it’s important to be aware of what other bloggers in your niche are writing about, and one of the easiest ways to do this is to set up Google Alerts for a few of your key phrases.  Check out this awesome post on Techie-Buzz for more information and a how-to (you don’t even need to have a google account, although it does make things easier).

As you can see, using keywords doesn’t have to result in boring, uncreative content - once you get into the blogging groove, you’ll be creating compelling, keyword rich posts in no time.

It’s the blogging version of the old “if a tree falls in the forest but there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?” If a blogger posts but no one reads it, does it really count? Whatever your opinion is on the tree thing, if you’re a blogger, you want readers, preferably as many as possible.  And you want them to stick around.

One thing that’s important to do is respond to your readers. If they take the time to read your blog and comment on a post or email you, reply to them! Answer their questions or otherwise encourage their participation.  It helps create a rapport between your and readership as well just making you look like a nice guy/girl.  After all, no one likes to comment in a vacuum, and as I’ve said many times, blogging is a conversation.

Of course, not every comment is going to be positive.  I’m not talking about the ones that are obvious flames or attempts to incite an argument (hey, some people just like to fight and they use the anonymity of the net to do it*), but the ones that provide constructive criticism or an alternative viewpoint.  It might be tough, but responding to those in a thoughtful manner can actually make you look better.  Plus, engaging in a discussion about your blog’s topic and your opinions can be a learning experience, so consider criticism and dissenting opinions as an opportunity to present yourself in a positive light.

Think of your readers as customers or clients when it comes to responding to their comments - you’d definitely be sure to reply to any questions or concerns your actual clients have, right?  Treat your readers as the same kind of valuable asset.

*You don’t necessarily have to approve these - just make sure that comment moderation is enabled.  If you feel you must publish every comment that’s not spam, kill ‘em with kindness in your reply.  And remember, in blogging as in business, you can’t please everyone all the time.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is a really hot topic in the blogosphere lately.  There has been tons of discussion on how to best optimize your blog, what keyword tools to use, and whether or not SEO should even matter for bloggers?  I even wrote a series on it myself.

I’ve always been of the opinion that although SEO is an undeniably helpful tool, search engine optimization alone will not result in success (no matter what some search engine marketers will tell you).   It’s not a magic potion.  Yes, SEO will help get readers to your website, but if you don’t provide compelling content, they probably won’t stay there, bookmark it, or subscribe to your feed.  Think of SEO as a major component of your marketing campaign for your blog, the star product.  The quality of the product has to come first, and like a good product, a good post can get some word of mouth promotion in the form of incoming links and social media mentions.

You’ve got to provide value for your readers in some way, shape, or form.  Blogging is a conversation, it’s a two way street, it’s a way to engage directly with your target market. Yes, a high ranking on google for your keywords will drive traffic your way, but it’s up to you to make that traffic stick by writing posts that benefit your readers.

After all, you don’t want to them to click away immediately (an exception here are the keyword stuffed sites loaded with advertising where the only goal is to serve as a tollbooth on the information superhighway that is the web - the readers come in, hopefully throw some change the blogger’s way in the form of clicking on an ad, and end up leaving pretty quickly).  After all, a good website is both search engine friendly and reader friendly.

Of course, if you’re using your blog as a portal to your business and personal brand, you want readers to stick around and keep coming back.  This is especially important if you’re an authority blogger, because then quality content and useful articles that inspire people to link to them are absolutely essential.  In addition, it’s likely that well-written articles from a knowledgeable blogger will naturally contain lots of keywords and search terms (hey, when you’re writing about a particular thing you tend to mention it a lot).

Of course, using targeted keywords in your titles (especially your titles - I’ll say it again - use keywords in your titles!), tags, and anchor text is important, as well as just generally seeding them throughout your posts.  Some bloggers like to keep them in mind and place them in their content with the terms as they go along, and some prefer to write the copy first and then figure out ways to add keywords in later.  Both ways work equally well, so you’ll have to discover what method works best for you through trial and error.  This post from Matt McGee over at Small Business SEM is an excellent primer on the “perfect storm” of keyword usage inside a website.

It’s also important to deep link to older posts that cover related topics.  Not only does that direct your readers to more of your relevant content, it keeps them on your site for longer.  Linking out is also key - besides the fact that citing other articles lends you credibility, it generates goodwill and gets you on other blogger’s radar (they’ll notice your links through their trackbacks or stats).   Speaking of linking out, the Copyblogger has written a stellar series on SEO called SEO Copywriting 2.0.

Finally, one more thing about SEO - your biggest results probably won’t occur immediately.  Besides the fact it takes time to build up a collection of good posts, gaining popularity and getting linked on other blogs typically isn’t an overnight thing.  Yes, you may know your blog is awesome and that you have valuable content, because unless you’re already pretty well known in your field, it might take some time for others to realize that too.  Just remember that each post is another step towards blogging greatness.