Six SEO Blogging Tips

This article was written by Jon Rognerud of Entrepreneur.com. Jon is a recognized authority on the subject of search engine optimization who has spent more than 15 years developing Web sites and marketing solutions.

As the Web expands beyond more traditional means of getting traffic via search engine optimization and paid advertising, social networks and related data management services should become an important part of your online search marketing strategy. Learning how to use blogging can help you create authority, connect better with your customers and lift your visibility in the search engines.

We know that search engines are making changes to accommodate for shifts in the marketplace, as well as a more Internet-savvy community. We can see this by the way the top search engines change results and test those changes on the user community.

Google's(GOOG Quote) universal search layouts, for instance, embed data from video, news and podcasts in the natural search engine results. Additional services, such as personalized search, are available that allow for search engine results swayed more toward user preferences or behaviors.

Universal search results represent an issue for search engine optimizers since less screen real estate is available for traditional text listings. You may find your listing pushed off the first page if you aren't watching and executing better than the competition. Social media optimization is something you should look into now, if you haven't already.

Blogs are a great first step. WordPress is a popular option that has an open source development community and several cool and powerful plugins. You get an RSS feed infrastructure and a place for embedding not only text content, but also video streaming and audio podcasts.

To take full advantage of social media optimization, here are six things you should do:

1. Set up your WordPress blog. If you're running a business and want to start building your own authoritative blog, I recommend using a trusted hosting partner like GoDaddy.com. It takes about 10 minutes to set up. Apply for a Linux-hosted account, since WordPress isn't compatible with Windows. Unless you have a unique domain set up for this, I suggest adding the blog as a directory of your domain: your-site.com/name-of-blog-with-keywords. TypePad and the Movable Type blog systems are other free services. Blogger.com -- Google's platform -- is free, and Yahoo!(YHOO Quote) Small Business has a variety of options to select from as well.