SEO

If you don't already have a personal blog, you should create one. A blog is a great place to begin experimenting with concepts like search engine optimization. The following is a list of 10 easy steps to improve SEO for your blog.

1. Make a list of the Top 10 blogs covering topics similar to yours. Remember, the best blogs generally have a narrow focus. Review the blogs to be like them or better!
2. Contribute guest posts or meaty comments to other blogs. The web is a great place to become a part of a community. If you post or comment on another blog, your writing will be exposed to other people with similar interests.
3. Ask questions on your blog posts and invite discussion. SEO is tied to site traffic. If you ask questions and encourage interaction on your site, you are likely to build audience more quickly.
4. Use images in your posts, but don't steal. Visual elements add another way for visitors to find you, especially if you tag them. But remember to use only those images that you have the right to include.
5. Tweet your blog posts. If you don't have a Twitter account--get one. When you add content to your blog, let your followers know about it.
6. Use blog communities like BlogCatalog. By including your blog there, you create another opportunity for audiences to find you. Along that same line, you should list and use the "pinging" service of Technorati or Google Blog Search.
7. Offer an RSS feed to make it easy for people to sign up for automatic notification of new posts on your blog. Many blog hosting services offer widgets to make adding an RSS feed as easy as click, drag, and drop.
8. Link internally to related blog posts. Let's say that you wrote about an important event on your campus in March and then again in April. Be sure to link back to your previous post within the new one to increase traffic.
9. Do use tags, but don't overdo. Five is a good number, but certainly don't use more than 10.
10. Perhaps the most important tip: Look at your own analytics. Again, many blog hosting services offer this service or you can use Google Analytics, for example. Viewing the data can help you get a sense of traffic-driving topics or sites that routinely link to your content.