Source Blogger

Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules to what a blog is or is not. Free blogs used to attract surfers to whatever your selling can be set up at many places, I prefer Blogger.com myself (Google now owns it) I have tried a few free services and have found that mysteriously, these blogger blogs, get spidered more frequently by google and achieve higher page rank quicker than othersJ in my personal experience, this is also achieve faster on blogs than on most websites, Search engines seem to like them a lot. Blogging for SEO is an extremly good idea.

In simple terms, a blog is a web site, where you write stuff adding pictures and banners on an ongoing basis. Publish it without the need for ftp and add banners adds and google addwords and whatever you like on the blog, and/or to every post. New stuff shows up at the top, so your visitors can read what the latest post from you is. Visitors can read previous posts at any time and search engines continue to spider them. Older posts can be set to be archived each and every month or week, it is up to you. Then they comment on it or link to it or email you. Blogs at Blogger can be set up in seconds also. They are Completely free too! The only rules are, no hatred, no scams, no explicit adult content In SEO terms-a blog is a great and extremly helpfull tool

To start with SEO in mind from the start

Get your theme sorted out. Lets use Baby Products as an example. Look up a few relevant key words (Check out the google addsense tutorial on this forums, awesome help for finding high paying keywords)

Now, Say you would like your site to be called Best for Baby.

Go to Blogger, click: add new account. Fill in a few details eg, preferred user name etc. You then get the option to choose what you would like your site url to be. (It will look like this. http://sitename.blogspot.com)

Have a few options ready as many url's will already have been taken. There are still some gems available however, so go look. You will then be taken to a page to choose your blogs template. It is simple, click on a good template-that's it!

Advise. If you want a blog to make money from, choose a template with a nice wide side bar. It is easier to add banners and lots of add in. A few of the templates are far to thin for this, so play around.

All these templates are easy to modify. If you simply don't like any of the designs they offer, you can add your own, or do a google search for free blogger templates, there are loads to choose from.

Now, once you have got your blog url, blogger takes you too a place that allows you to post. You can simply add test, or a list of your keywords for now, (you can delete this post later) and hit the publish button. You will then see a page that says "your blog is being created". Once this completed, you will get a page that says Blog published, click to view your. You will then see your new blog online. You have now made your first blog!

Dash Board

Now go close your blog preview, and you will see an option to go to dash board.

In the dashboard, you can choose and implement all your settings, Time zone to display, when to archive posts etc. There is also an option that offers, "Alert blogger when you have created a new post" tick yes, this tells them you have published news, and alerts the search engines to spider you! Also choose the option to make your blog public, or add to listings. At the top of blogger blogs, there is a button that says "next blog" if you hit it will display at random other public blogger blogs (And sometimes, this will be your blog) Some people click this again and again to view random blogs until they find one that interests them, so it may be your blog that catches their eyeJ and their pennies too!

You can also find something in the dashboard, under setting called, your blogs RSS feed. Make a not of this, you will need it later...

The dashboard is really easy to use, you can create a profile, and... you can make unlimited further new blogs from your control panel too! You can delete/and/or edit any post in here also.

How about you make further blogs like:

Baby.blogspot.com

Baby-goods.blogspot.com

Best-baby.blogspot.com

Baby-toys.blogspot.com etc.

Then of course-make hard links from each of these pointing at your main blog (I will explain why in a further tutorial)

There is an option in blogs to allow users to post comments on your posts.

Many will do this and add their url also! This is called a track back. I allowed this, and got spammed by everything from Viagra sellers to weight loss products. These "trackback" were once portrayed as a good thing. Personally, I never found them to do my blog any good whatsoever in search engines! There are programmes people can buy that will auto spam blogger blogs comments sections and fill your comments on posts with 1000's of urls and message you will then have to police.

I chose to set my comments to registered users only, so no one can post them.

It can take a lot of time going through and deleting offers of free porn and I chose not to have this hassle.lol

Now, click on post, and at the top you will see an option that says template.

Copy and paste this in to a notepad. (You can find notepad in your accessories on your computer) Save a copy as it will have all your settings in. Now do it again, save this one as "Blog Test".

Now you have a copy to play with modify, and practice on till your hearts content. When you want to see how it looks, add it back in to template on your blog and hit publish, you will then see all your changes instantly online.

You can do this over and over. (You have an original copy on a notepad text that you can add back in should you need to at any time) When I first got a blog, I knew no html at all. I played around with these templates and taught myself a lot. In these templates they helpful place a link to google news.lol

This is a great template guide, as you can see where you can safely add links in your design, if you are a complete newbie you can see how a link is made also.

Helpfully in the template there are some great helps that will say things like, Add the text for your footer here!! They are very easy for a beginner to master.

Have fun play around, change the header, add a few links etc.

Don't forget to add meta info! If you want an easy way to do this or don't have a clue what im talking about, go to www.submitcorner.com  they have an easy generator for your meta online and free.

Posting.

Log in, in the dashboard, click post. A page will appear for you to make a post.

Want to add a picture to your post or a small banner? Click on the icon with a picture, insert the items url and upload it to google. You have the option to align left right or centre. Hit publish, your picture will appear in your post.

Now type some text, use the spell checker and publish. You're on your way!

If you would like to cue a few posts in advance, write your post and instead of hitting post, hit save as draft.

When you want to publish your saved post, log back in to blogger, find it in edit posts, scroll to the bottom and make sure you change the time and date to the current and hit publish. NB. If you do not change the date and time it will go straight to archives and may not appear on the front page.

Tip. I have found it helpful to, post a really long keyword rich post first time, (Helps with se's) and for two weeks posting twice a day, morning and night. Any more than this may get you penalized for search engine spamming. YOU WILL GET INDEXED QUICKER IF YOU POST TWICE A DAY INITIALLY. After two weeks, posting 3 times a week is fine. I have experimented with this posting twice a day for longer than this-but found it did not help in Se's or SEO terms.

Stats.

Free blogger blogs don't give you any visitors stats or info

You can however add a free counter so you can see how your blog is performing.

http://www.statcounter.com this a place you can get them from and it will give you instructions on how to add it in your template also.

Easy Google addword.

Look in your dashboard, there is a section that says "get google addsense on your blog" If you hit click here, they give really easy instructions on hoe to add google add words to the various blog templates, they explain it really well so Im not going to waste time doing so here.lol