With that in mind, heed some of the following warnings to stay on Google’s good side.

✓ Don’t keyword stuff. Use a keyword or keyword phrase, but don’t plaster it all over your blog. Keyword stuffing is a big no-no as far as search engines are concerned. If you’re found keyword stuffing, your blog is flagged as spam and is likely to be removed from Google searches entirely.

✓ Don’t hide keywords. Don’t try to hide keyword stuffing by including your keywords at the bottom of your pages in an extremely small font or in a color that matches your blog’s background. Search engines find them and punish you for it.

✓ Don’t buy links or publish links that are paid for. Search engines don’t like text link ads that don’t use the NoFollow tag because they give the purchaser an unnaturally inflated number of incoming links. Both the purchaser and the publisher are then penalized harshly.

✓ Don’t publish sponsored posts without using the NoFollow tag. Just as search engines don’t tolerate link buying in the form of text link ads, they also don’t like it in the form of sponsored posts. If you’re caught writing posts for payment that include specific keyword links without the NoFollow tag, your blog can be removed from search engine rankings.

✓ Don’t go link-trading-crazy. You may be tempted to try to trade links with as many other blogs and Web sites as possible, but this strategy doesn’t boost your search engine rankings. Instead, invest your time in building relationships with key bloggers and Web site authors who publish content similar to yours. These links are far more valuable to your search engine optimization efforts. Think quality, not quantity.

✓ Don’t include a high quantity of irrelevant links to external pages within your blog posts. Again, quality wins over quantity. Linking to sites related to yours that offer high-quality content groups your blog with those other sites as far as search engines are concerned and gives your blog better rankings.

✓ Avoid companies that offer pie-in-the-sky search engine optimization claims. Always research a search engine optimization company before you pay for any services. Many companies that claim immediate, drastic results simply operate link farms that have exactly the opposite effect on your blog’s search engine results than you want.

✓ Never copy content from another page or Web site. Search engines don’t tolerate copying content from another page within your own blog (an entire page of content), but they tolerate it even less if they catch you copying someone else’s content. Copying content from another site (scraping) is not only a spam technique but also a violation of copyright laws. Instead, create original, compelling content.

✓ Don’t limit your search engine optimization efforts to Google. Sure, Google is the world’s largest search engine, but it can also be the most competitive for boosting your rankings and traffic. Take some time to invest your search engine optimization efforts in search engines such as Yahoo! and MSN. Spend time tracking your success on those sites as well as on Google.

✓ Don’t give up. Keep search engine optimization in mind every time you write a blog post. You never know which post might be the one that will drive lots of traffic to your blog!

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Results are typically delivered based on three primary factors:

- links that help to define the site’s overall popularity,

- content that helps to determine what the page is about,

- and frequency of updating which shows the site is active.

So how can you optimize your blog posts for search if no one knows search engine criteria used to rank pages? Of course, you can always hire a professional SEO expert to help you, but that’s not usually in the beginner blogger’s budget. Instead, the average blogger usually does some research and tries to implement a handful of tactics to give her blog a boost in overall search engine rankings for targeted keywords.

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