To submit your blog to Google, simply go to the online submission form, shown below, and enter your blog’s main URL. It’s usually your blog’s home page, and you should include the http:// part of your blog’s URL (for example, http://www.myblogdomain.com). You can enter any additional information or keywords that you want to provide, but they don’t affect your submission or appear with it after your page is indexed. Then type, in the text box, the spam-blocker text that appears on your screen and click the Add URL button. It’s that easy!

A blog post can be just a few sentences or many paragraphs. Some blog posts include an image and no text, whereas others might contain a complete tutorial or an online lesson teaching readers how to accomplish a task. Think about your audience (or at least the audience you want to have read your blog content) as you write your blog posts and create content that would appeal to them. The variety of blog posts in the following list gives you a starting place to help write your own blog posts.

✓ Current events: Write about something you heard about in the news.

✓ How-to or tutorials: Share your expertise in your blog topic by writing a tutorial or instructions to help your readers accomplish a task or an activity.

✓ Interviews: Contact a prominent person who works in a field related to your blog topic and interview her for a blog post.

✓ Link love: Find interesting blog posts across the blogosphere that are related to your blog topic and publish a post that provides links to those posts to help your readers find new blogs and to help you connect with other bloggers.

✓ Lists: Write your top five tips or suggestions or your top ten must-have products to help your blog readers. Alternatively, write a list of don’ts or a similar list of warnings.

✓ Opinion: Write a post that simply provides your opinion on an issue or event.

✓ Photos: Post a photo related to your blog topic.

✓ Polls: Ask your readers for their opinions by publishing a blog post that includes a poll or survey.

✓ Reviews: Write a review of a product, an event, a book, or anything else related to your blog topic.

Before you can start a blog with Blogger, you need to create a Google account to access the Blogger software.
To create your Google account (and Blogger blog), follow these simple steps:

1. Visit the Blogger home page.
Enter the URL www.blogger.com in your browser.

2. On the Blogger home page, click the Create Your Blog Now button

3. In the Email Address text box, type your e-mail address and then retype it in the Retype Email Address text box. The e-mail address you use doesn’t have to be for a Google Gmail account. You can use any e-mail address to create a Google account to access Blogger. The e-mail address you enter is the one you use to log in to Blogger, and it’s the one to which Blogger sends your username and password if you forget them.

4. Enter a password in the Enter a Password text box, and then reenter it in the Retype Password text box.You can change your password later, if you want. Google shows you, just beneath the Enter a Password box, how strong your password is after you enter it. Make sure to use a strong password — one that includes letters and numbers or special characters. Also, get into the habit of changing your password periodically.

5. Enter your display name in the Display Name text box.Your display name is shown at the bottom of each of your blog posts, indicating that you’re the author of the post.

6. Type the letters displayed in the Word Verification box. This security procedure ensures that new Google accounts are created by human beings rather than by automated spam systems.

7. Select the check box in the Acceptance of Terms section to indicate that you accept Blogger’s terms of service. You can click the Terms of Service link on your screen to read the complete document.

8. Click the Continue button. The Name Your Blog page opens on the Blogger Web site

You should set several formatting configurations before you start writing and publishing blog posts, such as time, date, and language options. Select the Formatting tab from the Settings navigation bar to display the Formatting page, shown in the figure below.

Then follow these steps to configure how your blog posts are displayed to visitors:

1. Select the number of posts you want to display on your blog’s home page by choosing these options:
• From the Show drop-down menu, select Posts or Days to display a designated number of posts on your blog’s main page or a designated number of days’ worth of posts on your blog’s main page.
• In the Show box, enter the number of posts or days’ worth of posts you want to display on your blog’s main page based on the setting you selected from the Show drop-down menu.

The number of posts you show on your blog’s home page is entirely up to you, but remember that people don’t like to scroll too much. Displaying 5 to 10 posts (depending on post length) on your home page is a common target to keep your blog readable.

2. From the Date Header Format drop-down menu, select in which format you want the dates to appear on your blog. This date appears at the top of your blog, above your posts, to remind visitors what day it is.

3. From the Archive Index Date Format drop-down menu, select the format of the dates used in the Archive Links page element on your blog’s sidebar. Older posts are automatically archived so they’re easily accessible from the Archive Links page element in your blog’s sidebar. It’s up to you to decide how you want your archived posts to display in your sidebar. Choose the date format that you prefer by configuring the Archive Index
Date Format setting.

4. From the Timestamp Format drop-down menu, select the format you want to use for the publication date for your blog posts. A timestamp appears at the bottom of each blog post that tells readers
when each post was published. Changing the Timestamp Format alters how that date appears on each blog post.

5. Select your time zone from the Time Zone drop-down menu. Selecting the correct time zone ensures that your date header and timestamps synchronize correctly to your location.

6. Select your language from the Language drop-down menu.
Blogger is available in a variety of languages. Make sure that you select the correct language for your blog.

If you’re serious about search engine optimization and prepared to invest some money into keyword analysis, you can open an account with a keyword research Web site like Wordtracker. Simply go to the Wordtracker home page and click the Sign Up link (see below).

Wordtracker offers a wide variety of tools and reports to help you narrow the list of which keywords you should focus on in your blog posts to maximize potential traffic.

Other options similar to Wordtracker include the ones at www.Wordze.com and www.KeywordDiscovery.com. Like Wordtracker, each of these sites requires paying a fee, but free trials are available so you can test drive-them before you pay anything out of your pocket.