You can write your heart out on a blog, but if no one visits it, does it really matter? Sure, your content should be enough to draw your readers in, but how do you get them there the first time? There are 10’s of thousands of new blog created every day, how do you not get lost in the shuffle? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the first line in that battle.

One of the first steps you can take is trying to cram as many keywords as you can in to an article, but try to do it in a natural fashion, you don’t want to be too obvious. How do you know what keywords you should aim for though? Luckily there are two good free tools out there for you to get started with.

First up is the SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool. This one uses Yahoo’s results and tries to predict what is going on at Google and MSN. Not 100% accurate, but will give you a good general over view.

Then you also have Google Trends which will allow you to enter up to five words and compare them to each other. This one will only let you look at Google’s results, but in this day and age, the others are just nice add-ons compared to the king of the search engines.

So I’m not saying go nuts and put in every keyword you can think of, but try to get a coupe in to each post if you can.

I talked the other day about how tempting it is to sell text links, but I would suggest against it. Well, sadly, I have been proven right.

According to information from Search Engine Journal, Google has confirmed via email that they are in deed penalizing sites for selling text links.

The partial update to visible PageRank that went out a few days ago was primarily regarding PageRank selling and the forward links of sites. So paid links that pass PageRank would affect our opinion of a site.

Going forward, I expect that Google will be looking at additional sites that appear to be buying or selling PageRank.

In short, no matter what you may think of Google, they account for 60 - 90% of search traffic depending on the country you look at. You can’t afford to damage your reputation with them in any way, so make sure you stay abreast of the latest developments, such as this one.

Last month, amidst much fanfare, DMOZ started a blog. Since then - Sept. 24, 2007 - they have made (count ‘em) three blog posts. Whoo-hoo!

So far, the DMOZ editors have tackled such important issues as The Search For DMOZ, dealing with DMOZ in the search engines, and Why Hasn’t My Site Been Listed in DMOZ, an attempt to explain why it takes forever for DMOZ to list a website in its directory, the No. 1 complaint among people who want to be listed there.

I covered DMOZs initial charge out of the gate. Was I skeptical? Sure. Still am. Do I have reason to be? Three blog posts says so.

Why so hard on DMOZ? Well, because you can’t start a blog and post to it three times in half a month and expect people to take you seriously. Maybe DMOZ editors have so much to do that blogging is not on the list of highest priorities. Judging by their initial enthusiasm, however, I’d say that wasn’t the case.

DMOZs blog posts fall on the defensive side according to their tone. Just read the last post and you’ll see what I mean. Everything sounds like a defensive position. DMOZ editors are so bent on proving something that the only thing they seem to be proving is that everyone else is right. Besides, they don’t post every day. Bad for SEO.

When blogging first started, it was mostly personal diaries and real weblogs that just kept people updated on things that were going on with a particular topic like the development of software.

Then the opinion blogs came right after that along with the bloggers who became citizen journalists like the Drudge Report.

Now companies have discovered how valuable blogs are as a way to communicate with employees, investors, current customers, and potential customers.

We know all those reasons to own a blog, but something that is not talked about much is how blogs can be used as an SEO tool.

Besides all of the other reasons to own a blog, here are some of the SEO reasons having a blog benefits you.

1. A blog in a folder within your website gives you the opportunity to add fresh new content to your website daily, bringing the search engines back to crawl your website more often and increasing your search engine saturation.

2. A blog on a separate domain name and c class IP block can help increase link popularity for your website by linking to different pages within your website from different blog posts.

3. The best reason to own a blog is that a blog can make you more sales. Every time you post to your blog, you have the chance to sell something. Either by including an affiliate link, using ppc, linking to your products pages, and by directly pitching your products and services to customers.

I may look at things differently than some of you, but from a commercial standpoint, every web page you build is an ad. Not your home on the web. Not your store on the web. Not your address on the web. Every page is simply an ad.

If you think about it, the Internet is the newest advertising medium. When radio came along people were slow to accept it as an advertising tool. When tv came along, advertisers were slow to catch on to that too. Compnies were also slow to catch on to the Internet as an advertising medium.

But even those who do know about Internet advertising, think only of buying links and banners on websites and using google adwords or other ppc programs as the forms of advertising that are available on the Internet.

Most do not really realize that the real ad is the webpage you are building. With organic SEO, you are distributing that ad to more people through the search engines. When you also buy ads or participate in ppc, you are really just paying to distribute your webpage ad to more people.

If that is the case, and each blog post you make becomes a webpage of its own, then every time you make a blog post you are creating an ad.

Now, before you protest, I said this applies to people who use the Internet commercially. People who are selling products and services. If you are a commercial entity, you need to be thinking of every page you build as an ad.

Now, that does not mean you cannot still be helpful and provide useful infomration to people for free. You do not have to build nothing but squeeze pages and landing pages that use a lot of hype and a strong, pushy sales pitch.

Subtly advertising your products and services in the sidebar and at the bottom of each post, while providing helpful information is one of the best sales methods there are. You are providing value to your readers for free. They will want to do business with you as a result.

So, when I say every blog post is a sales page, that does not mean you should write your blog as if you are a used car salesman. Just remember to structure your blog and the posts you make to give you a chance to also sell product. Those pages are found by searchers and you could be making sales.

For those who were beginning to think that the lights were out and no one was home at the ODP, it turns out at least a lone blogger still lives there and has started the DMOZ Blog.

I have to see how long that lasts. So many people are disatisfied with DMOZ that the blog comments are going to be really rough. I hope they chose a blogger with a very thick skin!

Here is what they had to say about the rumors of their death.