The answer to this question depends on what subject you blog about, but no matter what your subject is, with better SEO, a blogger can have a greater impact on larger communities (get more traffic to their site.)

So how does a blogger improve their seo ranking?

In this post, I've done everything I can to come up with the three most effective ways a blogger can improve their SEO. These three ways are from personal experience and the consistent study of successful bloggers.

Before I go into the three ways, I want to share a little personal philosophy about SEO. I've had many discussions (near arguments) with SEO experts that claim SEO is all about mathematics and quantification.

I highly disagree. I think there is more of an art to SEO than a science- and the reason why is because we are humans. Humans read (or watch/hear) the blog posts themselves and if it moves them in ways that are inspirational, informative, and extremely helpful, people will share the posts with others. This is the best way to establish backlinks to your website (and btw, back links are the most effective way to improve your SEO.)

Okay, now that I've got that off my chest, let's get down to the three ways you, as a blogger, can improve your SEO ranking:

1. Transform your titles. Do you know what transformation means? In an artful way, it means to magically change the appearance of something.
   
   To magically change the appearance of your titles, you can move words around, restructure your titles to be in the form of a question, or create a shock value (state something that makes a reader say "What!")
   
   When you do this, it is imperative to include the keyword phrase you want to optimize for. Do you know what your keyword phrase is each time you create a blog post? It helps to know. It will improve your seo.
   
   For example, I did my research for a keyword phrase to optimize for with this blog post (actually, I'm hoping to get rankings for two keyword phrases.) I found that the term "improve seo ranking" averages 1300 searches per month and the amount of websites competing for the keyword phrase is average. By looking at the numbers, I have assessed that my chances of ranking for this term are pretty good- so the keyword phrase has been included in the title of this post.
   
   Titles need to be catchy... a boring title doesn't get visits. But to be catchy with the search engines, your title should include your keyword phrase. Spending extra time to do "healthy" keyword research will
   provide impressive results for the optimization of your blog.
2. Answer the questions that are being asked. Let's think for a moment
   what the purpose of a blog is...
   
   Yes, it's a web log, and it is the more common way to share information about a certain subject.
   
   When you consider the purpose of a blog, it's good to know that the more helpful you are to the readers/viewers of it, the more value it's going to create.
   
   What's a better way to be more helpful than by answering questions?
   
   Don't try to answer that question ;-) stay with me. A blogger may think they know what questions are being asked for a certain subject, but there are ways to find out if they really are.
   
   You can use LinkedIn's "Answers" social media tool to research the questions being asked about your subject. You can also use "Yahoo! Answers." How about forums- try a Google search for "[your subject] forums." You'll find plenty of discussion topics where people are
   looking for an answer to something specific. And if you can provide a helpful answer, share it in your blog post.
   
   If you're questioning how that can improve SEO rankings, consider this: Google has shared that their search queries are getting more and more specific. Bloggers can assume (with confidence) that these specific search terms are often in the form of questions. People want to know answers to many things- and they are typing these questions into the search engines.
   
   Answer the right questions and you'll notice your SEO rankings improve.
   
   I promise.
3. Contribute to the conversation(s). Another thing that makes a blogger feel good is when they receive comments on their posts (preferably nice comments.) This is why most bloggers leave their comment sections open for readers to share what they got out of the post.
   
   When you create a list of blog subjects that are complimentary to yours, you can use Google alerts to inform you of when content is published
   about these subjects. You can also subscribe to the blogs that compliment yours in Google reader. It will organize and structure all the blogs you subscribe to.
   
   When you have a large list of complimentary blogs, contribute to the conversations going on within them. Make smart comments that are helpful, supportive, and inquisitive. More viewers of the blog post will notice your contribution and click your link.
   
   And if you don't believe me, I honestly have this happen to me often. Two weeks ago, I asked a very important question to a blogger that could have included the content in the post. I noticed in my analytics that week that I had hundreds of clicks to my website from that blog post comment. I was a little surprised because I didn't realize how important my question was to the rest of the community, but it was- the clicks were the proof.
   
   Commenting on other bloggers' posts can provide a link to your site, and there are debatable discussions of whether this helps your SEO or not. I'm gonna bypass that debate and stick to my point of: contributing to the conversations that compliment your blog subject will create opportunities for your website to be visited by more people who are interested in your subject matter.
   
   This is a creative, social, and artful way to improve SEO rankings for your blog.

Happy SEO blogging!