There are millions of bloggers trying to be King of the Hill or at least trying to become elite. There are so many of us trying to reach the summit, but how do we differ ourselves from the rest? It’s not a question of being different, but how interesting your content is.

Let’s look at some of the more popular technology blogs such as TechCrunch. It’s very difficult to compete with a company that has a staff of writers, but you can still get some of the market share.

Your writing must be contagious where your fans just simply can’t get enough, and secondly it must be original content. Many bloggers copy what has already been authored and it really is second hand news. If you are providing opinion or commentary than it must be interesting and also state facts. If your opinion is controversial you will create a buzz which will invite people to comment and voice their opinions as well.

You have probably read a ton of articles on SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO is a fantastic way to get organic traffic. Organic search engine optimization, almost always references the practice of achieving high natural (organic) placement in a search engines result pages (SERP).  The term “organic” has become the new buzz word for many search engine marketing companies to differentiate themselves from pay-per-click advertisers.

Organic SEO, is a long term project and usually requires a long term investment. It is not uncommon for organic search engine optimization to take 3 months or more to start showing results.  Once high ranking results are achieved they are often long lasting and will continue to produce clicks for many months more.  As a result, if done correctly, organic SEO will yield a high ROI which will usually increase as time goes on, especially when compared to a pay-per-click campaign.

How do I start?

There are simple steps that will make a difference. You don’t have to know programming as many SEO tools are available to you. If you’re using WordPress you will be happy to know that there are many plugins that will really put your blog out in front and center.

Must have WordPress plugins and more:

All is one SEO – Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines and Generates META tags automatically. Visit http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/ to download this plugin.

Google XML Site Map – This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Every time you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update. Visit http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/ to download this plugin.

Friendly URLs – By default, WordPress names its URL with a dynamically generated sequential number. An example would be http://www.yoursite.com/?p=100. To Google, this doesn’t mean anything. Google will have to spider my content to figure out what the article is about. Contrast this with http://www.yoursite.com/how-to-install-a-harddrive.

How to Enable SEO Friendly URLs

To turn on SEO friendly URL, go to Options in your WordPress control panel and choose Permalinks. From there you have four choices for displaying your URL: Default, Date and name based, Numeric, and Custom. You will want to use Date and name based or custom because they are the most search engine friendly. I use the custom setting for my URLs – it shows my domain name followed by the post name. The custom structure to do this is /%postname%/.

Before WordPress can update to SEO friendly URL, you need to make your .htaccess file writable. FTP into your site, find your .htaccess file in the root folder and CHMOD it to 755.

You will need Mod-Rewrite enabled in Apache, this is normally set by default.

I can go on forever, but these 3 small steps can make a big difference.