To be successful at Search Engine Optimization, its important that you continually test out new theories and ideas. Before I use new SEO techniques on a clients website, I always test them on one of my own. In order to better understand the application of SEO to blogs, I decided to implement the following experiment:

I would create a blog for each American Idol contestant. Using a pseudonym, I would blog each candidate until they got booted off the show.
Once the final 12 candidates were decided, I would step up my posting pace. Being that this was an SEO project, I didnt aim to provide any valuable insights into the candidatesI only planned to blurb news articles that mentioned each contestant.
The goal at the end of the project (besides gaining useful knowledge) was to have 1-2 sustainable blogs in place, while generating massive traffic the week of the final show.
Several weeks into the project, I discovered two things:

The Bo Bice Blog received considerably more traffic and better search engine rankings than the other blogs I had created. Bo Bice was the first Idol contestant in 4 years that TOTALLY ROCKED. I very much wanted him to win. So, while keeping my SEO experiment going, I decided to really blog about Bo Bice. In doing so, I learned many valuable lessons about creating a successful blog that can generate sustainable traffic, including many repeat visits.

Beginners Lessons:

Have a narrow focus: The quickest way to drive traffic to your blog is through excellent search engine rankings. If you blog about lots of unrelated topics, you wont rank well for any of your key terms. Even if you dont know much about SEO, you can still create a blog that will rank well in the search engines. Pick a narrow topic and keep your posts on topic. Choose a group of keywords relevant to your chosen topic and make sure you feature these terms prominently in your posts.

Build a base of content: Unless you already have a built-in audience, very few people are going to read your early blog posts because they will be extremely hard to find in either the blogosphere or the search engines. So, save your best content for when youve already developed a steady stream of web traffic. Blogging newspaper articles is a good way to build up relevant content quickly. All you need to do is subscribe to Google news alerts to get relevant articles featuring your top keywords. As your receive new articles, create a blog entry for each article, excerpt a relevant snippet (making sure to credit the source), and comment on the piece. This might not be interesting to your readersbut the objective here is to reach a point where you can start creating original, unique content that people will actually read because your blog can be easily found. For the more advanced beginners, adding an RSS feed that is focused on your targeted niche will also be of great value to your blog.

Try to make several posts each week. Youll be amazed how much content you can build up in a short period of time.

Monetize your blog (if appropriate): I placed a combination of contextual and affiliate advertising on my blog. The advertising revenue on my blog was poor given the amount of traffic I generatedhowever, if you are blogging successfully in areas of business and technology, you could make a good deal of money from such advertising. Google AdSense is a ubiquitous way for bloggers to earn money from blogging. Once youve placed the AdSense javascript snippet in your blog source code, Googles contextual ad technology will automatically choose ads relevant to your blog content and when someone clicks on the ad, you get paid.

Advanced Techniques:

Blog and Ping: There is a reason why news spreads so rapidly through the blogosphere. When you update your blog, depending on your blog host, a ping might be sent to one or more blog search engines that track the blogosphere, showing that youve made a new post to your blog. People who have subscribed to your blog, or people interested in your blogging topic, can be notified about your post and read it / link to it. An active course of blogging and pinging will help greatly in building links to your blog and generating more traffic.

Websites and software exist that will allow you to manually send pings to dozens of known blog search engines. Ping-o-matic is a website that allows you to ping 18 different blog search engines on demand. Ive been using RSSSubmit from Dummy Software to submit all feeds to over 70 such services at the push of a button.

Conventional Link-Building: To maximize your blog search engine rankings, I strongly recommend building links for your blog just as if it were a website. I did not do this for the Bice blog and that oversight (probably) came back to bite me.

Googles Bourbon update hit several days before the American Idol final and this blog was the only Bourbon casualty in my entire portfoliovanishing from Google the Saturday before the final. My intuition (plus other anecdotal evidence) tells me that had I built a foundation of links outside the blogosphere prior to Bourbon, the blog would not have been hitof course, Ill never know. The blog reappeared in Google with its excellent search engine ranking 10 days after the Idol final, depriving me of a tremendous volume of Bo Bice web traffic for the time surrounding the finalThanks, Google:.)

Linkmarket.net is by far the best link-trading site on the Internet. They now have more than 20,000 sites that are potential link partners. For $24.85 per year, you have unlimited ability to trade links with any site on the network. No matter what your site niche is, you should be able to find hundreds of potential trading partners and generate large numbers of inbound links quickly.

Press Releases: Online press releases are an excellent way to generate notice for your blog. I created a press release announcing the launch of the blog, and once I decided to actively blog Bo, I wrote a release each week recapping the show and featuring highlights from the blog. Online press releases can get thousands or even tens of thousands of readsespecially if you are writing on a hot topic. Many of the press release readers will become blog visitors.

PRWEB and PRLeap are the two most prominent online press release bureaus. Both allow free submission of releases and both allow you to pay for better placement. Your press releases will also get spidered into the search engines and (sometimes) will end up in Google or Yahoo News as well. Ive seen my Bo Bice press releases as high as #3 in Google News for a Bo Bice search.

Best Idea Yet

When my blog reached a consistent 500 visitors a day, I decided to actively solicit posts from Bos fans. Sure, most blogs give readers the ability to post commentsbut I thought that if I ran the comments as actual posts, I could create a buzz about the blog and generate large numbers of repeat visits. I ended up getting 5-15 e-mails every day from Bos fans wanting their information to be posted on the blog. So long as the post met my minimum blogging criteria, I ran the submission. Traffic spiked immediately and the quality of the submissions was generally excellent.

My idea worked strategically because the readers unknowingly submitted content that was SEOed for the keywords that were the focus of my blog Bo Bice. By running reader posts, I generated large amounts of SEOed content that helped generate and maintain my top search engine rankings. And, my Blog and Ping strategy ensured that each and every new post (several per day) was broadcast all over the Internet.

Top Search Engine Rankings Confer Authority Status

For most of the duration of American Idol 4, I ranked #2 -4 in Google, and #6-15 in Yahoo for Bo Bice and I learned such rankings conferred an enormous amount of authority in my chosen subject. A sampling of my e-mails I received included:

After Bo performed Vehicle by The Ides of March (the first time), an original member of the band e-mailed a message to Bos fans through the blog. He even asked me if I knew how to reach Bowhich I didnt.

A CBS Early Show Producer contacted my blog to promote Bos appearance on the showasking his fans to show up at their New York studios.

Whats more, I received multiple messages from the person running the AOL American Idol fan poll soliciting votes for Bo.

Results:

Currently, my Bo Bice blog is generating sustainable traffic with very little work on my part (barring any unforeseen search engine calamity). As the American Idol Concert tour rolls this summer and as Bo gets to work on his first post-Idol album, I expect the traffic to increase.

One doesnt need to be a SEO ace to be able to create a blog that can generate a large number of visitors. Whether you wish to blog for business lead generation, ad revenue, or personal reasons, if you follow the techniques described above, you can create and sustain a well-trafficked blog by following the techniques listed above.