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You've spent a lot of time getting unique content and a good visual layout for your blog. But even the best content and most unique graphic design will be ignored if nobody knows that your blog exists. This is why search engines are so important - especially Google, the most popular search engine available. There are some things to keep in mind when trying to improve your blog ranking in search engines like Google.

What Not To Do

One of the easiest things to do to improve your Google ranking is to not do anything that would get your blog excluded from Google listings. Although there are some search engine optimization ( SEO) specialists that claim these tactics will get you a huge immediate increase in traffic, this increase is short lived after Google cuts you off of the list.

The most important thing is not to use keyword stuffing. This means that you use the keyword in just about every sentence of your blog posts. Google and other search engines will automatically exclude blog posts that use keyword stuffing. Some SEO books published in the last couple of years states that the highest keyword percentage allowed is 4/100, there are others that claim the ratio is merely 3/100 or even lower. Google, of course, does not announce what the highest keyword density allowed is, just to keep everyone on their toes.

Another thing to avoid is using link farms. These are websites that basically just are long lists of links. Link farms exist because the more sites that link to your blog, the higher your ranking will be in search engines. Don't even link to link farms. If you receive an e-mail stating that a company or website has linked your site in its directory, chances are this is a link farm.

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Utilize Social Networking Media

With more links to your blog from legitimate websites, it will rise higher in search engine rankings. But how can you get more people to link your blog to theirs? Once upon a time, you emailed other blog owners and asked to reciprocate links. Although that practice is still used, it's time consuming and not guaranteed to give any tangible results. The best alternative is to use Web 2.0 media, also called social networking media.

Popular social networking sites include Digg, StumbleUpon and Xanga. There are social networking sites just for a particular interest like DeviantART, which attracts artists. You would pick a site and then join a community - which is based around a particular interest. Let's say your blog is about training dogs. Then, you'd want to join a dog community, pet community or dog training community on a social networking site.

The trick is to NOT link your blog onto the networking site, but to submit other articles and web posts that really interest you and will also interest the community. Then, you have clout in that community. That community's readers will often become very curious about someone who is contributing so much good stuff, so they will check out your blog. Certainly, they will be impressed by it enough to link your blog posts to the community, generating even more traffic and, as a result, higher search engine rankings.

Be sure to keep updating new posts in your blog and clean up any broken links in posts a few months old. An abundance of broken links on a site will lower your search engine ratings, as well as not often contributing new material.