Should you write a blog for fun, and only concern yourself with your readers? Or should you write for the search engines, and use great keywords?

Actually a little of both.

You have to start with a great post that gets the attention of the search engines in order to have your post found, and ultimately read. If you’ve never played around with keyword tools, Google has a great one that gives you keywords, phrases and some statistics on search volume.

When you use this tool, type in small keywords that pertain to your industry. If I put in the word "pets", I find phrases like "pet clothes" "pet boutique" and "pet photography". You can use these keywords to create your title, and ultimately create the content of your post. Using "pet boutique", you may end up with a title, "How To Start Your Own Pet Boutique".

Now that you have a good keyword, and a great title, write your post for your reader. What does your reader want to hear? What do they want to learn? How can you be a resource to them?

I recently came across a blog in one of my niches. It was brand new – started in the last month – and had about a dozen posts. Everything about it was ranked high for the search engines, and the posts did come up several times on the first page for the search I was doing. But when I went over to read the posts, they were clearly written to impress the search engines – not the reader. None of the information was accurate, or made much sense to the reader. In reality, the blogs posts will never give people a reason to visit again. They were solely put up to capture a little bit of ad revenue.

By using the two together, you’ll end up with far more traffic overall, and a larger audience that comes back again and again.