I want to start a blog and make sure I develop it correctly the first time. What is needed besides content for a blog to be great? Anotherwords, if you were to make your blog today, what would you make sure it had.. I hope this makes sense. I see many blogs and many are identical. I want to make sure my blog is optimized for SEO.

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View Port Orange Homes
Daytona Beach Condos For Sale
Daytona Beach Real Estate

You need to have it on a server with your own domain name but I'm sure you know that. I like my Wordpress blogs which seem to be pretty seo friendly. I just started my Oak Lawn one (link below) last week & it's already moving up in MSN for my main kw's.

I'm very particular how I word my Page or Post titles as that is how the permalinks get created (you should definitely utilize the permalink feature). I'm still trying to find a plug-in that will work to generate meta tags and meta descriptions but haven't been very lucky.

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Southwest Chicago Suburbs Real Estate is an affordable area with close access to downtown Chicago. Money Magazine says that Orland Park real estate is one of the best places to live in the U.S.

Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad and many other popular blogging softwares are all pretty SEO friendly, but you do have to put some customized work into them and think about your posting if you really want them to dominate.

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Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles [Of Google] will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit. Google.com

all of that is very helpful.. i appreciate it.. what exactly is a permalink? Oh and should I add some RSS feeds too?

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View Port Orange Homes
Daytona Beach Condos For Sale
Daytona Beach Real Estate

A permalink is the url extension. A normal post would have a number & possibly a date & time but no indication what the post was about. In Wordpress you have about 4 choices on how you want your url extensions to show up. I did not want dates & times so I chose the option of just having the post title (which is shortened & hyphenated).

rss feeds are automatic with Wordpress & I'm assuming most or all other blogs. However, in Wordpress I've noticed I have to edit the code (delete a word) for it to work properly.

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Southwest Chicago Suburbs Real Estate is an affordable area with close access to downtown Chicago. Money Magazine says that Orland Park real estate is one of the best places to live in the U.S.

http://wordpress.org/

with

http://www.broobles.com/scripts/simpletags/

and

http://www.arnebrachhold.de/2005/06/...rator-v2-final

Plugins.

As for Permalinks, I'll defer to Judy's judgment, but really don't see the need.

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Very helpful info.. Thanks a bunch.. Should I have this setup on a different domain and host and link "to and from", or same domain?
I hope that makes sense..

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View Port Orange Homes
Daytona Beach Condos For Sale
Daytona Beach Real Estate

Kevin, I would take a look at the following article - it's a concise list of all the various config settings on blogger that would help promote your blog. I've done almost all of the suggestions, and my blogs are doing pretty well.

http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=1060

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285 Columbus Lofts - New 63-unit Boston loft development in the former Red Cross building
FP3 Boston Condos - FP3 Fort Point Channel Boston Seaport Condos
Court Square Press Lofts - High-end luxury amenity loft building in South Boston featuring 130 condos

I know I'm jumping in way late on this thread but are your (or anyone) endorsing blogger.com as a good place to create a blog. Does anyone have a recommendation for what the best "free" blog package is?

John Thompson
Samson Realty
Northern Virginia Real Estate Blog

Both Blogger or wordpress are great free starter solutions

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Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles [Of Google] will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit. Google.com