The author is a copywriter with SEO Technologies, a bourgeois of world wide web marketing in Houston. Learn more at: http://www.websites-marketing.net/Texas/Houston.aspx

One of the hardest parts about learning search engine optimization is knowing where to start. The field  is always changing, and its prominent experts often preach conflicting advice.

To that end, I have prepared a list of SEO blogs I trust and enjoy reading. Even if I occasionally disagree with a post, I come back day-after-day to these blogs. Whether you are new to SEO or experienced in the field, they can help you make the most of your world wide web marketing.

Search Engine Land (http://www.searchengineland.com) – This is the mom of all SEO websites. Founded by search engine expert Danny Sullivan, it features news, tips, view pieces, and learning resources.  The website features columns devoted to link-building, local business search marketing, business-to-business SEO, and other specialties. Readers will enjoy tips from some of the ideal known SEO leaders and regularly updated links to other blogs and resources.

SEOMoz (http://www.seomoz.org/blog) – While not as expansive as Search Engine Land, the SEOMoz company blog is useful for just about anyone in the field. I love to keep up with them for in-depth insights into search engine and world wide web marketing trends. Their ideal feature might be the “Whiteboard Friday” series of videos, which can be as irreverent and personality-driven as they are informative.

SEO Book (http://www.seobook.com/blog) – This brilliant blog is the brainchild of Aaron Wall, a fiery-tongued SEO who is not afraid to raise agitating questions. While he offers excellent tips for practitioners, his lengthy essays on marketing ethics and the search industry are the crown jewel of his writing.

SEO by the Sea (http://www.seobythesea.com/) – This is a relatively new discovery for me. Author Bill Slawski’s specialty is presenting and examining search engine patents. Keeping up with this blog helps me comprehend the search engines themselves in greater depth.

Local SEO Guide (http://www.localseoguide.com/) and Understanding Google Maps and Local Search (http://blumenthals.com/blog/) – These two excellent blogs wage news and tips for local business SEO, local directories, and search engine maps.

Occam’s Razor (http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/) – Google Analytics evangelist Avinash Kaushik offers in-depth tips for understanding website analytics and using them as tools to improve your online marketing performance.

Yet, it’s simple to comprehend why themes beg for so much attention. With the correct theme, you can accommodate all the nifty tiny widgets and codes, and might also mean superior search engine rankings and tons of fresh traffic each day.

So what factors do you need to think about to make this whole theme-hunting business easier? Here are five important ones:

1) Theme Width and Columns

Typically, Wordpress themes come in 2-column or 3-column formats, with widths ranging from 500 pixels to 960 pixels wide. If you’re blogging for non-profit purposes, a 2-column theme can look more compact and reader-friendly. Since you have less images of products or links to other sites to display, you can focus exclusively on the content without leading readers away from your site.

On the other hand, if you’re blogging for profit, you might want to think about a 3-column Wordpress theme that will be healthy to accommodate your Google Adsense, Chitika and Text Link Ads codes comfortably without squeezing everything in the content area. 3-column themes grant room for expansion, but in the event that you’ve filled up all acquirable space with ads, then it’s time you removed the non-performers and use only the advertising services that work for that particular blog.

2) Use of Images and Icons

A theme with images and icons can look good, but it rarely increases your web traffic or subscriber base. In fact, most “A-list” bloggers have plain vanilla themes with a simple logo on top. Reducing the amount of images also means faster loading time and less stress on your servers. This vital aspect of server load become apparent only if you have tens of thousands of visitors a day, but it’s worth designing for the future.

A image-laden theme also distracts readers from the content itself. This is the reason why blogs like Engadget and Tech Crunch use images intensively in the content areas to add value to a post, but the theme itself is simple and rather minimalist.

Ideally, a theme should grant you to use your own header image for stronger branding purposes, yet replace images and icons with links and text, or just not use them at all unless totally necessary.

3) Compatibility with Plugins

Another time-sucking activity is installing plugins that improve the functionality of your site. There’s a plugin out there for nearly everything you want to do with your blog, but while most of them  are free and easily obtainable, it’s not always simple to install the plugins and insert the codes into your Wordpress theme.

If your theme is too complicated, it might be a headache to even insert that one line of code you need to make a plugin work. This is often the case with advanced AJAX-based Wordpress themes that have too many files and heavy coding. I’ve always preferred a simpler themes that stick to the default Wordpress theme as much as possible, so I can cut back on the learning curve and just get on with my life.

Remember that the purpose of your blog is to deliver timely, relevant content to your readers, Any theme that preserves or improves the reader experience is good, any theme that subtracts from the experience is bad.

4) Search Engine Optimization

A lot can be stated about search engine optimization, but at the end of the day if you have content worth reading eventually you’ll get the rankings you deserve. However, that doesn’t mean that you don’t need SEO; it merely means that as far as optimization is concerned all you really need to do is to make sure:

(a) Your  tags are formatted properly, with the study of the post first followed by the study of the blog – some themes can do this automatically without modification to the code or use of a plugin

(b) All your blog content titles use the H1 tag, with the main keywords used instead of non-descriptive text for superior SEO relevance

(b) Your theme has clean source codes, and if doable all formatting is linked to an external CSS file which you can edit independently

5) Plug-And-Play Ease of Use

Can the theme be installed easily on an existing blog without having to move things around? Can the same theme be used and customized easily on your other blogs? These are some additional things you might want to think about when theme-shopping, especially if each minute of downtime on your blog might mean lost revenue.

While it’s hard to make comparisons due to the sheer amount of free and paid themes out there, it’s still a good intent to have a test blog site. Test any theme you plan on using, and make sure your test blog is also fitted with all the plugins and miscellaneous widgets used on your real blog. The last thing you want is for your readers begin seeing weird error messages on your blog.

At the end of the day, a theme is just a theme. Instead of spending your time installing them, it might be wiser to outsource the task and focus more on your readers. Alternatively, you might also want to think about buying “plug-and-play” themes for a reasonable price. Dennis De’ Bernardy of ProWordpress.com has probably one of the ideal themes around, but if you’re short on cash there are certainly cheaper alternatives.

Off the top of my head I can think of 5 major reasons.

A blog is:

•    Easy to update
•    Easy to get started
•    Liked by the search engines
•    Creating feeds automatically
•    Allows people to interact with you

Before I begin let me take just a minute to define the term blog. The following is quoted from Dr. Mani one of the early marketers to embrace blogs.

“A blog is short for “web log” a sort of online individualized diary where “anyone” can reveal his/her innermost thoughts, feelings, desires, dreams, ambitions, fears, hopes … you get the meaning.

Yes, it’s a website. With one small difference. It lists posts ordered by date in a individualized journal format, and is easier to create than a website – just involves typing into a form and actuation the PUBLISH button”

The assist of near button publishing of most blog platforms make them one of the easiest web sites to update. On most platforms you don’t need to know HTML though it does help. If you can create a word document you can update a blog.

They are extremely simple to get started. Blogger and Word Press both can be started without much more than creating an statement and clicking a few choices. Now there are large advantages to hosting your blog on your own domain. But even there if you have cpanel hosting with Fantastico it is an nearly fill in the blank process to get started. No great technical skills needed.

Search engines like blogs. They are usually updated regularly because it is easy. Compare the type and near a button to update of the average blog platform to creating an HTML page uploading it either through the cpanel or FTP. Much easier so it happens much more often. Blogs tend to have fresher content.

The search engines also like the RSS feeds that are created. Properly used feeds can grant you to generate links from other authoritative sites such as Technorati, Feedburner and others. These high PR sites create backlinks to your site which will make the search engines rate you higher. People can easily subscribe to your feed and know when you have updated your site through various RSS readers.

Finally, the biggest advantage is that blogs can be interactive. Most blog platforms grant your reader to comment on what you have written.

This does two very good things for you. You get additional updated content (which the search engines like) and you get feedback on what you have written.  Which are you more likely to do? Click a comment link and leave your input on a blog or try and find a way to contact the average webmaster. Even if you do it is usually through a form or email that does not increase the content of the site.

A blog definitely gets my vote. What about you?