First of all, have your own hosting. If you don't have any you can get free hosting here wizardhost.biz. Once you have accessed the c-panel, scroll down to "site software" and click on wordpress, which is considered the best option for bloggers. It gives you, by far the most control. Okay, now once that is down you can go into your file Manager on the c-panel, delete the index.php, and create a HTML text index.html.

You will also notice your "blog" folder. Click on that and it will open to all the files of wordpress. You will need to CHMOD wp-admin, wp-content, and wp-include to 777, that is "change the permissions. This will allow you, at a later point to be able to upload images when you are posting. Now you can simply log into your blog, if you type the url of the blog into the address bar. The Meta will be there allowing you to log into the admin area. If you like you can go to "Presentation" and click on "themes" and you will find a directory of templates that you can download, or you can simply stay with the "default" or the "classic", by clicking on it and saving. Now the really important part lies ahead. You will need several plugins to make your blog more SEO friendly. Namely, feedburnersmith plugin, share-this plugin, and Ultimate Tag Warrior.and Google XML Sitemap Generator These are the most important ones.

SEO All in one plugin is used by many, but I find that it causes a lot of "crashes," as does Optimal title Plugin. Okay, so google those plugins and download. They come in zip extensions, so you need Just zip-it which will unzip the download. At that point you will have a folder and you just need to click on "folders" and then drag that downloaded plugin into your documents. Okay now yo are ready to use your ftp program and I like to use Smart ftp which is free and quite nice. Okay you are all set to go.

Open your smart ftp and click on "file" then "new remote browser" just fill in your url without the http://www, then the user name for your hosting and password. Any mistakes there and it won't work. Once all your files in that domain are open click on public html, then wp-content, then plugins and click "upload "and browse for your plugin. Then upload. Do the same for your template, if you want a different template. Once you have your plugins, you can leave smart ftp open and minimize. Now go to your admin area in your blog and go to plugins and activate them. With feedburner, you will need to "burn" a new feed. Once you have that "feed, something like http://feeds.feedburner.com/ASTL or whatever (the last part), Put it in the configuration for feedburner in your wp-admin area and also put that on your clipboard. go to "presentation" and click on widgets.

Now drag "RSS" into the widget space along with "meta" and a couple of "texts". Paste the feedburner from your clipboard in the RSS and save. Go back to the feedburner.com site and optimize that feed. You can even create a "headline animator" that you can copy/paste anywhere, like facebook, myspace,etc. If you have a Google Analytics account register that blog and bring back the "script" to put in a "text" box.

I also highly recommend adding video to your blog, since spiders are preferntial to video. For this I get a widget from Zimbio and I can add to that in the future, with relevant videos from either youtube or google. Take that zimbio code and paste it in another text box. The next thing to do is to configure your tags in your Admin area of your blog. Also in Admin under writing, if you scroll to the bottom you will see a space that allows you to add sites that will be "pinged" every time you post. You need to be registered with tose ping sites. Last, but not least, when you are researching your subject, Google "trackbacks" for that subject and, if they have high Alexa ratings, put those trackbacks in the space on the lower section of the "post" page. Remember, it's Web 2.0 and people like to be reminded that you are reading their posts. It's all about congeniality. Hope this isn't too much.