Hi, everyone. I've got my idea for my blog and am fleshing out a plan and a schedule before I get started. But I wanted to ask, is it absolutely necessary to SEO the blog? Is it impossible to achieve a good flow of traffic without using SEO?

Is SEO always obvious? I guess I'm afraid that if I SEO the blog, it will be obvious it will turn people off. I want my blog entries to be and feel natural.

You can have interesting blog posts without having the feel of too SEO because of the keywords and all. SEO is not just about getting the right keywords but you can increase traffic by leaving comments on other blogs, forums or let your friends know about your blog so they can spread a word about and if they are bloggers, you can exchange links with them. There are many ways to get traffic while at the same time maintaining an interesting blog. When your blog is famous, people will refer them and naturally your traffic will increase.

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Writing Angel

It all depends upon the kind of traffic you want. I think, SEO is essential. Because I prefer to get natural and organic traffic more often to my sites.

Not wanting to cut off the hand that feeds, but as an SEO Professional, I think your blog should already be optimized so you really should not have to worry about it a lot. Some basic SEO to include titles and keyword use should be in the back of your mind, but don't worry and awful lot about it. To get traffic, just create great content that other people will want to read...but you should also do some networking and see to it that your posts are submitted to the social sites such as Digg and Stumbleupon etc...

A more higher or general topic for SEO is SEM or Search Engine Marketing which includes advertising in search engines.

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Money Making and Blogging Tips

I agree with Pixelhead, your blog should already be optimised. Just try to write good content with people in mind, not search engine bots, because ultimately it is people who will be reading your blog and (hopefully) giving you backlinks.