Krystal, here are a few tips:

1. Choose a specific audience for your blog, and a general theme for the content of your posts, rather than trying to be all things to all people.

3. Basic search engine stuff: Name your blog so it has relevant words in it that pertain to your content and your audience. Be sure you use meta tags in the code for your blog. Your blog software can probably help you with this. Submit your site to Google, Yahoo! and dmoz.org (follow all directions carefully!). Those are three important places to get listed. DO NOT pay them to list you - it takes a little time for them to get you listed if you don't pay, but you WILL get listed if you have relevant content. Other than that, don't worry about search engine rankings while you are just starting out. Just write about topics of interest to your audience, and you will find that you are using the words and phrases that will make your blog relevant to the search engines naturally. Allow yourself time to get in the habit of posting and monitoring comments regularly.

4. Be sure that the ads you place on your blog are of interest to the audience you are targeting with your content! Readers won't click ad links that aren't of interest to them.

Good luck with your blog!