Does Google (and any other search engine) only take into account the keywords displayed on the posts of the homepage of your blog, and not the blog postings that are archived? in my first few blog postings i had used a certain keyword a lot, and my blog showed up like #40 out of over 1,000,000 results. most of those postings w/those keywords are archived now and now my blog is something like #190 in the results when i search for that keyword any idea why this happened or how i could fix it? does it even relate to those posts w/the keywords being archived? thanks
yes, keywords on the main index page is very important. if you want to get ranked well for certain keyword, then it would be wise to write the article titles with your keyword in them. if you have 10 article excerpts on the index page, then try to have atleast 3 article titles with your keyword in them. then do some link building to your homepage with that keyword in anchor text and you will surely rank well with your homepage. over time your articles will be archived but try to maintain atleast 3 articles with keyword always on the homepage