@silversnowdrop
The highest change of getting what you want displayed by Google in terms of on effective keyword rich Title and Tagline is character count sensitive.

A gleeful account of the escapades of two 20-somethings, our dogs and a little house in Austin.

That's a 95 character inclusive of spaces Tagline (sans Site Title. See here and note the third bullet point. http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2009/06/22/creating-an-effective-blog-tagline/ and avoid creating a lengthy tagline.

My question is what option do I have to accomplish this with out plugins or changing the format of my post.

The answer to your questions is no. SEO plugins would never give you the SEO and the exposure that wordpress.com will right out of the box. If you are wanting to increase traffic, then here are 25 basic steps to take to increase traffic to your blog:
1. Structure a reader and search engine blog;
2. In blogging content is king create unique, high quality content so publish fresh content frequently;
3. Learn basic SEO so you can use keywords effectively and apply basic SEO to your headlines, blog and posts;
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.
4. Make your blog posts look professional;
5. Create at least 4-6 pillar posts and continue to create pillar posts;
Pillar posts are also referred to as flagship content. Pillar posts are comprehensive posts that offer great value to readers as the contents are timeless in nature. They define you as having authority in the niche you blog in.
6. Select and link to appropriate anchor text;
7. Leave meaningful comments on related blogs and encourage comments on your own blog;
8. Develop relationships with other bloggers so you can build a blog readers’ community around your own blog;
9. Support the blog centered communities on related blogs by commenting on them and promoting posts from them;
10. Link to authoritative sources in your posts;
11. Deep link to your earlier related posts in your new posts;
12. Assign appropriate categories and tag your posts with care;
13. Link to related authoritative blogs in your blogroll;
14. Provide RSS feeds for subscribers;
RSS (Rich Site Summary or really simple syndication) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.
15. Having a well designed theme is important, evaluate your theme for effectiveness, and if required, create a new header, make improvements or replace your theme and reduce page loading time;
16. Avoid cluttering your blog with widgets that lack reader value and slow page loading time;
17. Buy your own domain and domain mapping;
18. Verify your blog with the three big search engines.
19. Get organized, use an online to do list by developing a blogging workflow;
20. Join social networks and social media sites like Facebook and use Twitter, Friendfeed and other Free RSS directories to promote your blog posts;
21. Promote your blog through social networks, online groups, and selected directories;
22. Develop a social media time management strategy and stick to it;
23. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival;
24. Become a guest blogger on sites with higher page rank than your own site.
25. Create newsletters and/or ebooks for your subscribers.

A WordPress blog can either be structured as a page based website or its conventional post based structure can be retained. That’s why understanding the differences between posts and pages is key to decision making when selecting a theme, and setting up your WordPress.com blog Posts have tonnes of Google jucie and Pages don't.
Page structured blogs have a very difficult time:
1. securing traffic;
2. securing comments;
3. securing backlinks;
4. achieving authority in their niche;
5. achieving Google PageRank.
No amount of on page SEO change that reality. Setting a static front page also affects SEO negatively. http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/05/12/better-blogging-at-wordpress-com-pages-and-posts/

These 5 videos introduce how Google discovers, crawls, indexes your site’s pages, and how Google displays them in search results. It also touches lightly upon challenges webmasters and search engines face, such as duplicate content http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/03/22/5google-webmasters-video-tutorials/

If you are using a WordPress.com theme good SEO is a given. However, going beyond the theme what the blogger has done within that structure is worth evaluating. Whether you write informative, persuasive or controversial content learning how search engines work, and how to apply basic SEO to you content will benefit your blog as it will increase traffic from targeted readers. http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2011/10/21/two-seo-videos-for-bloggers/

See also > http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2012/10/08/6-ways-to-make-google-your-blogs-best-friend/

The concept of my site really requires keyword and description options to be put in manually. I thought my tags would have been generated as keywords automatically but that's not the case. There are very good SEO plugins that added this option to your new post forms. Which I believe should be standard for all WP installs.

My question is what option do I have to accomplish this with out plugins or changing the format of my post.

Another thing, my homepage title is my sites brand so on the actual posts the title would be: Title- Brand. But the home page should be: Tagline - Title or Title - Tagline.

Also, the homepage has no keywords.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

I can hear the screaming just thinking about having alt and title text in images dynamic. I have clients (and know a good number more) who have collections of images they use in posts (chosen at time of writing) and each time they insert an image into a post, they tailor the alt and title text to the post that they are writing, even though it is the same image they have used numerous times before. This ends up giving them much more exposure in image searches in the search engines and boosts traffic to their sites.

I realize that for some this wouldn't matter, but a change like that could cause others to Occupy WordPress with less-than-nonviolent intentions.

This is also something that would have to be changed in WordPress Core, and wordpress.com has little influence over the Core developers, and I seriously can't see them going for something like this. Giving people the option of having the title and alt dynamic or fixed is messy as well, and then someone would want to be able to choose on an image-by-image basis.

Sorry, but I can't see this happening.

Any help is appreciated.
Sue

Dashboard >> Settings >> Reading >> Blog pages show at most XX Posts - set this to a smaller number will help.

Also if you use the more command to not show the whole Post on the front page will reduce the load time.

http://en.support.wordpress.com/splitting-content/more-tag/

Which browser and version of it are you using? Have you tried the troubleshooting suggested in the support documentation? See here please > http://en.support.wordpress.com/browser-issues/

shabnamphoto

Links from other sites are more helpful than links to your own site.

As for adding metatags, see here:
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/how-do-i-add-a-simple-meta-tag-to-my-home-page?replies=4#post-404693

If you write Google will come.

Your blog is not indexed by Google.
Your blog is indexed by Bing (1 results).

This is a post I published that contains some factors that may expedite the indexing process. OMG! I can’t find my blog on Google
http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/01/21/omg-i-cant-find-my-blog-on-google/

Setting that aside the best way to generate traffic is by commenting on similar blogs in the same niche as your own and in other blogs of interest to you. The flow of traffic is based on relationships. I think this post will also be helpful http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/07/13/wordpress-com-in-house-blog-promotion/

At the end of the day, if you do not use social media and social networks to promote your blog posts and blog, then you will find building a growing readership is more difficult as the audience you reach will be limited.

I don't post a signature for security reasons I do NOT wish to have a copy of my signature available anywhere online. Think about it? Are you sure you want this?

I already have gravtars, avatars and blavatars as well as profile pages on all sites I'm a member of and they are sufficient for my needs.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/avatars/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/avatars/gravatars/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/avatars/blavatars/

Just an idea. Is it possible to create a signature that can be added to the bottom of each post. I know it is possible to create an image with my signature on it but that is not what I mean. What I think would be cool would be the possibility of having a text snippet (include an image as well), that could be inserted at the bottom of each post just by clicking one of the buttons above the text box.

It would also be cool if we could add our own titles and descriptions for seo purposes.

Brilliant by the way - all that wordpress.com has become.

Rich