Written By: Sujan Patel On July 17th, 2007 | No Comments
When you’re developing an effective online presence, you need to tap the power of search engine optimization. For dynamically driven web sites though, applying search engine optimization in a thorough manner can be difficult.
What is a Dynamic Web Site?
For the sake of this blog post, a dynamic web site can be defined as a site that is using a database to pull content and provide it to users. Many times, databases of this nature may include articles, products, services, events. As a result, the webmasters of these sites have to find a way to convince Google and other major engines to index anywhere from a dozen pages to literally tens of thousands of pages.
What is a Query String?
A query string is the process of passing variables through a string of text. In this case, a query string URL refers to the use of a “?” in a pages actual URL. As an example, this is a URL with a query string:
www.domain.com/item.asp?item_id=012345
Are Query Strings in URLs Really a Problem?
The short answer is no — assuming of course that you have done your homework. Ideally, you want to limit the number of variables being passed through the query string though.
Eliminating and Reducing Query Strings in URLs
There are a number of ways in which a web server can still dynamically generate pages without the use of query strings. One such way would be to use a CMS that relies on query string free architecture. Another is the common .htaccess rewrite methods available on Apache web servers.
Warning: rewriting query strings and URLs can be a difficult and dangerous task. Speak with your hosting provider and tech support if you have never done this before!
Templating is Your Friend. Sort of.
The greatest aspect of templating out a dynamic web site is the ease of use for updating and making modifications. When you try to template optimization though, you’re left with a number of issues.
First off, how can you really optimize one template that handles thousands of pages with pure optimization? You can’t. There’s a level of customization that needs to be factored into place here, and it’s best to work with your design and production teams (or, third party CMS support) to integrate some new variables to use in your templates.
Here are a couple of examples:
- Add a field that contains META Keywords
- Add a field that contains META Descriptions
- Add a field that contains Page Titles
- Add in the ability to format text (bold, italics, etc.)
Use those Sitemaps!
Both Google and Yahoo allow you to manage sitemaps for a reason. Use these to your advantage as they’ll specifically tell each of the major engines that your content exists. Using the Google Webmaster service too will allow you to easily see where your content is being ranked, how people are finding you, etc. In the end — make sure there is room to scale up and allow for more customizations.
Written By: Sujan Patel On July 9th, 2007 | 1 Comment
A lot of things leak. Pipes leak. Basements leak. Sometimes even humans leak! However, there is one leak that many people might not be aware of, and it can be quite the factor in determining your blog or websites overall success. What may I be talking about here?
Leaking Pagerank.
Yes, seriously. Now we all know that the one thing that all webmasters and bloggers have in common is a goal to attain a high PageRank and keep it. We all know the importance of that magical (and sometimes controversial) number, and when Google decides to update PageRank, it’s roughly ten times worse than waiting for Christmas day to come when you were six years old. When that sweet PR comes down the pipe and its official, it can be very rewarding (or sometimes quite disastrous, depending on your situation). In any case, when a blog/website gets a PR assigned, the goal is to at the very least maintain it, and better yet, work on making it higher. Keep in mind - there is one factor that you may not have thought about, that will eat away at that precious PR if you’re not careful.
That’s right; your PageRank really can leak. *gasp* Over the course of time, if this leak isn’t fixed, then come the next Google update time, you will surely be sorry. Never fear, as there are a couple of measures you can take starting today that can save you from this silent PR killer. They are surprisingly easy to understand, even for an SEO noob.
Simply speaking, “Leaking PageRank” happens when your outbound links “leak” out PageRank that would normally be distributed to your internal pages, therefore it reduces your blog/websites overall PageRank. Which we all know isn’t good. This can really hurt a blogger/webmaster in many ways, so we need to take a look at why this is happening and what you can do about it right now.
The first countermeasure is to increase internal linking throughout your site. That means that when you write your next article, be sure to try and include a reference to an older article which is relevant to the one you just wrote. This should be common practice for you anyway, but it’s easily forgotten. Also, make use of tags, as tagging is an extremely easy way to increase internal linking. Make a habit of tagging all of your posts. Another way to increase that internal link love is to link to popular and recent posts/articles in your sidebar. This is something that most people do anyway, but if you’re not practicing this, then it behooves you to start doing this right away. Not only can it help counteract PR leaking, but it can also bring visitors to your best and most recent articles, which has many benefits alone.
Last, but definitely not least, in order to help counteract the effects of PageRank leaking, you need to immediately get rid of redundant outbound links. Think of your sidebar, I bet you have a “blogroll”, maybe even a list of the top/recent commentators and similar links. These are most likely being displayed on every single page of your site. If your site is old enough, this can mean hundreds or even thousands of pages. Talk about major leakage! Don’t worry though, the quickest, best, and easiest fix is to limit these types of “blogrolls” or link lists to be included exclusively on your homepage, and no where else. There are many different ways of doing this, and the best way to find out how to do it for your particular site is to Google it. For example, go to Google and type in “limiting blogroll to your homepage”. You’ll uncover enough results to find out how to do it for your specific platform. If you don’t feel like doing this (I don’t see why not, it’s really easy) then you also have the option of keeping your blogroll on its own special page. Even worse, if you’re really lazy, you could add the “nofollow” attribute to your blogroll and/or top/recent commentators, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of having them.
In conclusion, you really don’t have an excuse for not putting these strategies into place right after you get done reading this article. Leaking PageRank may not be your top priority now, but once you are established and your site is on top of the world, the last thing you want is to be quietly leaking PR behind the scenes. It could really ruin your day. So plug that leak right now, get into those internal linking habits.
Written By: Sujan Patel On July 4th, 2007 | 4 Comments
Happy Forth of July! We at Single Grain hope everyone has a fun and safe forth of July. Now to to the good stuff…we are giving a Free SEO Analysis to the first 10 people who email us.
Heres what the free service includes:
- 1 Hour of over the phone consulting
- Analyze competitors website
- Analyze clients website
- Evaluate existing SEO techniques
- Analyze code
- Page titles
- Meta tags (for sub pages as well)
- Alt tags
- title tags
- Analyze keyword density
- Evaluate website content
- Catalog and evaluate of inbound links
- Evaluate website navigation
- Analyze page/code flow
- Identifying high value/high potential
- Keyword Examination
- Keyword Expansion
- Evaluation using Google’s keyword tool
- A Full SEO Analysis Report
This offers only for the first 10 people so act now. Email us: SJ (at) singlegrain (dot) com
Update: We have 5 free SEO Analysis left to give away.
Written By: Sujan Patel On July 3rd, 2007 | 2 Comments
When it comes to understanding your web site visitors, few tools are as important as a quality web analytics package. While it is important to have a basic understanding of general terms, it’s more important to use the information in these reports to help increase the productivity of your web site.
Search Referrals & Landing Pages
One of the most common things we come across here at Single Grain, is poorly targeted optimization. In other words, if you run a web site that sells books — and you’re sending users looking for “children’s books” to books on parenting — you need some work.
The trouble here is that many people assume that if they’re ranking well, they don’t need to worry. What happens though if the people you’re bringing in through search optimization aren’t doing what you want them to? Many times this happens when they come in looking for one thing and end up on a page focused on something different.
If you find this happening with your site, make the changes to keep your visitors productive and happy!
Understand Your Visitors!
The best types of analytics are those that show you how your visitors converted to your success point… be that to submit a lead, make a purchase, or contact you through the site.
There is an underlying issue here that we find when speaking with clients. When we ask them what they’re looking for, they always tell us that they’re after more visitors to their site.
While we can’t disagree, we shift the focus towards more productive visitors. See, our theory is that you can have all the visitors in the world — but if they’re not targeted or they can’t produce business for you — what good are they?
That’s why it’s critical to understand your visitors. Research using your analytical reports to find out what sites they’re coming in from, what areas of your site are most productive, and what they’re using and looking for once inside.
With this information in hand, go back to the computer and hammer out some new content that speaks to these users. By doing this, you’ll give them another reason to come back — and will be one step closer in reeling in hundreds of similarly productive visitors in the future.
Develop a Timeline and Test!
While it’s great to make changes that positively impact your site — you have to test things out to make sure they work. Failure is not a bad thing — it’s just a sign that you’re actively trying something different.
With search engine optimization, different approaches can be rewarding — but you need to know when to pull the trigger.
Tap into your web analytics and look specifically at what major search engines are doing on your site. Google for example will send out their spider called GoogleBot. If you can see that every other Thursday GoogleBot is coming into your site and grabbing all of the pages… When do you think would be a good time to push those new changes live? You got it — Wednesdays!
This approach will save you time assuming that the trends continue on (and with Google, they tend to do just that).
Final Word on Analytics
There are thousands of web analytics providers out there, and each has a different understanding of search optimization, relevant reporting, and so on. Before you buy into any service of program, be sure that you can accomplish these and other tasks. Challenge the vendor offering such tools to show you how to make the most of your search efforts.
Many companies will reward your asking for these tools with some free training to help speed your learning curve. Good luck!
Written By: Sujan Patel On July 2nd, 2007 | 1 Comment
This day in age, everyone wants to make a quick and easy living. While that approach has led to some great inventions for us all to enjoy, successful search engine marketing requires principals, conventions — and a little elbow grease.
Simply stated, if you want quality SEO results, you will need to work for them.
On Site Optimization Efforts
The first step to successful search engine optimization is a thorough review and revision process of your pages and coding. It is critical here to develop a themed approach and stick to it while offering content.
We know that the major search engines want to promote unique content. Many times though, we cut corners by using ready made articles, copied text with little revisions, etc. The challenge then becomes to efficiently create content that strikes the engines as being appealing. If you’re passionate about your site’s topic and focus, this is a great way to actually motivate yourself for long term success.
There is one simple rule you can use: Be sure to create adequate content to accomplish your goal. An about us page doesn’t need to be three pages long. If its quality content that speaks to the topic of the page don’t worry — the engines will be fine with it.
Now that you’re in the habit of taking your time to write the content, it’s time to get to the most important elements! First off, create logical, unique and keyword relevant page titles. They will be the single most effective element in on page optimization, so take your time and stick to the underlying theme and plan. It’s really important here to write page titles that use your major keyword phrases and targets — but also does so logically. Search engines are developing a deeper understanding of language, so creating titles that make no sense will result in little impact on your results.
Next, go back and format your content to match your page titles. Using headings (H1 through H3’s) to logically break up content is one great way to develop a page’s optimization. Beyond that, use elements creatively, like unordered lists and forms. Search engines have taken major steps forward to develop their algorithms, and one major area of focus was a deeper knowledge and consideration to HTML coding.
Finally, when it comes to HTML coding — make sure that your rendered pages are valid. This will cover things that you’ll need for third tier search engine success — like ALT tags, section 508 compliancy, META tags, etc.
Off Page Optimization
While this may sound contradicting — you need to be considerate of others while not holding back with your site marketing. Let’s dive into that, shall we?
First — it’s time to be considerate. You need to gather as many inbound links as possible without coming across as being too fraudulent or spammy. Too many times we see site owners using a cut and paste, mass email effort to any and all site owners hoping to get a few inbound links. That’s junk, and the results are junk. If nothing else, you’ll end up aggravating others to the point that they’ll never be willing to provide a link to you.
So how can you get some inbound links that are of value without breaking the bank? First, identify the sites you want links from. Behind every web site is at least one person willing to provide a link — but you need to cater to their needs and desires. It’s true that many people are ego driven, so why not use that to your advantage?
Do your best to identify with the one person you need to be in touch with. Don’t become complacent and rely on email as your only means of communication. Become proactive, pick up the phone, and let people know that you value their site and audience so much, you’d like to develop a partnership. Using this as leverage you can easily achieve what you’re after — and in many cases much more.
Now, let’s get aggressive and market your site on your own.
With the advancements of the whole Web 2.0 movement, social networking opportunities are tremendous. From major communities like MySpace and Friendster, to niche tools like MyBlogLog and Digg — you can do a lot and earn some great exposure if you are willing to put in the time.
Start by adding a blog to your site if you have not already done so. This opens the doors up to use social bookmarking services like Digg, Del.icio.us and others.
Every time you write a new blog post or add another page, be sure to submit it to these services yourself and encourage others to do the same. This proactive approach may seem daunting — but the number of visitors you gain can be invaluable.
Long Term SEO Success
The final component to your search engine success will rely on your ability to always put your best foot forward. A one time optimization effort is good, but far from great. A willingness to adapt to trends demonstrated by the engines is critical. And here, when we say “engines”, we’re really only discussing Google and Yahoo. You should never go out of your way to tailor your optimization efforts for a particular engine if it cannot help support your site.
So, over the course of time — be sure to update your site by continuously adding new content. Be proactive, exchange links and work to develop a solid web site jam packed with unique content. In the end, your efforts will certainly be rewarded.
Above all else, remember to be reluctant when it comes to automated tools. Any tool or service that takes the work out of the equation is likely to also cost results. If you’re serious about your site’s optimization — put the time in and do it right.
Written By: Sujan Patel On June 26th, 2007 | 2 Comments
Correcting supplemental results and directing search engine bots to your important content can be an overwhelming task if you don’t know what approach to take. Supplemental results aren’t the end of the world but if you are trying to get traffic from Google’s search results then you might be out of luck. Google will only show supplemental results after all the other relevant searches have been displayed. There are basically three main reasons Google puts pages into their Supplemental results:
Duplicate content
Pages with no content
Pages with no links
Today we are going to concentrate on duplicate content.
Duplicate content is one of the fastest ways to get your blog pages into Google’s supplemental results. In order to avoid this you need to direct Google to the correct pages you want indexed. With more and more blogs popping up everyday it’s very important to have a blog plan and understand the best ways to increase your traffic.
The organization of your blog can be a huge factor in determining which pages are included in Google’s main index and which end up in supplemental results. Because you can easily add posts to multiple categories, you can quickly end up with multiple versions of each post. However, multiple versions means that you are dividing the strength of each post and allowing Google various ways to link to each post. You want Google to only see one version of each post.
Another quick way to duplicate your posts is with your comment feeds and trackback URLs. Each time you post a new story or article on your blog and people either comment on it or trackback to it from their blog, a new link can be created in the SERPs. The problem arises when these comments or trackbacks get more attention then the actual post, the original post can be pushed into supplemental results.
You can fix all these problems with the proper inclusion of your robots.txt file. The robots.txt file is a text document that goes in the root structure of your website and basically tells Google and every other search engine where it can and can’t go.
Wordpress offers many suggestions on how to edit your robots.txt file. Another important resource that you can use is Google’s Webmaster tools. If you setup an account with Google Sitemaps you can add various functions to your robots.txt file and test out which URLs will be blocked before uploading and potentially harming your website. Editing your robots.txt file can be dangerous so go slow and edit only what you need to.
Blocking unimportant or duplicate content will allow you to gain traffic by increasing the amount of pages you have in Google’s main index and reducing the amount of pages you have in their supplemental results.
Drew Stauffer is the CEO and founder of Alibi Productions, a website promotion & online marketing firm based in Greenville SC.
Written By: Sujan Patel On June 25th, 2007 | 3 Comments
Last week we discussed the complete package that represents GUS, or Google’s Universal Search. Today we will now discuss the optimization of key components that any business can use to further their search engine promotion.Please note that this post will discuss the common traits that all businesses will need to use. Special or niche products like Google’s Book Search for example will not apply to most businesses, and has therefore been left out of this discussion. For help with marketing your site and business through these other mediums, please contact us today.
What products can all businesses use for more coverage in Google Universal Search? The three that come to mind would certainly be Google Base, Google Images and Google Local.
Google Base Optimization
Google Base is a tool that allows site owners to conveniently list their inventory on Google. Google then uses that inventory and tries to match it up to appropriate search results for a given user.
By default, Google requests the following information on a per product, or per service item: brand, condition, description, expiration date, id, image link, link, price, product type, and the most important — the title of the item.
For the sake of example, let’s say that your business sold and serviced jewelry. While you could list an engagement ring as a “1 carat platinum ring” — you won’t get much exposure. You must force yourself then to use the title and the description fields in Google Base to become very descriptive.
Try labeling that same ring as “1 Carat (ct.) Princess Cut Diamond on Platinum Engagement Ring Band”.
Seem overboard? Think again! You have suddenly opened up the door for a number of highly searched for terms like… “engagement rings”, “princess cut diamond rings”, “1 ct. diamonds”, etc.
Throughout your use of Google Base though, be sure that you reference the best pages on your own site. Remember that a user will search someplace through Google and be left off on your site when they’re finished. While you may be tempted to put them through to a shopping cart page that instantly adds that item to their cart — it really cannot be advised. Users coming into your site from Google Base will need to be comforted by the fact that they have left a large company in Google. Be sure then to market your pages to be as thorough and as descriptive as possible without distracting from the product at hand.
Finally, be sure to check your web analytics to see how people who buy originally arrive at your site. You will find that many people will search by specific criteria, such as color, material or style. Google Base Optimization is a continuing effort where you will need solid tools in place to get the best results from. Once things are covered though, it is well worth it!
Google Images Optimization
Images from Google Images is now being shown in the normal search results. Here are a few step to insure images from your website optimized:
• use alt tags
• keywords in the title attribute
• text around the image should be related to the keyword
• keywords in the file name
• don’t include images into external css or javascript files
Do not stuff too many keywords onto your images, use the appropriate keyword for each picture, and use different variations of it in the alt tag, in the title attribute, and in the file name.
Remember not to go overboard with optimizing your images, abusing it will just make it that much harder for everyone in the future to optimie.
Google Local (and Google Maps!)
If there is one area where Google’s Universal Search will excel, it is in delivering local results to users that make perfect sense. Looking for an opportunity to dominate 1/3rd of the screen on Google Search Results? Google Local is the way to go. Any search that involves a unique city name, zip code or regional information is enough for Google to try its best.
The service is still so new though, that businesses that pioneer the submission process in their own region stand to be given large amounts of traffic as this service matures.
Thankfully, the “optimization” of Google Local is simple. Log in, submit your business, and keep feeding them information. Be sure to include anything and everything you can on your business. Google is all about pushing Google Local results out to users — so the more you add in, the better.
Remember too that once verified your listing can be changed again and again. Just log in, choose to edit your business, and you’re done!
On a site or page level, be sure to include your businesses address, phone numbers, and active contact information. Many of our clients have also begun using a direct link to Google Maps for linking to driving directions, and that has really helped to catapult their Google Local listings. Give it a try or call us for more complete service packages!
Written By: sujanpatel On June 20th, 2007 | 12 Comments
Social media are the fastest growing online segment of the web and they are filling search results in the major search engines. If you are not participating in social media websites, your search engine rankings are going to suffer. The days of working on your organic search rankings for your primary URL are gone.Digg, Stumble Upon, del.icio.us, MySpace, Facebook, and the list goes on are some of the most popular websites on the Internet, so why not leverage them for SEO? They get millions of visitors a day, so there is no reason not to create profiles on all of these sites to drive traffic and increase your rankings. Social media is similar to search engines in that the most relevant and interesting content comes to the top.
How do you use social media to increase your SEO results?
Start participating on social media sites.
Look the social media sites that match your target audience and start building profiles for your brand, products and services. On your profile make sure to include links to your primary website. Most importantly, after you build your presence you must stay engaged with your audience. You can’t just build a profile and leave it.
Sites that offer friend requests, like MySpace, offer well-regarded search engine content that also links directly to your company’s web presence. So, the more friends you have the more traffic
Tagging sites like Digg, Netscape and del.icio.us, allow you to submit news articles. If the news you post is relevant and interesting to the readers, they will “Digg” your story by voting and your article will get more exposure to readers. The SEO benefits of more exposure are more direct links from well-trafficked pages to your site. Bloggers often pick up these stories and post them on their blogs, which will grow links you’re your website substantially. Build relationships with highly-visible community members Building relationships with highly-visible community members, is a way to help promote your own website. Seek out high-traffic community member pages that match your target audience readership and post comments related to their content. This allows you not only to be a resource to the readers, but also increases readership to your website.
Be in it for the long-haul Just like increasing your organic rankings, SEO in social networking takes time and effort. The long-run efforts for your SEO will be hard for your competitors to match.
Written By: Sujan Patel On June 18th, 2007 | 1 Comment
The landscape of search engine promotion has been changing dramatically. Earlier this year, one of the most dramatic changes in recent history took place when Google launched their “Universal Search” product.
Universal Search has essentially replaced the standard Google search results that we have all grown familiar with. In the new platform, you will often come across the following products in a Universal Search results page:
- Google Base
- Google Videos / YouTube
- Google Local
- Google Products (Formerly Froogle)
Of course, there are many more Google Products. Some searches, provided that they’re contextually relevant, will include any of the following Google Products:
- Blog Search
- Book Search
- Catalogs
- Code Search
- Directory
- Images
- Local/Maps
- News
- Product Search
- Video
As a web site owner though, you need to make sure that your products, web pages, services and businesses are ALL listed throughout Google’s service arena. To do that, seek the assistance of the following reviews, summaries and links for each included product…
Google Blog Search
Submitting your blog to Google actually requires the use of the Google Blog Search Pinging Service. Review Google’s information on the pinging service to learn how to automate blog post submissions and general inclusion of your blog to this search product.
Google Book Search
Do you have a book or publication to sell on the Internet? If so, you need to tell Google all about it! You can do that here using an active Google account.
Google Catalogs
If you are a merchant with a catalog in print, Google Catalogs can help you make your catalog accessible to online users by scanning it and hosting it online and promoted through Google Search. With your catalog being included, users can quickly find your products and order directly from you. To submit your catalog to Google, you will need to sign up for a Google Catalogs account and add a unique Google address to your circulation.
Google Code Search
Developers have a great opportunity to share their software developments with the audience using Google’s Code Search. Developers can easily add their applications and code snippets for inclusion to Google Code Search by using a GData or XML feed.
Google Directory
For those who have been in the industry a while, the Google Directory is really a co branded version of the Netscape Open Directory Project, or DMOZ. Inclusion to his human edited directory can be frustrating — but the benefits of an active listing are monumental for a healthy search promotion effort. To learn more about how to include your web site in the Google Directory, please review the instructions available online.
Google Images
Assuming that Google is crawling your web site actively, you probably already included in Google Image search results. There are of course advantages and disadvantages with having your images being listed here. By default, it is safe to assume your images are included. If you’d like to remove your images, or prevent that from happening though — you should certainly rely on Google’s resources.
Google Local / Google Maps
Google Local and Google Maps is one of the most anticipated Google Search products prominently featured in the new Universal Search. Listing your business is simple using the easy interface and process made available by Google.
Google News
If you run a web site that features timely and factual news articles and resources, you may be able to get your content featured in Google News. Much to the liking of news publishers, Google News is featured prominently on the Universal Search system. TO have your content evaluated for inclusion on Google’s News listings, please read more about recommending sites for inclusion in Google News.
Google Product Search / Froogle
Google Product Search is the new name for what has been in place for the past three years as Froogle. This is Google’s online product search center, and it allows merchants to list their entire inventory of items directly on Google for sale. Users can then search normally on the new Universal Search and be presented with options to purchase products directly online. To include your items, see more directly from the source at “Sell with Google“.
Google Video
Google has recently invested heavily in the use of video search products. With the acquisition of YouTube, users and marketers can only wonder just how far video will become involved in Google Search products. Right now though, Google Videos are inserted and peppered throughout Google Universal Search results — and certainly present an entertaining opportunity for sites to market their content. To get started in harnessing the power of Google Video Search, seek the assistance of Google Video (Beta) - Video Upload Program. (https://upload.video.google.com/)
Conclusion & Advice
We have only seen the start of Google Universal Search. As the service grows and users share their experiences and frustrations, the Universal Search products are certainly subject to change. Using the Universal Search platform now though will allow site owners to truly push their potential to an entirely different level. More than anything else, taking advantage of these services now, while they’re not extremely competitive — should lead to some great long term results.
As you submit your web sites, pages, products and goods to Google, it is our recommendation that you use a consistent Google account. Doing so will help to establish more authority with Google and in the back end, allow Google to derive some clear patterns on the comprehensive business you run. That, in the end — is what will lead to your success in using Universal Search.
Written By: Sujan Patel On June 14th, 2007 | 10 Comments
I’m sure you’ve noticed lately that there have been a lot of new blogs popping up in “making money online” niche. The great thing about this is that there are quite a few of these that have some potential. There are many future “A-Listers” in the making and one of the more important aspects of how much money they will make down the road (after gaining readership and traffic) is obtaining a decent Google PageRank and maintaining it.
The last PageRank update was in April. The experts say that a PageRank update takes place, on average, every three months. That’s perfect for the younger breed of bloggers out there because there is still a decent amount of time to prepare for the next update and at least gain some PR out of it. Below you’ll read about five ways that you can boost your PageRank starting today!
1. Look for a list of DoFollow blogs – Basically, blogs that have the DoFollow (sometimes called NoNoFolllow) plugin mean that you can leave a comment on one of those blogs that are on the list and Google counts it as a link to your site. Two important things to remember here:
a. When leaving a comment on a DoFollow blog, make sure it’s sincere! No one wants junky, generic comments just so you can snatch up a link. Keep in mind that a lot of the time the crap comments are moderated out, so don’t waste your time with comments like, “nice post”, or “cool blog”. Spend some time submitting a great comment and not only will the author appreciate it; but you might even get some extra traffic from it!
b. When you’re ready to leave a comment, put one of your main keywords in the “name” field. This isn’t necessary, but it sure as heck won’t hurt your keyword rankings if you are going after a certain one to garner more “organic” traffic from it. For example, if I own a blog about SEO, then when I leave a comment on a DoFollow blog, I would put something like “SEO Tips” in the “name” field. Overall, these extra links that you pick up from leaving a comment will help you with many different things (Technorati, Google, more traffic, etc…)
To find a list of DoFollow blogs, the easiest way is to Google it. There are many great lists of these maintained out there, so you won’t have any trouble finding one pretty quickly.
2. Get links from power players in your niche - This is a very important aspect of gaining PageRank. You see, when Google crawls for ranking purposes and they see a link from a PR6 site coming in to your site, it will score you more points. It can do wonders for your search engine rankings. There are a few ways to obtain these big time links.
The easiest way is to pay for them. On most of the “A-Listers” blogs you can buy link on their site for a monthly fee through a link broker such as AdVolcano, Text-Link-Ads, or even a private sale. Purchasing a link is not always an option though, as they can be very expensive for a highly popular site. No worries though.
You see, a lot of these “big player” blogs/sites have a review exchange or something similar going on, which usually involves you writing a review of their blog/website, and then they will link to it from their site using the anchor text of your choice. For about ten to fifteen minutes of your time, you can write a review and get a very nice link back to your own blog for free. Start doing reviewing these, because it’s well worth it.
Last but not least, there is one more way to get linkbacks from these big sites/blogs. It’s free and only involves your creativity. Can you guess what it is? Content! Write a fantastic article and there is a good chance that it will get picked up in one of their “speed-linking” sessions or if you’re lucky they might even write a post about your article. This can bring you quite a bit of traffic and it will also do wonders for your future PageRank. That leads me to my next point…
3. Content, content, content - Without good content, a blog is doomed to fail. Google loves unique content and will index it rather quickly, especially if it contains strong keywords and an original perspective. This is a strategy that will help you over the entire life of your blog. The more content that you put out equals the more times Google will find it and index it - and in turn you’ll get more links, traffic, and readership. If your stuff is good enough and ranks high in the search rankings then you’ll surely garner some good PageRank out of it several different ways over. So keep those articles coming, they all help!
4. Directory submissions - This can have a tremendous effect on your Google PageRank score as Google recognizes a lot of directories as “expert” or “authority” sites. So getting an inbound link from them is huge! There are a few ways you can go about doing this. There is a website out there called Add URL.nu which lists 945 directories that you can submit to, which is pretty handy tool to have around. Another option to make the process a little faster (believe me, it’s very boring and tedious submitting to directories) is by downloading a free program called Directory Submitter Standard. This free program is a miracle. It speeds up the tedious process of submitting by quite a bit. You can submit to five directories using Directory submitter in the time that it takes to manually submit to one. Again, gaining inbound links from directories will score you big points when the next PR update comes around.
5. Article marketing - Article marketing is an often forgotten way to build quality backlinks. As you can see from the above four entries, link building and link popularity are key to landing you a great Google PageRank. Basically, article marketing can gain you tons of exposure in the writing world, and you even have the possibility (if the article is good enough) of gaining hundreds or even thousands of incoming links from relevant sites/blogs after they pick up your article. There are literally hundreds of article marketing websites out there, so with a couple of quick Google searches on the subject, you’ll easily be able to find one that suits your needs.
Hopefully some of these strategies aid you in your quest to obtain a decent Google PageRank when the next update comes around. Start doing all of the above steps and you’ll surely nail down a great PageRank out of the deal. The best part about the above mentioned steps is that not only will you gain PageRank, but you’ll also receive extra traffic and readers, short-term and long-term. Combining all of these strategies is a sure way to grow your blog in many different, yet important ways. When it all boils down, PageRank equals money!
