A simple way to build traffic to your website and gain popularity with Google is by posting links. A link is like a vote of popularity, saying this is a good website to check out. So where should you post links you may be wondering?
Going to forums related to the content of your website, making comments and leaving your link is a popular way. If you leave a short comment, people may be interested in learning more of what you have to say and click on your link. Also going to blogs or having your own blog is another easy way.
Another popular way is called reciprocal links, meaning exchanging links with other webmasters. Although time consuming, it is a very effective way to gain link popularity. You simply find other websites with similar, non-competing content and email them asking to exchange links.
There are many link directories that offer free listings, however you will want to seek out quality directories, avoiding spam-type ones or FFA (free for all) directories. Look for ones that are human edited and have other quality sites listed.
Joining social networks can also build free links. Many of them are free to join and you can post as often as you have time for. Posting videos on popular sites such as You Tube is a very effective way. If people like your video, they may want to see more of your site.
With some time dedicated to building links you will soon see your website soar in popularity
A number of sensible suggestions have emerged about good SEO practice. Here is one of the most important:
1. Don't add links too quickly or all from one or two sources -- Google wants a "natural" linking pattern.
This is not a new suggestion, but Google seems to be prepared to penalize sites which engage in blatant link buying. Clearly this is targeted at services that sell links by the hundreds (or thousands). So one month a site has no links, and the next month it has 2,000 or 20,000 links from one or two "name" sites. Obviously these links have happened because of link buying.
Is Google trying to discourage all link buying? I don't think so. Links are just a form of advertising, and Google cannot discourage buying advertising without being blatantly inconsistent. Google itself is one of the primary sources of purchased web advertising, and it would be a blatant abuse of their dominant position to discriminate against smaller advertising networks who are offering a legitimate service to webmasters.
As I read the situation, what Google is trying to do is safeguard the integrity of their search results by ruling out massive overnight link purchases. We're talking thousands of links here. Without these safeguards, search results can be dramatically skewed by the practice of buying large chunks of links. There is clearly something wrong with a system that claims that link popularity is an indicator of site quality if a site suddenly has thousands of inbound links when just a week ago it had none.
This practice makes a mockery of the importance of links. Their only purpose is to exploit the system and make a dramatic impact on Page Rank and Search Engine positioning. Google wants Page Rank and search results to flow from website quality and relevance. And virtually all SEO experts have maintained that quality and relevance come fairly gradually as a site grows and its content develops. The "natural" development of links should happen more or less in lock step with the development of content.
This does not mean that the importance of links has been diminished. Just the opposite. Google is reconfirming their position that the number and quality of links pointing at specific web pages is the most significant indicator of the importance of that web page.
Nor does it mean that a webmaster should never buy links on legitimate websites. On the contrary, it means that links should be acquired and developed consistently and steadily over time, and that the quality of your link partners matters more than ever. This applies whether your links are the result of exchanges, purchases, blogging, article publishing, or any of the other established techniques for building traffic through linking.
When you are looking for link partners you should look at the quality of the sites linking back to you. Ask yourself how relevant is the content in the pages, what is the balance between content and links, how often are these pages updated, how much traffic do these pages get, do these pages link to "authority" sites like Google, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon
All of these things matter more now than they ever have.
A while back, I read an article that explained how to get a good
google rating without ever submitting your site to their submission
forms. Like you, I was kind of shocked by this statement so I decided
to give it a try.
In the beginning, I used to submit my site all the time to Google but
soon realized the magnitude of my failure. Of course, it's a known
fact that Google relies solely on your link popularity and content.
Link Popularity?
What that means is the amount of links (yousite.com) listed on other
sites that are related to yours! The more sites that link to you, the
greater your popularity!
So again, Google depends on your link popularity! If you don't have
a google rating (In other words, is your link found on google?) some
sites WILL NOT link to yours. There are many sites that have a great
google rating and have specific regulations to whom they will accept
within their resource sections. They will specify that your site must
be listed within Google and if they type in your site in the google
search bar, your site should be listed within the top 5 sites.
Here's The Theory:
Of course you want all sites to link to you, especially the ones who
already have a great google rating because that means that your site
will be picked up by google. Some people only try to get links from
those sites but just remember, we all had to start somewhere.
My suggestion is to do as many link exchanges as possible and
especially make sure that each site is specifically categorized by
their content. You will get penalized for having one page full of
links to sites that do not relate to each other.
Another little "Timbit", try to keep your pages to 1-20 links within
each page. Once you have 20 links, add a button to a (PAGE 2) and
continue your resources that way.
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Here's an example of our "Resource Section"
http://www.smartads.info/resources
You'll notice how each category has specific sites that get listed
within them.
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Ok, so I went a little off topic with respect to this article but
you'll see how everything is connected together. Once google starts
ranking your site, you don't want to leave any stone left un-turned.
So back to getting a google rank without submitting your site. Once
you start performing link exchanges with other sites, just keep on
going and going and I promise that eventually, Google will start
picking up some of your links on other sites. Once this starts to
happen you're google rank will rise.
So just keep doing what you're doing and let Google do it's own thing.
When your ready and you're link popularity grows, then you can submit
your site to Google and reap the rewards.
So many companies do this process backwards and wonder why they don't
get listed in Google. Or like what happened to me, Google lists your
site right away but then in a couple of weeks, presto, your site is
gone from their listing and your left confused as to why!
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In this article I talked about Link Exchanges & popularity, feel free
to learn more about this in my 2 part series:
Link Exchanges, what they can do for your business, part 1
http://www.smartads.info/articles/le/10.html
Link Exchanges, what they can do for your business
http://www.smartads.info/articles/le/11.html
Yes, blogs can be optimized, too. It should be done for the benefit both of your readers and search engine spiders. Although the process is quite similar with the standard website search engine optimization, it is a bit different. Here are some tips that you can do to start:
Consider the Design
It is not advisable to use the default template being offered by blog publishing sites. You wouldn't want to bump into a girl in a party wearing the same dress, do you? Same thing goes to blogs. You can hire a designer to do the work for you. If running a tight budget, you can always look for free templates offered by web design companies and you can customize it a little to make it unique.
Optimize the Tags
Use the most substantial phrase for your blog in the hard code of the title tag. Also, you have to double check that each entry's title appears on the tile tag. This is sometimes overlooked.
Keywords
You should always use your keywords in the blog post titles and categories. You can also use many categories in one entry if appropriate.
RSS Feed
It is best that you have RSS subscription button available on your blog. This would be more convenient to your readers because it will publish your recently updated work. If your blog publisher don't have RSS automatically available, there are RSS feed button creation tool on the net. But make sure that you place it where the readers can easily see them. You can put it in your sidebar. It is already on the blog owner's prerogative if he/she wants to full or partial RSS.
Use Email
Because there are some people who are not familiar with RSS feeds, go the extra mile and offer them something else with the same benefits. I'm talking about You can have your blog post via email. Free tools are also available online to do this.
Compelling Introduction
Introduction about the blog post is sent out via RSS feed. Make sure that it is compelling to enough to make your readers want to have more of it so that they would click the “more” button and read the entire article. Therefore, it should be interesting.
Check you CSS
It is common that blogs come with overwhelming amount of CSS or Cascading Style Sheets. The solution to this is to place it in an external CSS file to avoid clutter in the main template and for the main entry not to go further down.
Keywords-rich Anchor Texts
In placing links in other sites/blogs and even in putting internal links, make sure that you are using keyword-rich anchor text. Remember that it is always better to use your keywords than “click here” or “more”. It would benefit you when search engine spiders crawl your blog.
Keep Your Posts Bonded
If your blog post is somehow connected to your previous posts, link them to each other. The idea is that if your reader is interested in this particular topic, then he/she probably can also be entertained of a different story with the same subject matter. You can use Related Posts Plugin for this.
Do the same in other blogs. If you see a blog entry or an article on the same issue, make them knowledgeable of your existence by placing a link going to your post.
Purchase a Domain
We all know that blog hosting companies will only be around for such a time. Once they close their business, they will be closing your blog as well. If that happens, where will your loyal followers find you? Or there are change in the domain of your blog host, it will surely affect your rankings.
In case you have limited resources and can only settle to free hosting companies, look for those who offer to display your own domain rather than displaying their own like Wordpress and Blogger.
Proper URL Naming Convention
It is always a bad idea to use dynamic URLs whether on websites or blogs. You should always take advantage of any chance you have to use keywords, without keyword stuffing, including this one. Meaning, instead of using “www.xyzblog.com/?246”, you can consider “www.xyzblog.com/blog-post-keywords-here”. When you cannot do anything about it, use mod rewrite.
Good Navigation
If your blog is just a part of a website, it is not ebough that you a have a link going to your blog's main page. Use the sidebar to syndicate your new posts because the visitors of the website might get interested in your articles if they see the titles.
Fast Page Load
The amount of time involved for a page to load all depends on your host. There are some blogs that takes about half a minute just from the snippet of RSS feed to the full article. You can lose a lot of readers just because of this reason alone.
Moderated Trackbacks and Comments
Spammers are everywhere. They always find a way to abuse your blog by putting non-sense comments with links going to their website. It is annoying and it can also affect your rankings. There are numerous tools available online which you can use to moderate and avoid comment and trackbak spam.
Don't just create a blog to share great information or to prove that you know a lot about the field you are into. Do not settle on the number of followers your blog has. Start to optimize now and see the great changes on the next few months. Read More......
the default genre. There are plenty of blogs that serve
other functions, but many blogs are primarily catalogues
of the life experiences of their author. Although there
are quite a few blogs that focus on collecting poetry and
other forms of creative writing, the vast majority of
personal blogs are in some sense documentaries.
For many years, the act of making a documentary was
meant to be an objective act of reporting the sights and
sounds that the filmmaker, writer, or photographer
encountered. However, in contemporary times there has
been a movement towards embracing the subjectivity
inherent in the documentary form. This means that
modern documentaries often reflect the distinctive
voice and sensibility of their creator, and the fact that
todays documentaries often revolve around personality
blurs the lines between documentary and memoir. Blogs
rest somewhere between these two genres, muddying
the distinctions even further. Personal blogging,
documentary, and memoir are now irrevocably
intertwined, for better or for worse.
Although few bloggers think of themselves as making
documentaries in any formal sense, every time
somebody sits down in front of a computer and types up
a record of their day, they are documenting their own
historical moment. The things that we take for granted
about our daily lives, like the way that we use specific
modes of transportation, or the kinds of products that
we buy, often seem quite fascinating to people who live
in circumstances different from ours, and it is this kind
of fascination that is at the heart of many documentary
projects. When people think about blogging,
documentary is not very likely to be the first adjective
that crosses their minds, but a few decades down the
road it is very likely that todays blogs will be seen
primarily as very subjective documentaries of our era.
The people of tomorrow will almost certainly look to
the blogs of today for insight into our historical
moment.
When it comes to blogging, documentary may not be
the aim of most people who spend their time posting
their thoughts and ideas on the internet. In some ways,
the documentary aspect of blogging is more of a side
effect than a primary goal. However, the fact that so
many people are interested in publishing these public
online diaries shows that personal blogs are about more
than just rumination. The fact that bloggers are so
stimulated by and interested in sharing their ideas with
each other reinforces the idea that personal blogs are, in
some ways, documentaries meant for public
consumption. Documentaries appeal to people who are
curious about other ways of life, and many people who
regularly read others personal blogs are looking for this
sweeping the blogosphere. One of the reasons why a lot
of bloggers are attracted to the medium of blogging in
the first place is that they enjoy being able to make
frequent updates and posts that keep all of their visitors
up to speed with current situations. Mobile blogs, or
"moblogs," take this to the extreme by allowing users to
post things literally as they happen. This new wave of
moblogs and mobloggers keep web surfers up to date
with good and bad events of importance as they occur
all over the world, helping to make international
communication faster and more accurate.
Many people feel that the limitations of blogging have a
lot to do with geography. After all, there is only so
current that a blog can be when you need to run home
and boot up in order to update it. However, mobile
blogging marks the beginning of an thrilling new era
when web-based communication can happen
spontaneously from any location. Moblogging devices
mean that there is almost nowhere on the planet that
remains off-limits for bloggers.
Mobile blogging is still in its infancy because the
technology that makes it possible has only recently hit
the global market. The first moblog technology became
available over a decade ago, but it is only the past two
or three years that mobile web devices have become
user-friendly enough to appeal to most consumers. As
camera phones and other mobile technology become
more popular, more and more bloggers are getting away
from their desks and are hitting the streets. Moblogging
is becoming much more widespread that it was even a
few months ago, and mobloggers are quickly attracting
a lot of attention with the blogging community. It is not
yet clear whether moblogs will become the dominant
kinds of blogs in the years to come, but the current
trend seems to imply that moblogs are here to stay.
Mobile devices make it possible to blog from the sites
where current events are unfolding, which is one of the
reasons why mobile blogging has so much thrilling
potential to revolutionize the blogosphere. A moblogger
with a camera phone can post blog entries from, say, the
foot of the podium at a presidential speech, or from the
stands during the final moments of the world series.
This enables bloggers to experience the same real time
thrills that live television coverage provides, but in a
more democratic medium. The combination of mobility
and individual control that moblogging provides
certainly places mobloggers on the cutting edge of
today's communications technology, and it is hard to
imagine that the number and prestige of moblogs will
not continue to grow in the coming years. Read More......
