SEO Dance

You’ve probably heard the saying, “No man is an island,” meaning no one can do everything, and sometimes we have to rely on others. With websites and the every-changing Internet, the same logic can be applied. You seldom see a website or blogger do every aspect of their website themselves. Some can build webpages and might even be good at promotion. Still it’s much easier and the rewards can be great when a webmaster pools his resources with someone else.

That’s how I think of blog networks. It’s a collaboration of like-minded bloggers out to help each other by driving traffic for each other. I’ve just joined a fairy new network with one of my personal blogs and am excited to see the network startup find its feet and hopefully become a great success.

It’s nice to be on the “ground floor” since I hope it will be a good learning experience about marketing on the World Wide Web. Being a part of a network will hopefully grow my readership and exposure.

It’s always better to do tackle a task with someone, so it just makes sense to adopt that attitude when garnishing more attention to your website.

One thing I have learned over the years it to never say never to an idea. While some ideas might not fit your ideals now, it doesn’t mean that you won’t in sometime in the future use them.

My case in point is a blogger whom I admire and read quite a bit. She had commented one time that she did not like paid blogging and thought it was just a bad idea. A few months later she posted how she was going to give paid blogging a try. Now it is quite possible that she was just trying it for the sake of blogging about it but still it is something that she was going to do that she previously had written off.

It’s a good example of how sometimes a bad idea one day might not sound so bad the next week or six months from now. Certain SEO techniques like link exchanges or forum postings might not be appealing today but in a few months might be the perfect way to garner new interest.

Sometimes it’s best not to discount any method for garnishing more traffic to your website unless it’s an underhanded practice. Keeping an open mind will help make sure that you at least give new ideas a try. While some might not be successful, you could be surprised at how effective some tactics that you thought were a waste of time really pay off in the end.

SEO

The absence of a recent PageRank update has some wondering if an end has come to the Google practice of ranking websites. PageRank is updated every three months and is overdue. The last PageRank update should have happened mid-summer. What has happened to the PageRank update?

Well, just like your hairstylist is the only one who knows your natural hair color, only Google knows what is happening to the PageRank. Google spends a lot of time tweaking their service, so it is possible that the PageRank is undergoing a transformation. There is no official word as to what exactly - if anything - is going on with PR.

Google could very well be overhauling the current PageRank system that gives a blog a numeric ranking from 0 to 10. In the scope of just how many websites are online, this ranking does seem a little lacking. While the Alexa ranking - in theory - is a better judge as to a website’s popularity, it is still severly handicapped because only those surfing with an Alexa toolbar are casting votes for websites. Google PR is a more complete approach to judging websites; however, the simple number is sometimes misleading. Some new websites with little to no PR have found quite a loyal audience while older, established higher ranking PR websites might not be as cutting-edge as they once were. Of course, it’s hard to really rank websites but maybe Google is working on a system that improves their formula.

For now though, we wait until a PageRank happens or for official word from Google as to what is really happening with PR.

As I’m reading through my morning email, I come across a note that I find interesting. It’s from a website I’m associated with and the need to install the Alexa toolbar. Apparently the Alexa ranking of the website is slipping, not because there is less traffic to it but because so many users have upgraded to Vista. So far there isn’t an Alexa toolbar that it Vista compatible.

I’m not the biggest fan of the Alexa rankings. I know some people are really into the whole Alexa ranking and feel that - like the Nielsen ratings for television programs - Alexa is very accurate. I for one am skeptical to say the least. However, there are plenty of webmasters and others who feel a good Alexa ranking is important especially when it comes to advertising.

Alexa ranks websites by visitors who use the Alexa toolbar. So, if you want to give the websites you visit a “vote” on Alexa, then you have to surf with the toolbar installed. While this system is far from perfect, the Alexa ranking is becoming more creditable every day. Still it will be nice when a true website rankings system is developed. Until then hopefully the Alexa toolbar for Vista will be released soon to help website rankings become more in line to what they once were for some websites.

Well, apparently cable doesn’t run this far up the road, so we are waiting on option B: satellite Internet. I have dial-up but it’s very limited.

Having dialup these past few weeks have made me really appreciate broadband. It also has showed me that there seems to be very few websites that are dialup friendly left. It has definitely been a wakeup call to check my websites for how fast they load with a dialup connection.

There are some websites that will check your page for you. Ironically it would take me too long to find them through searches before getting frustrated and quitting. Some things to keep in mind when making a 56K friendly page is keep graphics to a minimum, and keep blogs as widget-free as possible. Do away with background images and other decorative graphics. No flash, and if you use flash, have an option for a plain text version.

To get the most out of your SEO efforts, make sure that your website is friendly to all websurfers.

Hopefully I will be back online fully next week. Then things will return back to normal with regular postings.

Well I’m sort of back online after the move. It’s dial up but I guess it beats nothing. Tomorrow high speed will be installed, so tomorrow should be a return to the norm around here.

Having limited access the past few days has made me realize how disconnected I feel when I can’t just jump online at any given moment. It also makes it feel longer than it actually has been since being online. It feels like many weeks since I’ve read anything on the subject of SEO when in reality it’s been less than a week!

While using someone else’s computer to access the Internet, I cannot tell at a glance what my PageRank is, so I’ve been plugging my websites into PageRankim.com to see if the update has happened. So far no moment on any of my sites. I was hoping the Google dance had happened while I was offline. Sort of like a nice “welcome back to the Internet” gift of a higher PageRank.

Time to unpack some more and wait for the cable guy. Then it’s back to normal around here. Thank goodness.