SEO Dance

I have been a little disappointed with the latest Google PageRank that apparently is going on because none of my websites have budged. They are all the same PageRank. I guess there is still time for the Google dance to affect them. Still, it’s a little disheartening to say the least.

It has got me to thinking about the web and authority. If Google determines PR and SERPs by a webpage’s authority on a subject on the web, then how do you build that up? We all know that incoming links from authority webpages are important, but how did those pages become an authority? It’s almost like trying to find the starting point of a circle. It just keeps spiraling around and around.

So, how do you build a reputation on a certain topic when it comes to the web? First you have to write solid content. Use your own words and thoughts. It’s OK to be inspired by someone else’s post or writings, but form your own opinion.

Most of us don’t have a huge advertising budget but getting the word out about our little spot in cyberspace is paramount. Visit other like-minded blogs, leave thought-provoking comments, and join forums that are topical to your website. People will never know you are on the Internet unless you tell the world. This can be hard for some who sky away from the spotlight. It is something you will have to work on because if you do not promote yourself then no one else will. If you start speaking up more on the web, then your authority will slowly begin to grow.

One of the bloggers I regularly read just returned from BlogHer and had a list of what she had learned from her experience. She had struggled with labeling herself a professional blogger, although she is making money doing it. Through the encouragement of others, she is now ready to call herself a professional blogger and treat it like her business. Have confidence to take charge of your online presence and people will take notice.

So, if you have passion for a subject, love to write, and don’t mind a little self-promotion, then web authority should follow. It doesn’t hurt to have a huge wad of cash lying around for advertising. If not, then it may take a while but authority can be built, it just takes time.

StumbleUpon is a website with a great concept. Looking to surf the Internet but have absolutely nothing to check out? StumbleUpon might be the right place to visit. Users submit interesting articles while other users will randomly be taken to web pages.

Through the StumbleUpon toolbar, just click the stumble link to be taken to a random page. It’s great for finding interesting web pages and also a great traffic tool for websites that have been submitted.

I hadn’t realized the full power of StumbleUpon until I had an article submitted to it. The referrals from StumbleUpon were through the roof, which was especially exciting for my fairly new blog to have such nice traffic stats. It’s easy to register with Stumbleupon and submit articles. Just note the web address and write a short review describing the article. The increased traffic is worth the small effort that it will take to get your article in the stumbleupon rotation.

StumbleUpon

It may have a crazy name, but the concept behind Thoof is not. Users of Thoof submit their favorite articles - much like in the same fashion as Digg and other similar websites. The difference with Thoof is that it gives each article submitted an equal shot at gaining in popularity. So many times with Digg if a story doesn’t receive a bunch of diggs then no one ever sees it. Thoof puts all stories on equal footing, which means more exposure to your articles and better quality news rises to the top.

Signing up is easy and adding a story is simple, too. Other users can add to the article description of stories. Each story must have two tags before it can be submitted. Thoof also remembers which stories you read and will display stories that it thinks might be of interest to you. It’s like TIVO but for the web.

Thoof could be a very useful tool in the social media circles since it has the same kind of style we are used to but with a slightly different twist on how it determines popularity.

Thoof

Have you ever stumbled upon a great web service that you quickly forgot about only to rediscover it later and wonder why you haven’t already signed up for it? This is my experience with BlogHer. I stumbled upon BlogHer a few months back while exploring their ad program but quickly forgot about it. Now I have rediscovered BlogHer and happy that I have.

BlogHer is a blogging social network for women. Sign up for a free account. In your profile list your blogs and gain more exposure for them as well as yourself through the network. You can get your blog added to the BlogHer list so that more BlogHer users can find your blog.

Self promotion is so important when blogging especially when you first get started. You have to get the word out about your blog in as many different venues as possible. BlogHer is a great network for women bloggers who blog on a topic typically enjoyed by women. Getting the word out about your blog in the right circles will help to increase exposure and traffic for your blog. Plus it can be a great way to network with bloggers - who not only enjoy blogging but reading blogs as well.

BlogHer

The Google update seems to be in full swing as webmasters are reporting changes in their PageRank. During the PageRank(PR), Google visits each sites and examines its links, giving those websites a “vote” if the nofollow tag is not used. Google then proceeds to the next website and reconfigures ranks again. So, during this process, PR might fluctuate. PR updates seem to take 1 to 2 weeks, so during this time, don’t be discouraged if your PR falls because it could very well rise again.

If your PageRank falls, there is always time to improve it while waiting for the next PR. Try to get more incoming links to your website by writing articles on topical events or hot subjects on other blogs. Even use a pingback so the original blogger will find your posting. Work on optimizing your website for Google’s search bots including using the alt tag for images as well as adding the meta tag in the header. Even though meta tags are not really used anymore, filling them out with a keywords and descriptions can be a nice exercise into what keywords you really want to focus on using on your website.

The PageRank process will complete within a few weeks, and it will be another three months before the next one takes place. There is always time to get your website in shape for the next Google dance.

PageRank

You may be asking yourself just what is article blasting? Article Blasting is a promotional technique to write a lot of articles about your niche website, then submit them to directories. What this hopefully accomplishes is an authority about the subject, driving more traffic and PageRank for your website.

Amy Bass, who is a blogger working to pay off her debt by making money online, coined the phrase on her blog. She explains on her blog that her goal is to write 50 niche articles and them submit them over time to several article submission directories. Her articles will be sprinkled with keywords for her niche website. Amy will be reporting is this was a success or not on her blog.

My problem with article blasting would be coming up with 50-100 different niche topics to write about. It could be done but would take me a few months, so I don’t think that is in the spirit of an article blast. My method might be more of an article trickle.

It will be interesting to follow Amy’s results since I have been wanting to submit articles to directories but not sure if there is any real payoff to it.

Recently I had switched to using Firefox and wasn’t using Internet Explorer. I have installed the Alexa tool bar for IE but didn’t have it for Firefox. I recently installed it on Firefox since I had noticed a drop in rankings on some of my websites.

The problem with the Alexa rankings is that it is determined through Alexa tool bar users or through Alexa redirect links. Friday I had revealed the Alexa ranking for SEODance.com as 442,585. Usually rankings are updated over the weekend and during the week at least once. Today’s ranking of SEODance.com is 438,093 so the ranking feel and that is good. The lower the number, the better ranking the site has according to Alexa.

It is curious, though how much of a weight my surfing with my Alexa tool bar went into figuring the ranking. The Alexa rankings are easily manipulated but are still valuable to some. If the Alexa toolbar was used with more of a sample of web surfers like how Nielsen does their ratings then the results might have more value to the masses. Right now it’s just a fun tool to get some data about your website.

With any website or blog, self-promotion is a vital part of success. If you don’t spread the word about your blog, then who will? Taking part in a blog community can be a great experience and a good way to drive more traffic to your blog.

The two communities that I use and really enjoy is MyBlogLog.com and BlogCatalog.com. They both have their strengths. MyBlogLog.com is a good blog directory for finding like-minded bloggers to swap links with. MyBlogLog also gives you some code to embed into your blog that will give you stats about your blog. The pro account gives you more access and information, but the free service is still pretty nice. You won’t be able to view stats like referrals and off-site clicks until the next day. I don’t spend that much time on MyBlogLog.com but have received a few link trade requests just the same.

BlogCatalog.com is another blog community that is somewhat different from MyBlogLog. Blog Catalog does have some simple stats for your website that you can view at any time. What makes Blog Catalog different is the sense of community among its members. There are plenty of discussion threads that feature topics from self-promotion to what you did this weekend. So, there are a lot of varied threads which create a great way to get involved with the community. People might want to know more about you and will click on your profile. From your profile they will see all of your blogs and be able to visit or join your blog community. MyBlogLog has a similar setup with your profile as BlogCatalog.

Taking part in both blog communities will just help to promote your blog that much more. MyBlogLog is a little more like thumbing through business cards while BlogCatalog is more of a community effort. Whichever fits your style the best, then concentrate on that blog service. Not only will you find that these sites help to drive traffic to your blog, you might find some interesting blogs to read.

blog communities

Alexa has released a toolbar for Firefox. Alexa measures web traffic of websites then ranks then according to their algorithm. The catch with Alexa is that sites that are visited by those who have installed the Alexa toolbar are the sites getting votes and have a better rating.

I use the Alexa toolbar in Internet Explorer for quite some time. My websites have slowly gotten a lower Alexa ranking. The lower the number is, the more traffic it is receiving. Recently I stated using the Firefox browser, so I haven’t been surfing in Internet Explorer. Yesterday I used Internet Explorer for the first time in about two weeks. I’ve noticed that my rankings have fallen slightly across the board. It makes me wonder just how much voting power one Alexa user has on the system.

Now I have the Alexa toolbar installed on Firefox, so we’ll see if there is a change in my rankings. I do like the toolbar better for Firefox as the rankings show up in the bottom right-hand corner.

The current ranking for SEODance is 442,585. Alexa updates their rankings at least twice a week. After the next update I will post the new SEODance ranking for comparison.

Alexa toolbar for Firefox

In recent months there has been a movement by some in the blogging community to remove the no follow tag from comment links. The no follow tag means that the link is from an untrusted source. The whole idea behind the implementation of the no follow tag was to fight comment spammers looking for free links to their website. Now with so many tools and methods to fight comment spam, should bloggers turn off the no follow tag?

Links with the no follow tag aren’t counted as links when it comes to Google. Using the no follow deters spammers from posting useless comments on blogs. Bloggers who want to rewards readers have removed the nofollow attribute from comments, so those links to the reader’s website will count for something in the eyes of Google. It can help with PageRank and possibly search results for linked word or phrase. Some readers use a search keyword instead of their name when commenting on blogs.

While this is good for building brand, it has begun to annoy some bloggers who feel the comments on their do follow blogs are becoming too spammy with many people just there for the free link. It has prompted some to revert back to using nofollow on comments. Other bloggers are considering taking the same step.

When considering dropping the nofollow attribute, bloggers should figure in all the factors. There could possibly be hundreds of comments on their site that could possibly drain their “link juice” (Lord help me. I never thought I’d use that term!) and weaken all of their other links. It could also hurt their PageRank if the ratio of outgoing and incoming links is offset too much.

It’s a Catch-22 since you want to give the link but at the same time it might hurt your site in the long run. Dropping the nofollow attribute could be a good thing for your blog in some aspects but might be determinable in other ways. It just depends upon which is more important to the bloggers: rewarding their readers or the blog’s outgoing links.

nofollow, do follow

For many, the best way to learn to by example. The more writing I do, the more I seem to be reading. Whether it’s research or for fun, I read a lot more now than I did before I began blogging. It’s good to read what other people have written because you can learn a great deal without even trying.

I have a writing background in television news, which is a completely different style from print. In TV writing, you do not have to worry about punctuation and spelling(a lot of hard to pronounce words you spell phonetically). With TV writing, you make your point and move on since time is always a factor. Switching gears to write for the web has been a challenge. My writing space is only limited by my Internet storage. I can also take a little longer to make a point if I so desire. I still think it’s important to grab the reader’s attention and to write concisely.

Reading other people’s work will help you broaden your writing as well as learn writing techniques. When I read something that piques my interest, I like to examine why. This can help me incorporate those elements into my own writing and possibly incur a few new readers.

Reading can also be a good way to learn SEO practices. Find out how the SEO experts write and work in keywords into their bodies of work for clues as to how to do it effectively. It’s a fun way to learn and improve your writing skills at the same time.

SEO writing

Adding a forum to your website can be an effective way to drive more traffic your way. Although starting a forum will take a lot of work, the pay off is well worth it.

An active forum takes time and patience. Before beginning make sure you can promote some people to post on your forums like friends or family. There are services where you can pay someone to post on your forum to make it look active since a lot of people will not spend any time at a forum that has very few posts. It’s best to try that as a last resort as you really want to have folks around who will answer questions and become more part of the community.

There are a few good free forum software programs that you can install on your domain like phpBB or Yabb. Others like vBulletin might cost money, but have a lot of functionality and can be a lot of fun to the forum community.

Starting a forum can be a daunting task. Do your research for what type of forum you want to open and see what places already exist. Make sure your forum adds something that those don’t so it will be appealing for people to sign up.

While setting up and maintaining a forum can be demanding, the rewards can be worth it. The increased visitors will help establish to your website on the Internet as an authority in your subject matter.

phpbb, forums

A search engine results page, or SERP, is a list of results returned from a search string in a search engine. Usually you expect to find your website in SERPs that are related to your website like if I have recipes on my website then a search for a specific recipe should have my listing somewhere in the results. Sometimes webpages show up in search results that do not make much sense.

The reason our websites might show up in strange search strings? Who knows. It might be possible that that those strange search terms might not have that many direct search results, so the search engine searches for any terms that are a possible match. One term that recently landed someone on one of my websites was “pogo badge crackz.” I am fairly certain that I have never used the word “crackz” before. It was a Google search, and Google interpreted “crackz” for “cracks,” so the page SERPs was all pages that included these three words. None of the pages seem to have the exact keyword phrasing.

It’s amazing that we spend so much time crafting our webpages to include keywords, and then wind up with great placement for keyword phrases we couldn’t possibly imagine. Keywords are still important because visitors who are looking for the keywords that you have focused on find your site, they are more likely to be happy with the result. It’s still interesting to explore those odd SERPs that show up in our web stats.

odd SERPs, SERP, search engine results

Webmasters wait on pins and needles for Google to begin updating PageRank. The quarterly activity is the subject of much talk since some websites lose PR while others gain it. Whatver the scenario, webmasters spend the next three months after a PageRank update trying to pinpoint what they did and either do it again or avoid it like the plague.

I lost PageRank during the last update and am not sure what happened. I have an idea that it may have been because I deleted a forum from my domain. It seems that when you delete a lot of content from your website that the domain could be penalized. Other than that, I’m not really sure what happened. Hopefully this quarter I didn’t do any major mistakes and will gain back my ranking.

I have read that some people are reporting an influx in PageRank by using tools like this live URL PageRank checker. Apparently different ranking results are a sign of a PageRank update. Regardless if it is happening yet or not, it will happen and probably soon. No more months to wait but a few days or weeks for the PageRank update. It can be hard not to obsess over it especially with a new website. I suggest immersing yourself into writing content or making a to do list for your website to take your mind off of the upcoming PageRank update. It will happen soon enough.

PageRank, Google Update

While I haven’t used Web Dev Notes reminded me what a useful tool it really is. It’s great to find out at a glance information about your visitors to your website. The information is presented in graphical format, so it’s easy to understand.

It is through Google Analytics that I learned one site receives the majority of visitors through searches while another receives the majority from referrals. I have two different methods of promoting these sites. The one that receives referrals I am much more active with commenting on blogs and taking part in contests and memes. The other site because of the content I try to use keywords and depend on search traffic.

Google Analytics is a free service and is invaluable to find out information about your visitors. You can find out the average time spent on your site as well as your bounce rate. Explore the pages that are exit points for your visitors. It’s some interesting data that can be a great asset when setting up an SEO campaign.

Once the code is installed, you should start seeing stats within 24 hours. Sign up and start receiving useful data about your website that can be invaluable in your next SEO campaign.

Google Analytics