Get Rank For Your Blog

Blogging for SEO

2008-05-21T18:53:00.000-07:00

Using frequent posts to drive the search engines to your site.

It's no secret that blogs are great for helping to boost your seo rankings. You can use a blog to get a new site ranked quickly and ahead of your main site if you are dedicated to posting on a frequent basis.

While the main goal of your blog may be to express your thoughts, talk back to your customers or as a vehicle to promote your product or services, there is another critical element to blogging.

Search Engine Optimization & Marketing.

Because of the frequency of active blogs (daily - or at least 5 times a week) the search engines have put high weight on blogs that are focused and tend to stay on topic.

It's the freshness of content (in a perfect world) that a search engine is craving and rewarding to the blogs. The ideal situation is that the blog would provide for tiny snippets of information that over time build up to a greater whole. (Almost like a blook)

But the most overloooked element of a blog is that once you've established a frequent pattern of posting and you have the Googlebot coming to your site every few days, you can then use that to link to other sites, sub-domains or any deep links that you need to get crawled. While most blog postings may not have direct links to any sites in particular, you could always format your blog with some permanent links on the side.

Another mistake made by the amatuer blogger is that they don't realize that you can optimize your blog. True, most blogs only have a few areas, namely the "home" page and the "archive" page. But depending on the tool being used to post the blog, there are some places where you can take advantage seo-wise.

The title of your blog should be thought of as a headline - grab the reader's attention - but also be sure that your blog title is also what gets archived - that way your titles can become search queries as well.

While the main objective of a blog should be to get your message out, don't forget to take a little time for SEO and you should see your efforts payoff in the search engine results pages.

SEO for Blogs

2008-05-21T18:48:00.000-07:00

While there are many reasons to blog, there are two primary uses that are becoming more widespread with blogging: To game Google Adsense, and to also game the search engines for better rankings.

Since Blogs are known to the search engines as daily snippets of information that are updated on a frequent basis, they get a lot of preference in the search results. So from this, how do you optimize your blog? Depending on the service you utilize, there are still some basics that you can apply. The two biggest blogging sites are WordPress and Blogger.

If you are looking for an advantage with SEO, you should use Blogger since they are owned by Google, and you'll be indexed quicker. Blogs aren't all that much different than a site. The power of a blog is from the frequency of the posting. If the search engines see a pattern of 3 postings per day, they will be very active on spidering that site.

Depending on the topic of the blog, you may be able to boost your blog in the rankings if it's related to a hot topic on the Internet. Now, to the actual optimization. Since blogs are typically a few pages long, you only need to establish a few rules that will be applied sitewide:

Use an interesting title - Also known as linkbaiting (The process of getting users to link to your site.) - your title should captivate the user to read more

Try to use your blog keywords in the title - while it may be hard to always do this, by keeping the title related to the topic, your blog will always be relevant

Use the H1 tags - All blog editors allow for custom templates, so be sure to stylize your blog title in the H1 tags

Link to other blogs - Find other related blogs that your readers might find interesting, and ask for a link in return

Don't forget about your archives - You may post a topic that isn't hot at the moment, but comes up later - make sure your readers can find that posting As stated above, the key to a successful blog is frequent postings. You don't need to write up an article everytime, two paragraphs and maybe some resource links is what a typical posting should be comprised of.

#1 Rank in Google

2008-05-21T18:46:00.000-07:00

Impossible, right? Not really worth the time, right? Wrong on both accounts.

Many times while entering phrases into Google, I find a lot of somewhat related sites, but hardly ever anything exact. So why bother on getting these supposedly un-searched terms?

Because there is a perception that having your site in the #1 spot in Google means that your site is an authority on that particular subject. As any experienced user knows, this is most often not the case, but perception is reality.

Granted, some of the phrases that you can get ranked on may not be very popular, but you never know what a user is going to enter into the search box, or do we ever know at what point of information gathering they are at.

One of the most common traits of searching is that when a user firsts begins a search, they use a broad term, but as they get further along into their search, the phrases become more precise as they themselves filter out the un-related sites.

This is the same concept of which a successful PPC campaign can be run. While it may be great to get tons of traffic for the keyword "shoes", if a user is really looking for "Nike running shoes", the site has wasted money on that search.

Another curious stat that web analytics reveal is that a consumer that comes to a site through PPC is not a life-time customer. They are usually interested in the quick fix, or easy solution. Compared to a user who arrives through organic search engine optimization, they are more likely to be lifetime consumers since they tend to trust a company that has "earned" it's way to the top of the rankings.

By the time a user has a four to five keyword phrase entered in for their search query, chances are that they have already eliminated the "noise" and are focused on the "signal" i.e. the product or service that your site is offering.

One final item to remember is that if you have an exact phrase that is not common to a search engine query, once it gets indexed, it will most like appear in the number one position since the search engines always try to find an exact match when other factors aren't available.

Search Engine Optimization Forums

2008-05-21T18:44:00.001-07:00

Band of Gonzos

David Castle

Google Community

SE Round Table

SearchEngineWatch

SearchGuild

SEO Forum

SEO1

SEO-Guy

SEO-Today

Spider-Food

WebProWorld

Search Engine Optimization Tools

2008-05-21T18:43:00.001-07:00

10 tools, 1 site

A free online SEO analysis.

Add your RSS Feed to Google News

AdSense Preview

Backlink Checker

Backlinks Host IP Analyzer

Backlinks to your site

Backlinks Watch

Baidu Pro

BlogStorm

Broswer Shots

Buzz Reporting

Check Google Ranking on Multiple Data Centers

Check Page Rank

CleverStats

Clicks By Search Rank

Compare Your Clicks

del.icio.us URL History Tool

Directory Manager

Domain Geolocator

Fagan Finder

Find Links

Flash Search Engine

Free Keyword Discovery Search Tool

Free Patents Online

Free Yahoo Site Submission

Good Keywords

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

Google Alerts

Google Analytics Home

Google BlogSearch

Google Bot Names

Google Cheat Sheet

Google Dance Machine

Google Keyword Tool

Google Mobile Site Preview

Google Mobile Sitemaps

Google PageRank Calculator

Google PageRank Predictor

Google Rankings

Google Search Counts Tool

Google Sitemap Creator

Google Video Search

Google Website Optimizer

Google'World

How Google Calculates PR

How Google spiders your site

HTML Validator

Index Rank

IP Tools

KeyWord Analyser

KeyWord Density

Keyword suggestion based on synonyms

Keyword Suggestion Tool

Link Analysis

Link Building

Link Worh Calculator

Lipsum Filler

Live PR Check

Local Keyword Generator

Lynx Viewer

MarketLeap

Neat-O Tool

Niche Keywords Tool

One Boxer

Page Rank History

Pagerankr

Ping My Blog!

Plagiarism

PPC Click Fraud Analysis and Prevention

Preview Google Adsense Ads

Ranking Check

Ranking Comparison

Ranking Reports

Related Words Tool

RSS Feed Tools

SE Relationship Chart

SE Tools

Search Engine Engine

Search Engine Optimization Articles and Tools Sources

Search Engine Simulator

Search Engines and Directories

Search Engines Submission Pages

Search Google, MSN and Yahoo at once!

Search Ranking Factors

Self SEO

Send Google an email about your site

SEO Dictionary

SEO Keyword Tools

SEO Resources Directory

SEO Scorecard

SEO Tools

SEO Training Courses

SEO-Tools

Site Ranking Tool

Site Stats Tool

Smart PageRank

Social Bookmark Tool

Soople

Spannerworks SEO Tools

SpiderLinker

TrendMapper

UpTime

W3 Validation

Web WorkShop

Website to Country

What You Must Know Before Hiring An SEO Company

WHOIS

WordTracker Keyword Tool

Yahoo Local Blog

Yahoo Mobile Site Submission

Yahoo Modification Date

Yahoo Shopping Blog

Yahoo Widgets

Yahoo! Search Blog

Yahoo! Site Explorer

How to Create Google Adsense Pages

2008-05-21T18:32:00.000-07:00

First let me preface this article by stating that you should NOT create pages for the "gaming" of AdSense. Most companies who use AdWords are small to medium sized businesses trying to grow.

With rampant click fraud, those advertisers won't be able to advertise, and AdSense won't pay out as well.

That said, let's begin the process.

For our example, our topic is that of "widgets", so where do get started?

Create the page - Sounds simple enough, but there are some coding standards you should always use. They are:

Name of the page - Use the name of the keyword you are targeting. So, in this example it would be widget.htm. You can use your web server's technology as well, but if in doubt, you can never go wrong with the .htm

Title the page - Use the keyword again for the title.

Meta Tags - Yes, they are still used. Make sure you include the keywords in your meta keyword list, and give a definition of the word in your meta description tag
H1 - Put your keyword in stylized H1 tags. Use CSS to make the tag look consistent to the rest of your site

Content - This is often the biggest obstacle non-writers have. Don't worry, follow these steps and you'll soon be on your way to original content.

Go to MSN, Yahoo and Google
Enter your keyword into the search box
Look at the top 5 sites listed from each search engine
Educate yourself on the topic from the content found on these sites

Page Copy - Now that you've absorbed more information, compose your own page of ORIGINAL content. You can take bits and pieces from the other pages, but be sure to inject your personality into your writing. That will make it uniquely yours.

Links - Don't forget to link to authority sites about your subject. It's very natural for web pages to have links to other sites, don't forget about this key point. Take a moment to see why you need outbound links.

Traffic - The most obvious is getting traffic to your site. Your site will have higher paying ads if your page gets more traffic. If you need help with this, be sure to visit the SEO resources section.

Personally, I tried using the traffic generating sites, and quite frankly, they are a waste of time. Sure you'll build up your traffic numbers, but it's usually from an autosurfing program.

TOP 10 SEO TIPS FOR BLOGS

2008-05-21T01:14:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the technique of altering your blog so that it gets ranked in the top results of a search engine once a relevant search is undertaken. I thought of doing a top-to-bottom SEO of my blog and in the process involve my readers also in optimizing their blogs. So login to your Dashboard and follow me on this comprehensive approach to optimize your blog.....Before we start make sure you have reliable statistics about your current website traffic. You’ll want to compare performance of the site before and afterthe optimisation has been carried out. You can do this by comparing statistics from any traffic counters you have installed in your blog.

STEP 1 - CHOOSE YOUR KEYWORDS.
A keyword is a word that best describes your web page. Before you even create your blog you have to choose your keywords. This is because you have to put them in the URL/Link you make in creating a new blog. Do not give your own name to your blog url unless it is already an easily recognized brand name. If you have not made it into a brand name it will not attract any traffic. Our objective in SEO is to attract as much traffic as possible.
Choose a subject you are going to blog about and research your keywords as shown in Keywords Tips and Tricks for Bloggers.Primary keywords are the main keywords from which all keyword variations should derive. Your primary keywords should focus on your subject and not be too specific. Secondary Keywords are those which reference related subjects. For example if your Primary Keywords are Search engine Optimization then the Secondary Keywords will be Cascading Style Sheets, Web Design etc. Make a list of at least 500 words since you will be putting them in various parts of the blog title, headings, links, content and image tags.Your blog URL should be made of the primary keyword which best describes your blog.
Check the availability of the URL and put your best keyword or keyword phrase in it. You can also combine your keywords into a phrase to put in your URL.

STEP 2 - THE TITLE TAG.
This is the second step while creating your blog. Do not give a title like "Welcome to my blog" and if you have such a title change it immediately to one showing the subject like "How to ...". Do not use words like AND which are considered as filler words. Instead use the pipe symbol as in "Bank Loans Where To Find The Best Terms in the USA". Use your Primary Keywords first and then your Secondary Keywords. The recommended maximum number of characters for this tag is 60 including spaces.
In Blogger you can go to Settings----->Basic----->Title to set this tag. On the Edit Html tab it is represented by<data:blog.pagetitle/> Do not just put keywords in the title. It should be made of keyword phrases otherwise it will be considered as spam by search engines. In Blogger Blogs on opening a particular post the title is made of the "Blog Title : Post Title". Hence use your keywords in Post Titles also. The post title should be relevant to the content in the post. Do not use ALL CAPS in your titles as they become difficult to read.

STEP 3 - THE META TAGS.
The Meta tags are the Description Metatag and the Keyword Metatag and are placed between the and tags usually the description first and then the keywords metatag. They look like this :Description Meta:
Keywords Meta: Do not repeat keywords more than 2-3 times in these tags otherwise it is considered as spaming. Your Keywords Meta should not exceed 1024 characters including spaces. Also your Description Meta tag should not exceed 250 characters including spaces. You can use plurals and misspelt words within the keywords tags.
The keywords in them should also be found within the content of your blog. There is one more metatag in Blogger - META Robots Tag. The Robots META Tag is meant to provide users who cannot upload or control the /robots.txt file at their websites like Blogspot. This instructs the search engine spiders to follow all the links and index the blog. If you want it to be a private blog put NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW instead.See Default Metatag on Blogger for more information.

STEP 4 - THE CONTENT.
Each Post is made of the Post title, The content and The Tags at the bottom of the post. The Post Title should include the primary keywords and correspond to the content of the post. The title should be enclosed in Headings tags. Preferably post titles should be in bold. Each post should contain 200 to 300 words. This text should include your most important keyword phrases, but should remain logical & readable. Daily adding of relevant content is a priority.
If not possible at least weekly. Turn on your site feed(s) and use them to promote your blog. Use yoursecondary keywords in the body of your post. Do not repeat the keywords too often. Keyword density should be between 4 to 8%. It’s most important to have them in the first 200 and last 200 words of the content. Make them BOLD or ITALIC. Do not use DUPLICATE CONTENT. Do not repeat content internally within the blog in different posts. Do not repeat content externally in other blogs. Do not copy content from other sites. Besides copyrighting issues Google will penalize sites having duplicate content.
Your content should be fresh and updated. It should also be relevant to the blog theme. If it is a blog about football any other widely disparate content will attract attention. Do not use "DIRTY CONTENT" if it is not an adult blog. That will cause the search engines to put your blog in a different category.

STEP 5 - HEADINGS.
The H tags are important starting with the lowest number, making the H1 tag the most important. Put all post titles and headings within these tags.Put the primary keywords within these tags. Your headings and the content below them should match each other.

STEP 6 - IMAGES.
Your images should be small resolution so that the page loads fast. Do not use BMP images as they are big and load slowly. Name your images with your primary keywords. Use primary keywords within the ALT tags of images. They tell spiders and screen readers what that image is about. Do not cram a bunch of keywords into the "alt" attribute. Use no more than 2-3 per image. Use misspellings and plural keyword phrases here. Alternative text values should not exceed 80 characters in length. While naming images use dashes (-) when separating words. Dashes tell search engines that the word is separated. Underscores (_) tell search engines to read it as a whole.

STEP 7 - LINKS.
Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links. These are the words you highlight in the Post before clicking on the Link icon to enter the URL. Include your most important keyword phrases in the text that immediately preceeds, or follows the the hyperlink. The area round any link is more sensitive and the search engine spiders pick up the words from there. Do not overdo it and make sure that the text is readable.Use an additional text navigation bar in the top, left or right areas of the blog in that order. The spiders go over your page in the order it is coded.If you place the left sidebar code above your main column then it is the first to be spidered. An internally well-linked to document is considered as more important.Use both internal links and external links. Refer to your other blog posts by inserting their links within your post. External links are important when they are from better Page Rank sites. One way links are weighed more heavily than reciprocal links.

STEP 8 - LOADING SPEED.
Your blog should be fast on its feet. There should not be any flash, Multimedia, Javascript or frames delaying the loading process. Search engines do not crawl Javascript produced content as it does not produce html. Search engines do not index framed pages.
Use the Website Speed Test to see how fast your blog loads : http://www.iwebtool.com/speed_test. It is also a good idea to use HTML links in the top-level main navigation on each of the pages of your site. Your web page should load in 10 seconds. Go to Blog Settings----->Formatting------>Show _ Posts on main page. Put this number as between 1 to 5 and save settings. Your blog will now load faster. Check your blog loading speed at
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

STEP 9 - SITEMAPS AND CODE OPTIMIZATION.
For Blogger there is no need to upload any sitemap files. When submitting the sitemap to Google use the Metatag method outlined in How to Submit to Google. Use CSS layouts instead of table layouts. This enables the search engine spiders to reach the content faster as they have less code to gothrough. Get your code validated at http://validator.w3.org/ because if there is an internal code conflict it may halt the search spiders.

STEP 10 - REPEAT ALL ABOVE STEPS.
SEO is a technique which is applied after creating content and not during it. You have to repeat it from time to time so as to tweak your blog to be optimized and rise in the search engine results also called SERPs (Search Engine Results Page). There are some important things which you should not do to attract the spiders but that is the subject for another article.

How To Increase Google SearchRank?

2008-05-21T01:00:00.000-07:00

Google Page Rank is the star and everyone talks about how to increase it. However it is updated at long intervals of three to four months or even later. What is more practical is for the site to come first in the results page returned by Google to queries from viewers. When your site/blog comes up in the first few results then there is a rapid rise in traffic to your site..........

WHAT IS SEARCH RANK?

When a viewer enters a word or query in a search engine box it returns thousands of sites which have that word in them. Typically viewers will only see the first few pages and click on the first few links only. Your Search Rank is the number of your site in the list which appears in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).This rank depends on what keyword has been entered in the search box. When you optimize your site for a keyword it will rise in the list and appear in the first few pages. This is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

CHECKING SEARCH RANKYou can check the Search Rank of your site for a particular keyword by entering that word in the search box of any engine and counting how many positions your site is from the top in the results returned.You can also check your Search Rank for a particular keyword at Speedtester

HOW TO INCREASE SEARCH RANK?

1. Titles should contain your keywords. Research your keywords properly before applying them.

2. Put keywords in metatags.

3. Put your keywords in post titles and in bolded headings within the post.

4. Use keywords in alt tags for images. Use lists within your posts.

5. Make your post titles into readable links by enabling post pages in Settings---->Archiving.

6. Submit sitemap to Google.

7. Ping all the search engines after publishing a post using Multipinger sites.

8. Get site code validated for XHTML and CSS.

9. Make your site faster to load by putting less posts on the main page. Settings------>Formatting------->Show __ posts on main page.

10. Lastly SEO should be undertaken after all content has been added to the site and is a cyclical process without an end.

How to Make Money and Rank #1 With Blog

2008-05-20T07:40:00.000-07:00

So, I'm sure the secret is out that blogs are the best thing to use to make money on the internet these days. Blogs are easy to create, fun to use and can really help out your search engine rankings. Another plus about blogs is that whenever you want to make a change to your blog you only have to use a template and delete from there as apposed to going through the whole changing process with a regular website.

Today, I would like to share with you some of the ways that you can make money with blogs and how to rank them well in the search engines as well. Hopefully after you are done reading this article you will be able to set up a perfect blog to start making money with and have it ranked in the search engines in no time!

The first thing you want to do is find a good niche that you can make your blog about. The main purpose of having a blog is to give others information on things that you know about or learn about. Blogs should always be informative because this is what the business is about. When you choose a niche, start with one that has low competition that way you won't get frustrated with trying to get your blog to rank well in the search engines. Once you find the perfect formula on how to get your blog ranked then you can move onto a more popular niche.

Once you get your blog set up with content that is about your niche you are then ready to start bringing traffic towards it. It can really be frustrating trying to get so much traffic to your blog because you never know which way is going to work the best for you. The method that I use that works great is article marketing. You can get benefits from it in two different ways and that is with traffic and backlinks. You will need backlinks in order to rank high in the search engines. The more backlinks you have the higher the search engine ranking you will have.

The best way to use article marketing is by making a good author resource box. Don't write a story about your self or anything because people have short attention spans these days. Make sure that your links back to your blog are in your author resource box with anchor texts. Make sure that you use the main keyword you are trying to rank well for in the anchor text.
Its best to constantly keep your blog updated and ping it as it will get indexed very quickly. With the methods above, I am sure that you won't have a problem getting your blog ranked well in the search engines in less then a month.

How To Make Money Blogging

2008-05-20T07:29:00.000-07:00

Some people blog merely to provide it's readers with insightful information in regards to various niches, hobbies or personal interests. There are other who reap the advantages of monetizing their blogs for financial success. Some people wonder how it's possible to make money just writing articles to your own website everyday. Well the truth is that a blog with the right amount of traffic has the potential to generate a small fortune if you play your cards right.

There are basically three major ways to monetize your blog and start receiving a paycheck.
1. Use affiliate links to advertise products/services already created online. Each sale yields a commission for you! The most recognized marketplace for a huge variety of affiliate products is clickbank.com. Create a free account and start generating links immediately.

2. Generate a large amount of traffic and sell advertisement spaces on your blog. A high traffic website is like an expensive neighborhood where land lots sell for huge money. If your website yields high traffic, sponsors will be all over you to place banners, text links, or articles added to your website for a pretty penny. You set your price and make a residual income every single month!

3. Google AdSense. This method is very predominant online and a lot of people currently utilize it due to the simplicity. All that's required is creating an AdSense account with Google and they will do the rest of the work. They will analyze your website based on content and filter the appropriate links in correspondence with the information they find. Each time someone clicks on an AdSense link, you get paid (payment differs based on category).

Another way is thinking outside the box. After you've successfully created a high traffic blog, create your own product to market online via a separate website URL. Kill two birds with one stone and double your profits! If your website is driving a significant amount of traffic, why not create your own product and use your prime banner space to promote yourself? Several blogging websites use their information source as a free advertisement for products they've also created to yield a massive amount of clicks and sales conversions.

When it comes to adding content to your blog, ensure you're writing unique articles. DO NOT copy content from any other blog, or online source, as this could not only get you in to trouble, but give you blog a poor image.

Write daily! Not only will adding content daily help build your loyal reader list, it will also help you drive more traffic to your website, as search engines will pick up your new content and place it in their search queries.

Making money simply writing informative, unique articles can actually pay. Building a loyal reader base, driving traffic and adding content frequently will have a major impact on turning your blogging initiatives in to cold hard cash.