A question on WebmasterWorld has brought up a few interesting comments. As part of a search engine optimization program you may decide to include your own business blog – an activity I highly recommend. The question was, “What are the problems associated with getting loads of blog links?”. for 2018.

There were a wide range of views presented during the discussion. The general feeling was almost one of placing blogs as the second or perhaps even third class citizens of the online world. This can be an error in the thought processes as well constructed blogs can significantly improve the search engine positioning outcomes for any web site.

Links are an important component of any SEO program so a discussion such as this can be important to clarify some of the issues surrounding the topic. This discussion has not really addressed any of the real issues surrounding links from blogs. On the contrary, the general consensus was that blog links are fairly worthless, particularly once they ‘fall of the front page’.

Spam links can come from anywhere and blogs are certainly not the only source. A well constructed blog with good content and a sensible linking strategy adds just as much value to a sites search engine optimization program as does any other strategy.

Links from blogs certainly add authority to a website. They may not add as much value as .gov or .edu link, however is has long been assumed that they add more value than any other link.

Blogs are now part of the online world and they represent a good pathway for businesses to connect to their customers and interact with them. If your search engine optimization program is well prepared and conducted properly, blogs will not be only the only source of links. What is important is to develop a variety of authority links from a range of online entities. Having a balanced link building strategy will enhance your authority and search engine rankings so blogs, as just one of those entities, should not be seen as harming your long term search strategy.

Premium WordPress Themes – Relevant Links

Newbies – the new kids on the block. Fresh young websites that are still in diapers. These sites often show an unranked Google PageRank so is there any value in linking to, or more importantly from a search engine optimization perspective, getting linked from?

• There are many quotes that come to mind, however, in plain terms, what may appear useless today could prove to be powerful down the road. The real art of search engine optimization is just reaching the top of the SERP’s, it is also about staying there, going the distance.
• The only way you can plan for the future is by looking for related sites that are growing, developing their own inbound links and slowly improving their position. While they may have only a minor effect on your SEO outcomes in the short term; in the long term they will be valuable.
• Obviously a little common sense is required. The pages must be relevant to your pages and the site itself there for the long haul. It is a waste of time and energy to build links from a site that will be gone tomorrow. Over time you can come recognize sites that are going to be short lived. The content is sparse, the site full of ads and they often provide little or no value.

Avoid those sites at all costs. On the other hand, sites that have good content and have been optimized for the search engines are, over time, going to acquire their own inbound links. As this happens their rankings will grow stronger and with it yours.

Young sites should hold no fears when it comes to linking so long as you do your home work first, but the key to remember is only partner and link with sites that you have a business relationship with, this will be valuable for everyone for sure!

Premium WordPress Themes – Site Explorer

There are times when even the best SEO program struggles to get a couple of places up the search engine ranking ladder to make to the front page. There are number of strategies you could apply; one of these uses Yahoo! Site Explorer.

The differences between being on the front page and being on page two often comes down to site age and the number of backlinks a site has. Pages that are appearing above yours in the SERP’s most likely have these extra backlinks.

You can use Yahoo! Site Explorer to investigate those pages and see which sites are linking in to them. On most occasions, their back links will differ substantially to yours. Those links may be opportunities that your efforts can capitalize on.

If those links are blogs then you can target them with a comment campaign. You are looking for links and you are looking for authority which may lead to more links so ensure your comments add value and are very valuable.

Non Blog or commercial sites may be approachable for links if they are closely related to your niche. If not direct links, then making yourself known to those web sites may assist in the relevant link building efforts.

By including the links that your competitors are receiving into your SEO program may help your site to climb those last few rungs in the SERP’s.

Everyone knows you have a home page. They can find it easily. for 2018. But deep links are a lot more productive and effective in link building than home page links for a few reasons:

• You can target specific kewyord phrases instead of the broad sitewide term
• It is easier to push your internal pages up in the site rankings with long-tail keyword phrases
• Links to multiple pages looks more natural than a bunch of links to your home page
• Visitors can find your home page’s URL by typing it into their browser windows but they’ll have a more difficult time remembering your page permalinks for internal pages
• Internal pages typically cover a more specific topic that is relevant to a user’s needs

When you start your link building campaign as part of your search engine optimization efforts, try to figure out what the best anchor text is for each of your internal pages. Come up with about 10 different anchor text phrases. Vary your anchor text for each of your internal pages and do as much deep linking as you can from a wide variety of sources. You’ll see much better results overall in your link building efforts.

Premium WordPress Themes – Profile Links

Just as social bookmarking can help you build links back to your website, social networking can do so as well. In fact, it is pretty much common knowledge that social networking profiles are good sources for links for the long term ongoing link building aspects of search engine optimization. But why stop there?

When you use social bookmarking sites like Digg and Mixx (and of course quite a few others), one thing to keep in mind is the social voting aspect of the service. Simply submitting your content might get you a link, but a lot of votes on your content will gain some search traction. Your social networking works the same way, but slightly different.

With social networking sites link LinkedIn and Facebook you are not necessarily submitting links. You are participating and making contacts. But your participation is doing more for you than simply making you a social butterfly. The more you use those services, the more search traction your profile at those services is likely to get. For instance, your Facebook profile might appear in the SERPs but it will appear higher if you are active on the service. The more active you are, the more likely you are to rise to page 1 in the SERPs.

This might be called indirect search engine marketing. It is based on the concept that your reputation rises with the waves. As you build your reputation as the social networks you are also building it with the search engines. And since you can’t have 10 of your web pages on page 1 at the same time for the same keywords, getting your social networking profiles to rank high in the SERPs is the next best thing.

Premium WordPress Themes – Yahoo! Links Vs. Google Links

Google pretty much created link popularity. Before Google, no one cared about inbound links except for traffic purposes. But the other search engines have caught on and now all of them include link analysis in some form in their web page ranking algorithm. I find it interesting to compare Google data with Yahoo! data for a number of reasons.

Any time I check my link popularity, the first thing I notice is that I have a few links counted at Google and a lot of links counted at Yahoo! When I go to look at the links, I see that Google shows me one link from each domain and usually not much more. Yahoo! however shows me a lot of links from the same domain. Yahoo! also shows me internal links. Google doesn’t.

But I’m pretty sure that Google uses links to rank my websites in the SERPs. Yahoo! does too, but links aren’t as important at Yahoo! There are other factors more important there. What this illustrates to me is that you cannot rely on any one strategy for ranking at the search engines. You need to branch out and make your web building strategy more diverse – that includes links and it also includes other things as part of your long term search engine optimization and link building effort. The more diverse you are in marketing your website, the more likely you are to achieve high rankings where you want them.

Premium WordPress Themes – Indirect Back Links

I’ve noticed over and over again that Yahoo! is a bit more liberal than Google in its link credit practices. But Google, unfortunately, doesn’t report every link it credits. I think that is because they want to protect their algorithm somewhat and not let out their secrets. There are some really smart search engine optimization experts out there who can figure out how Google gives link credit if the information if made available.

Yahoo!, however, works a little differently. Yahoo! will give you link credit for a single link in your blog’s sidebar for every post you make. So if you post every day for a year and you have one link back to your website from an offsite blog, Yahoo! will likely register you with a link popularity of 365 at the end of that year. Plus some.

Why plus some? Because you are going to get some links in other ways.

Social bookmarking. If you bookmark your web pages at all the social bookmarking sites you can find, a good number of them will gain you link credit from Yahoo! But even some of those bookmarking sites that don’t provide link credit will result in indirect link credit in other ways.

If you have a BlogCatalog account, for instance, your sidebar links will also register as link credit from BlogCatalog as long as your blog is registered at BlogCatalog. Also, people who vote on your bookmarks at some sites, if they have a BlogCatalog, account and they decide to blog about your web page, will help you gain some more link juice from BlogCatalog.

But that’s not all. I’ve seen link credit come from sites that I didn’t bookmark at because someone else bookmarked it there after voting on it from another site. For instance, StumbleUpon rarely gives link credit. But after asking a group of people to stumble an item, one of them went to FriendFeed and submitted the same item. We got link credit from FriendFeed.

Never underestimate the power of indirect links. Don’t just focus on dofollow sites. Benefits can come from unexpected places.

If you’re prone to using directories to help you build back links then you might just think submitting your site and not worrying about what your submission looks like doesn’t matter. You’d be wrong. It matters a lot. The for 2018.

First, there’s the PR angle. People visit directories and might visit your website from a directory. But if your title and description don’t sell them on the idea of visiting your website then they won’t bother. You do want visitors, don’t you?

But even beyond the visitor question, there are other reasons why you want your description to be well written and, most importantly, well optimized.

The link from the directory to your website should contain your important keyword, but it should include the keyword that relates to the page it points to, not a generic keyword. You are looking for link relevance and the keyword is the single best indicator of that. More than likely, your submission title will be the link from the directory to your website so put some thought into that.

But what about your description? It doesn’t link to your site. Does it matter? Yes, it does. Some directory listings will appear in the SERPs for important keywords. For that reason you want to make sure that you optimize your directory listings. If someone finds the directory listing before they find your website because of a keyword placement then you’ve got one new visitor that you didn’t have before.

But don’t you want your website to rank higher than directory submissions? Yes, of course you do. But you can’t control every search engine’s ranking algorithms. People will visit your site from smaller search engines like DogPile and Mahalo and your directory submission could be the ticket that gets them there so make sure you optimize your directory submissions.

Premium WordPress Themes – With Sony

In the past if you wanted to read an e-book you had to either download a .pdf file or buy an expensive e-book reader like Amazon’s Kindle or Sony’s eBook Reader. The biggest problem with e-books is that the formats from one reader to another have never been compatible. Kindle has its own format. Sony has its. And Microsoft has its. If you buy or download a free e-book for one reader and you want to, by any chance, read it on another reader you’ll have to download that book for the other reader – if it’s available. There is no cross over.

But what if somehow Google made it possible to receive link juice to help with a long term search engine optimization strategy from e-books being read in Sony’s eBook Reader. There would be an incentive to publishers to start producing e-books for the Sony format. That would certainly make Sony’s reader more competitive with Amazon’s Kindle. However, that wouldn’t necessarily give any additional incentive to consumers to purchase the Sony reader or to read any of the books formatted for it. Still, what if?

Premium WordPress Themes – Similar Links

Gab Goldenberg pontificated on this question on his blog. He gives two answers, but the first one is suspect.

Not necessarily. Click-through rates are usually better for links that appear higher in the pages. There may be mitigating factors that would allow links further down the page to have a higher CTR, but generally speaking the higher the link on the page the better a CTR it will enjoy. So how does that change Gab’s theory about link juice for search engine optimization?

I’d say that Gab’s logic should have went like this: Since the two links are identical and CTR is usually higher for the links at the top of the page, coupled with the fact that traffic and bounce rates are usually factors as well, the second link shouldn’t pass any link juice if it uses the same anchor text as the first.

Of course, I don’t have any direct testing to back up this claim either. But that’s the logic behind the premise and conclusion, as I see it.

Does Google Still Like Directories?

Google used to love directory listings as part of a long term link building and search engine optimization effort. A webmaster could submit his website to 1,000 general directories and get back links using the same anchor text and it was good. But those days are over. You could call them the halcyon days of directory submissions. Or the hey-day of links.

Whatever you call it, you won’t ever see that level of commitment from Google toward directories again. Google hasn’t gotten stricter on directory submissions.

In general, I think Google still likes most directories but you could say the search bots have grown skeptical. Google is a bit more discerning. If you get your website listed in directories where there is a lot of spam, you shouldn’t consider that those links will account for much. It is better to get links from a few real good directories than to get a lot of links from a bunch of bad directories. And if it comes down to high traffic directories versus directories that give just a little bit of link juice, you could be better off with a high traffic directory and no link juice. Any way you look at it, you have to weigh your options.

Premium WordPress Themes – Driving Traffic

Squidoo is all the rage, but you don’t need a lens to make the world a better place. You can build great links and drive traffic to your website using other UGC sites. In fact, I highly recommend it. Here are 7 alternative sites that allow you to post articles or share your knowledge, drive traffic back to your website, and build great inbound links:

• eHow – eHow is a very popular site that allows anyone to teach others what they know how to do. Articles are generally short and snappy and “go by the numbers”.
• WikiHow – The wiki version of eHow. Only better.
• Instructables – The new kid on the blog, Instructables gives you an opportunity to teach others what you do best. Create your account, comment on other people’s instructables, and start your own.
• Associated Content – Not only can you build great links and drive traffic to your site with Associated Content, but you can make money there – even if you don’t have a website.
• Helium – A snazzier version of Associated Content. Make money, drive traffic, build links. Learn stuff and teach stuff. Be the expert.
• Knol – Owned by Google. Article marketing, only better. Drive lots of traffic with your expertly written articles on just about anything.
• HubPages – Another site like Associated Content and Helium where you can make money teaching people what you know.

Squidoo is a good site, don’t get us wrong. But you don’t have to hang your hat at Squidoo and move in. Try these other sites too. Build relevant links for your long term search engine optimization, drive traffic, and make more money.

Did you know you can change your Google crawl rate? It’s true and you can do it in Google Webmaster Tools if you have an account. Best according to business. buyers

The default setting for the Google crawl rate is to let Google determine how often it crawls your website. However, if you have special needs then you can set your own crawl rate. But I wouldn’t recommend changing this unless you understand the special needs of your server and you are an advanced webmaster.

To change your crawl rate, log in to your Google Webmaster Tools account and click on Settings. In these settings you can establish a geographic targeting area, set a preferred domain (using www or without www), and choosing a customized crawl rate. Find the crawl rate button and set it to “Set custom crawl rate”. Below the crawl rate button you’ll see two settings – requests per second and seconds between requests. Select the settings you desire that are faster or slower than the default rate and click “Save”.

If you are experiencing higher than expected volumes of traffic then you’ll want to have Google crawl your site less often. You may even want to slow down the requests per second. Slowing down your crawl rate will allow you to handle the increased traffic better on your site and this is a particularly handsome way to let Google know that you are seeing a spike in traffic due to increased PPC marketing or link bait that is working. If your site is not getting crawled or it is taking an extra long time to get indexed then you can increase your settings and invite Google to spend more time on your site to increase the number of your indexed pages.

Premium WordPress Themes – Has A Forum

If you’ve ever wondered where to go for your most pressing Google Analytics questions, now there is no need to wonder. They’ve launched the new Google Analytics Forum.

The new forum has several features that I think are pretty cool for a new forum:

• Analytics Help in Google Groups – This is a useful feature if you want to find previously answered questions. Can’t find it in the new forum? Search here next.
• AnalyticsPros – Google Analytics has gone through the trouble of designating user pros who can answer your questions and they are identifiable. Just hit one of these people up for your most pressing in-depth questions of Google Analytics.
• Google Analytics Help Center – Of course, this is not a new feature, but it’s a good one nonetheless. This should be your starting point for answers on Google Analytics. If you can’t find it here then check the forum and the Analytics Help Group.

Premium WordPress Themes – Error Codes

If you’re browsing the web and you click a link that takes you nowhere, you’re likely to be hit with an error page. The most popular error page is the 404 page, but it’s by no means the only one. Here are some error pages that you are likely to find and that you might be interested in customizing for your own website to be more helpful to your site visitors:

• 401 Error – This error code is to tell visitors they do not have the proper authorization to view a certain page. If you have a membership site and an individual tries to access a page that requires signing in and their username and password are incorrect then you might deliver a 401 error.
• 403 Error – This is the forbidden error. It doesn’t mean what you think it means. It usually is a reference to a script that won’t allow users to access a certain page. Even if a user authenticates with a password and username, they could still see a 403 error if there is a problem with your script. You can fix the error at the server level, but you can also customize your error page to be more helpful.
• 404 Error – Not found. This is the error page you are most likely to see if you a particular web page is not available. Typically, a user types in the wrong URL in their browser window, but you could have also had a typo in the domain name you created and marketed another spelling of it. Easily fixable, but a bug nonetheless.
• 500 Error – Internal Server Error. I hate these. They typically mean the server had problems, but it can’t tell you want the problem is. It’s unidentifiable and isn’t one of the above. Picture asking a sales clerk at a local retail store and a question about the merchandise in the store and she says, “Sorry, can’t help you and I can’t tell you why.” That’s a 500 error.

To customize any of these error pages you’ll have to open the page in your html editor and add the elements that you wish to add. I’d recommend that you download your index page and cut out all the text content but leave all the design elements so that the page looks like the rest of your website. Then where your text goes, type in the error code and message that you want visitors to see. And that’s about all there is to customizing your error pages, though you may have to access your .htacess file to direct browsers to particular pages when they encounter one. That’s another lesson.

Premium WordPress Themes – For All Browsers

Are you aware that every web browser looks at your website a little differently? It’s true. What happens through the Firefox browser doesn’t necessarily happen through the Chrome or Internet Explorer browser.

Of course, every browser looks at the basic information – text, graphics – about the same. The problem is that they all carry different resolutions and specific nuances of command, especially with regard to elements like CSS and JavaScript. You may need to give specific browsers special commands within your website code so that they’ll read what you want them to read correctly.

So how many different browsers are there? Here are the top ones:

• Firefox
• Internet Explorer
• Safari
• Chrome
• Opera
• Mozilla
• SeaMonkey
• Konquerer
• Camino

There are a few others out there but they are not important enough to worry about. Test your website in the top browsers before you upload it just to be sure that users of that web browser see what you want them to see. You’ll save yourself a lot of headaches later on and you likely won’t lose sales due to browser incompatibility.