Time to inspire links and pump up your PR and inbound linkage.
DO: Generate original content, which encourages links.
DO: Add your blog's address to your email's signature file.
DO: Post links on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (more on these below).
DO: Participate in bulletin boards and list serves on your topic. Again, include your blog's URL in your signature.
DO: Comment thoughtfully on blogs relevant to your topics. Curious readers will click though – track this via Analytics or Sitemeter referrals – and stick around if they like your stuff. Eventually you may even befriend fellow bloggers, who might then promote your work via posts and BlogRolls.
DON'T: Expect sites to reciprocate links. Showcase work you find relevant to your readers. Any competent blogger will notice a traffic spike, if you introduce a significant amount of readers. He or she may return play... but it could take time or never happen at all. Be generous with your juju. Offer it without strings. The karma almost always flows back in...
DON'T: Get sucked into link-trading schemes. Google sees right through that game.
DON'T: Get frustrated if you're not adding hundreds of new readers a week immediately. So much of successful blogging is about building a community. That takes time. Keep adding original content and good outbound links. Participate on other sites and publicize your own.
As a recent New York Times article noted, "Richard Jalichandra, chief executive of Technorati, said that at any given time there are 7 million to 10 million active blogs on the Internet, but 'it’s probably between 50,000 and 100,000 blogs that are generating most of the page views'."
On the one hand, that can seem a little discouraging. On the other, you have a chance – with little start-up cost – to compete with media giants. Take FiveThirtyEight: A site run by a baseball-stats nerd, a poker player, and a documentary filmmaker has a readership akin to the Houston Chronicle's, according to Joshua Benton at Harvard's Neiman Journalism Lab.
According to the Wall Street Journal, 1.7 million Americans make money blogging and 452,000 of them derive a majority of their income from it (read more about e-jobs here).
Blog's aren't a Golden Ticket. But they're darn close.
Basics of nabbing higher rankings
URL's, headers and page titles are important in Google's eyes. Make 'em descriptive and precise as possible, as we discussed earlier in class. If your blog requires major search engine marketing, consider registering a domain name that features important keywords. Just be aware this can create some extra hackwork for custom headers and other Blogger standards.
Don't hide your content behind images and Flash. Generally this is not a problem with Blogger, unless you video-post often. If so, entice Googlebots (and readers) with introductory text, which summarizes what's behind that play button. Again, specific details help. "A funny clip" is weaker than "Mystery: Sharks Missing at the Seattle Aquarium".
On that note, time out for a predator smackdown:
Now don't you feel better about the economy? At least you're not being drowned by an animal with the density of a wet Kleenex...
For posts primarily about images or video, teaser text brings context and gives the search bots more traction. Tech enthusiasts also use correct <title> elements and alt attributes. However, this is complicated in Blogger without editing an entry's HTML.
Make sure permalinks are enabled (Dashboard -> Settings -> Archiving -> Post Pages -> Yes). This gives search engines a permanent location to find a given entry (other bloggers too, so they can link to your entries). When a page moves, it generally loses its existing PR juju. (Ways exist to avoid this if, for example, you are migrating from one blog platform to another, but they're complicated).
Mike's sage advice- Don't optimize for search engines, optimize for your readers. Entries easily read by humans are easily read by Google.
- If you can think of a way to game the system, I guarantee that Google has already counterpunched it. The company hires a lot of very smart people: the geek elite.
- Keep Google returning to index your site with fresh content. If the bots decide you only blog once a month, then they will only crawl your site twelve times a year. Post regularly.
Seomoz.org consulted 37 experts about playing nicely with the world's top search engine (full report here). Following are the ten most positive factors they cited. Note how most revolve around links and keywords.
- Keyword Use in Title Tag
- Anchor Text of Inbound Link
- Global Link Popularity of Site
- Age of Site
- Link Popularity within the Site's Internal Link Structure
- Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site
- Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community
- Keyword Use in Body Text
- Global Link Popularity of Linking Site
- Topical Relationship of Linking Page
Posts
4 comments:
What does this one mean? Anchor Text of Inbound Link
And is it something we can influence?
joanne
First some background: Links are technically called anchors (for reasons not worth going into here) which is why they are designated with an <a> tag in HTML. The anchor text is the text between the opening and closing anchor tag.
In the list above, "Anchor Text of Inbound Link" is the anchor text of that link. (To seomoz.org it is an inbound link; on our site it's an outbound link).
There is very little you can do to control in the anchor text of incoming links from other Web sites. If you run more than one site and link from one to the other, then you have control over some inbound links.
The biggest benefit comes from internal links -- links from within your site to other pages within your site. When you reference a previous entry avoid writing, "Click here for more information on squeezing Googlejuice to increase your page rank." Instead, "Squeezing Googlejuice can increase your page rank" tells the search robots so much more about what is at the other end of that link.
- Mike
One last comment, don't twist yourself into a verbal knot trying to get the best keywords into the anchor text. If the sentence doesn't read well, then readers won't continue reading your site. And that's worse than the occasional "click here" link.
- Mike
Thanks Mike--that's really helpful info.
joanne
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