Posts Tagged ‘link building’
How to Craft an Effective SEO Plan
Monday, November 28th, 2011
Any experienced blogger or site developer will tell you about the importance of creating a solid, goal-oriented SEO plan before launching a website. Like a good business plan, an SEO plan outlines what you hope to accomplish with your site, who you’re looking to market your site to, and how you plan to meet these goals.
Unfortunately, so much of entry-level SEO is focused on keyword development that other important factors, including content, links and promotion, are often left by the wayside. While keywords are still hugely important, a site that focuses on them exclusively is comparable to a table with one leg – it falls down, and fast. By understanding the value and proper implementation of keywords, content, marketing and links, you can easily create a site-specific SEO plan that search engines and your audience alike will notice and appreciate.
The OnlineMBA.com Awards are Part of a Deceptive Link Baiting Scheme Aimed at Bloggers
Saturday, July 24th, 2010
Hundreds of bloggers are falling prey to a deceptive link baiting scheme that I would like to expose.
The website OnlineMBA.com has a section for ‘awarding the web’. This award system is 100% illegitimate.
Submitting a Theme to the WordPress Free Theme Directory [Tips and How-to]
Friday, June 4th, 2010
![wordpress text logo Submitting a Theme to the WordPress Free Theme Directory [Tips and How to]](http://www.blogtap.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/wordpress_text_logo.png "wordpress_text_logo"){kind=logo}
The advantages of having one of your themes featured in the WordPress free theme directory are endless. Not only do you get valuable backlinks from WordPress.org, but you also receive:
- Backlinks from an enormous amount of domains that use your theme. Be sure to include a link to your website in the footer that says something like “Theme by sitename.com” and most sites will not remove it. The links on the theme are all sitewide and, although they pass off very little PR value (they are at the bottom of every page), they significantly increase the domain diversity factor of total backlinks to your site.
- Exposure to people that use your theme. People who use your theme will sometimes frequent the theme homepage and end up checking out the rest of your site as well. These people have the potential to become subscribers.
- Exposure to people that click the link in the footer of sites that your theme is installed on. The links not only provide valuable PR juice (for better SERP) but they also supply a steady flow of traffic from curious visitors.
The Many Reasons Why You Should Allow DoFollow Commenting on Your Blog (I’ll be Frank)
Friday, May 28th, 2010
Blogtap has officially gone dofollow commenting today. That means that anyone can steal Blogtap’s precious PR juice simply by commenting with a website link.
Yup, the PR vampires will be here any minute now. They will bombard my comment queue with their under-thought and overly appreciative (e.g. “great post man!”), witless comments. I say bring it on. I say open the floodgate. And here’s why:
- A mindless gang of middle-eastern SEOers is better company than none.*
- Although many of the comments will be vapid and unsubstantial, I need commenters to get the conversation going, to break the ice on uncommented posts. I might be able to tell the difference between a comment posted for the sake of building backlinks to another site but many drive-by visitors will not. (more…)
Six powerful link building tips for your blog
Sunday, April 11th, 2010
A guest post by Gagandeep Singh, an Internet Marketing Executive working for Fortepromo Promotional Products, a promotional tool Kits Company based in Minneapolis, USA.
If content is the king and visitors are the loyal subjects of your blog, then links are the kingdom’s currency. Simply put: the greater the number of external links to your blog, the higher organic search engine rankings will be and the more traffic your blog will receive.
A few days back, Chris wrote about do-follow blog commenting, which is one of the most effective methods for link building and developing new relationships with fellow bloggers. To help you succeed in your link building efforts, I have highlighted a few more link building techniques that will transform your blog into a hyperlink haven.
Writing blog tags properly for search engines (SEO) and human visitors
Thursday, April 1st, 2010
Yesterday, I gave a very thorough definition of what blog tags are. Today, I’m going to tell you how to create blog tags for SEO as well as for human interaction purposes.
The practice of blog SEO can sometimes create a dilemma. Everyone wants their blog to be optimized for search engines but no one wants to make readability sacrifices. Blog posts written to target keywords can sometimes be less legible than blog posts written in ignorance of search engines. With tags however, the more efficient they are for people, the more efficient they are for search engine optimization. In other words, you get the best of both worlds! If you use tags properly of course.
Why the Google PageRank of your blog does not matter
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
Ah, Google PageRank. The crown of every newbie blogger. Yup that’s right, I said it: Google PageRank doesn’t mean squat. Unless of course you are a newbie blogger.
PageRank is a value from 1 to 10 that Google assigns to websites in its index. The higher the PR value, the more authority and credibility a site has. Naturally, Google is the only website with a PageRank of 10 and all of the lesser websites are given values from 0-9.
Graphic by Elliance, an eMarketing firm specialising in results-driven search engine marketing, website design, and outbound eMarketing campaigns. First sourced at Search Engine Land.
Newbie blog marketers pay a lot of attention to Google PageRank because it is a simple number. Unfortunately, using a blog’s PR value to judge its worth is like judging who the best baseball player is solely on the number of homeruns hit. There are so many other factors not considered.
Building links to your blog through commenting on other blogs
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
Building links to your blog for search engine rankings is little different from building relationships with people in the real world — networking — for desired jobs and positions.
Employers judge prospective employees based on references from other individuals. If the prospective employee is in good favor with people in high positions, specifically positions in the same industry, the employer is more likely to hold the applicant in higher regard. It is no different in the cyber world. Commenting on other blogs relevant to your niche is just another method you can use to get search engines to hold your site in higher regard, thereby giving you higher rankings and more traffic.
Think of a search engine as an employer seeking a man for a job. The job is specific to the search term entered by a user and those applying for the job are the many sites and pages that the search engine has in its index. The search engine asks these questions for each site in its index: is the site reputable? Is it productive? Do other sites in the same topic range hold it in high regard?
How to use tags properly on your blog
Sunday, February 14th, 2010
The purpose of tags is to easily allow readers to read blog posts of a similar nature or on the same topic. The use of tags in a blog is not meant to increase search engine ranking or provide a navigation menu (although they can serve these purposes) but to simply allow the blogger to more specifically categorize a post. After all, a blogger cannot create a separate category for every blog post that has a logical connection with another.
Say, for example, you blog about a speech Barack Obama gave at your school. You already have a blog post about Barack Obama’s state of the union speech that you wrote last year and you want potential readers to be aware of that. What do you do? Create a new category titled ‘Barack Obama’ or ‘Barack Obama Speeches’ in your sidebar categories? No, you simply create a tag titled ‘Barack Obama’ so readers can click on that tag at the end of your post and be taken to a list of other posts with that tag.
Choosing tags wisely
When choosing a tag for a post you should always make sure the choose something simple and easy to remember. If you want to create a tag for two blog posts, each involving a speech Barack Obama gave, you should use ‘Barack Obama’ not ‘Barack Obama Speeches’. Your tags must be arbitrary and broad because, otherwise, you will never use them again and end up having 1,000 tags (600 of which are only used by one post) on your blog. Remember that tags are all about grouping posts together. They are the same as categories except they are more specific.
If you use tags properly, your tag cloud (if you are using one) will fulfill its purpose properly. The tags with the most articles will appear in larger font and will display to your readers how important that particular topic is to you.
Here are some examples of bad tags:
- riding a bicycle at night
- making waffles
- doing push-ups
- riding the waves
- watching polar bears
Here are some examples of good tags (what the above bad tags should be instead):
- bicycle
- cooking
- exercise
- surfing
- zoo
Below is an example of what a tag cloud will look like if the tags are chosen correctly.
Author: Luca Cremonini
Can you guess what the blog is about for the above tag cloud? You should be able to realize that the blog is about web design. Notice how all of the tags are very broad terms.
Keep it simple and broad! And don’t worry about grouping too many posts in the same tag. It rarely happens and, if it does, that just means you have an extreme interest in a particular topic.
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