Google PageRank and backlink update
Google is busily updating its backlinks and PageRank. Like Santa, Google is making a list, checking it twice, and finding a few sites naughty, and a few sites nice.
Reports are appearing, from some webmasters, that their PageRank (PR) has increased. PageRank (one word) is the measure Google uses to evaluate the importance of a website. The PageRank calculation is based on the number, and already existing PageRank, of a site's incoming links.
A PageRank increase is usually accompanied by an increase in the number of backlinks (links coming into your site) that Google is counting. Google does not list incoming links that are lower than PageRank 4 (PR4). The other links are taken into consideration in the PR measurement, however.
To find out your own blog's PageRank, you need to install the Google Toolbar.
It can be found here:
Google Toolbar Download
Unfortunately, a Mac based Toolbar is unavailable.
Other webmasters are reporting the opposite is happening. They have found a decrease in their reported backlinks from Google.
That decrease in backlinks, and corresponding PR drop, is Google's equivalent of receiving a stocking filled with a lump of coal.
Bloggers have usually done well in Google's backlink reports and PageRank distribution. Because bloggers are such generous, and frequent linkers, blogs have done extremely well in Google.
At the same time, bloggers have placed almost no importance on chasing Google PageRank. Because of that lack of concern with PR numbers, blogs have been doing the right thing all along. Bloggers trade links, add links, and create in-post links to other blogs and websites, regardless of any PageRank concerns.
That good karma is returned to bloggers, and many don't even know it!
Many PR conscious webmasters refuse any link trades with blogs or websites that display a PR4 or lower. In the long run, that Scrooge attitude is harmful to a site or blog. That shortsighted view is not shared by the vast majority of blogs.
The value of any weblog or website is to the visitor.
Providing your readers, with interesting and informative posts and content, is what a blog or any other website is all about.
Whether PageRank is important to you or not, your generous link adding and trading policies are of benefit to you, and to your visitors.
You can't get a better holiday gift than that!
Link Building Strategies for SEO Success
What are Backlinks?
These are links on other websites directed back to your site. The importance and popularity of your site is usually determined by how many webmasters consider a link to your site viable. However, the quality of the backlinks you gather is what the search engines are really interested in.
What are Quality Backlinks?
These a backlinks from websites with similar content to yours. It's all a game of relevancy and has a lot to do with the success of your website and marketing efforts. Building backlinks to your site is top priority if you ever hope for a better PR or SERP. There are several legitimate ways of doing this without engaging the so called "black hat" techniques that'll only get you banned from google and other quality search engines.
Write Articles and submit to Article Directories.
Writing articles and submitting them to article directories is a simple, but very powerful and effective way to create interest and generate traffic to your site. Best of all, it's absolutely FREE.
Basically it works like this. You write interesting articles and submit them to article directories for webmasters & publishers to use freely on their sites, blogs & in their written works. However, they have to use the article as it is and are not allowed to change it. In the authors resource box within the article, you place a link back to your website so that any reader who likes your work would most likely click on your URL, visit your site and ultimately get you some targeted free traffic.
Your articles should be short, informative and straight to the point. A typical article word-count is usually btw 400-700 words.
Submit your site to Web Directories.
Submitting your website to quality directories online and deep linking within them will not only increase your link popularity but your website PR and SERP as well. Make a list of the top web directories online and manually submit your URL to them. Some would require a reciprocal link back to your site and some will charge a fee for inclusion. Which ever the case, submitting your URL for inclusion in these directorys will guarantee you have some quality backlinks to your website.
Participate in Forums.
You can find forums all over the internet focused on a diverse range of niches. But the "making money at home, internet marketing, webmaster & SEO" forums are by far the most popular. Register for an account with forums in the above niche market and post regularly to the board. Participate constructively in discussions and remember to leave your site URL in your signature so it appears in every post and thread that you participate in.
Be supportive and gradually become a source of good and clean information, become a valued community member. By doing this, you'll build up reputation and create valuable credibility for yourself. This way, rest assured your site will always be visited by your forum community thus increasing your link popularity and quality backlinks.
There are more techniques that a webmaster can utilize to bulid links and improve SEO for his/her websites, but applying the above link building blueprints will certainly guarantee results, with a little hard wor
Link exchange guidelines
This only applies if your website is brand new but also if you get links slowly. If you are experienced, and know how to get many link exchanges fast, then there is no need to create a highly focused directory before getting links from any category.
A link is important, so important that it does not need to be on a page with 40 other links to be considered important. All links are required, so accept a link even if there are a hundred other links on the same page.
The only time I reject a link is when a webmaster creates a page on his site, totally blank, and he does not link to it from anywhere. So it cannot get indexed any time. They just upload the page on the server and that's it.
Installing one of the free plugins that display links that are using no follow tags is also important. So make sure your links won't be using no follow tags.
Pay attention to three way link exchanges from certain type of sites. If you link to site A, and the webmaster then links to you from a directory (not a site) that is no good. At least get a link from a website.
Do not link exchange with directories. They have no content and most of them have categories that relate to everything you can imagine. All links are important, but still I ignore directories, I submit my website to many directories but not to those that require a link back.
Making link exchanges with sites hosted on free webservers is not bad, however these websites usually do not last long, the webmaster may buy a domain and all links get lost. But it is still a link, so get it if you can.
Check their links pages, and if they have too many characters in the URL pay attention. If it is too long search engines cannot index that page and a link on the page is useless.
However check to see if some of the pages got indexed, if at least one got indexed then even the rest can get indexed.
Those are basic rules.
If you have a blog do blog link exchange, you place their blog on the sidebar and vice versa. They might also accept an article exchange which is even better.
I check to see if my link partners are still linking back once a month, assuming you don't have some directory that does the work for you. Before I delete any links I send the webmaster an email or use their contact form. Sometimes they just move the site to a better location not always remove link. So good thing to check before deleting link partners.
Getting too many link exchanges at once is also not recommended. That looks very spammy and even worse if they all have same anchor text. So for a whole month you did nothing than all of a sudden you have 100 new links in one day.
Done slowly and every day, say 30 links a day that is absolutely great. Whatever the amount it must be the same every day approximately. I can tell from my results. It is also good news because you work less.
Hope that all this information helps. Even though the keywords you select are very competitive you still are able to get good results if you focus on getting links.
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