In this article I will look at some of the basic techniques of SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
What Is SEO
SEO is a process of choosing the most appropriate targeted keyword phrases related to your site and ensuring that this ranks your site highly in search engines so that when someone searches for specific phrases it returns your site as high as possible. It basically involves fine tuning the content of your site along with the HTML and Meta tags. It also involves off site activities such as link building. The most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, AOL and Ask Jeeves.
How do they decided what ranks well?
Search engines keep their methods and ranking algorithms secret, to get credit for finding the most valuable search-results and to deter spam pages from clogging those results. A search engine may use hundreds of factors while ranking the listings where the factors themselves and the weight each carries may change continually. Algorithms can differ so widely that a webpage that ranks #1 in a particular search engine could rank #200 in another search engine. New sites do not need to be "submitted" to search engines to be listed. A simple link from a well established site will get the search engines to visit the new site and begin to spider its contents. It can take a few days to even weeks from the referring of a link from such an established site for all the main search engine spiders to commence visiting and indexing the new site.
What is the point of Sblogs and Autoblogs?
Normally such sites are set up to either make a little cash through Adsense or other contextual ads, or in many cases to set up a network of blogs, or a blog farm to generate page rank, and link authority. Anyone who knows about such things can spot these auto blogs a mile away. Typically there titles link directly to RSS feed content, and headings will focus on keywords that a sblogger is focusing on.
Why are they annoying?
Apart from the fact that someone else is trying to cash in on your hard work, there are also duplicate content issues. Search engines don’t like duplicate content, and if you were unlucky enough to have a low ranking new site, that doesn’t get indexed regularly, there is a good change that search engine spiders could index the content of the Sblog, before indexing it on your site, marking the original as duplicate, you would have to be unlucky, but it’s food for thought.
One of my main focuses here is blogging about blogging, or "how to blog". But I often find myself, sitting at my desk, trying to write blog posts, and ending up with nothing to show for my efforts. This article is an effort to list the worst productivity killers, when it comes to blogging.
- Read too many RSS feeds - I am firm believer in reading what other relevant blogs are writing about to inform your articles, but there comes a point when your reading can be killing your writing time. Keep an eye on this.
- Stumbling - Stumbling is great, and a great way to research content. But spending your time looking at stuff like this:
… can be unproductive.
4Mar
Here’s an invite to a private beta of a new social media service "Qassia". Qassia is a social media service to promotes your blogs. It offers SEO friendly anchor text of your choice for links to your blogs, and your blog listing is ranked based on how many people you refer. Kind of like a pyramid scheme. You get 500 funny dollars for each referral, and by the looks of it you need a few referrals to rank well. I guess the idea is to get in early if you think this service may be a success and see how it plays out. You need to use the invitation link above to join as the service is still in private beta stages.
2MarThe month of February 2008 came and went and I just realised I never got around to making a new post on Pingable for the whole month. I have been busy starting a new job, which has kept me away from my blog a lot. When you spend all day looking at a PC sometimes it can be a chore to come home and do more on your PC. I also was unfortunate enough to break my laptop, I dropped it on the screen, so I only have shared desktop to use at the moment.
What have I learnt from my blog?
Well the page rank for Pingable is finally something I am proud of, PR 4 isn’t bad. I only noticed this a few days ago. Although one of my posts has had a PR of 4 for some time.
I tried the advertising network blgads, I put the ads up for less than a week, I got 8,000 impressions, and only 5 clicks (despite placing them in article, blending + different formats) and only made a total of 17cent for my efforts. So pretty much a waste of time. I guess this is the case with all contextual advertising networks. If you don’t write about a profitable topic, your clicks aren’t going to be profitable.
Since I haven’t posted in a month, I also haven’t promoted or had any content promoted on Social Media sites like Stumble. So my traffic has dropped off considerably. My Alexa score has dropped from 105,000 to 145,000.
Read the rest of this entry »
