There are basically three things a blog owner must be seriously looking into to achieve good ranking for his site- structure, links, and contents.  Among these three, it is improvement of content which is the least technical and therefore more understandable to the layman.  This has not however automatically resulted to better contents.  It would appear creating good content is not as easy as it seems.

Creating good content to attract visitors to one’s site is what is referred to as content marketing.  It is  basically a marketing technique based on creating and distributing relevant content to a target audience.  It is based on the premise that if the required information is provided by a site or blog and the way to finding this information has been provided, traffic will naturally come.

Sound Marketing is Founded on Excellent Content

The foundation of every online marketing effort is excellent content.  Excellence pertains not only to presentation but to relevance as well.  A site or blog is deemed excellent by a target market if it is able to provide the information being sought.  The content should be able to succeed in convincing visitors to be part of the site whether as regular readers or actual customers without resorting to hard-sell.  The best content marketing will lead readers to the site’s desired course of action.

Contents are for Human Users

The biggest mistake that a site can do with regards content is to write it for search engines and not humans.  This is because an article written for search engines is usually not human-friendly.  It should be remembered that humans are the end users.  Search engines only provide the means of finding sites but contents will still have to useful to humans.  The problem with articles written with search engines in mind is the tendency to excessively use keywords without any real and good content.  Deceit should not be employed in getting readers and visitors.

Natural Acquisition of Links

Higher Google ranking through good content is partially achieved by getting natural  inbound links from sites that matter.  A few links from this type of sites can do wonders than many links from lesser-valued sites. Not many sites can achieve this without going through serious assessment of their contents.

High ranking comes in time but only if the site or blog has something to offer in contents.  Otherwise, it might just be too much to ask for.

Teresa is a researcher-writer who covers a wide range of topics in search of useful information.

The notoriously popular Kim Dotcom comes back after a temporary hiatus via a cloud storage provider with free or paid options.  Mega is offering as much as 50 GB free storage or 500 GB of storage for about $99 a year.  This has caught the attention of many which should probably explain the impressive figures being mentioned by the Mega owner.

Still, this does not cover the fact that Kim Dotcom is yet to face charges being hurled against him for infringing on music copyrights when his company, MegaUpload supposed to have allowed illegal downloading in its site. Many consumers are now facing the dilemma of whether to treat Mega as a legitimate service provider or as a security threat.

It may beat the likes of Google and Dropbox with regards to its free storage offering but it still operates with a disadvantage in reputation.  Still, it has managed to attract at least 3 million users from the time of its launch this January. It is quite interesting to note that Mega is now offering a music streaming option which could be its direct answer to the issue of copyright infringement in illegal music downloads.

Mega: Piracy or Privacy – An infographic by the team at Who Is Hosting This.com

Every SEO developer’s sight is set on authorship which is often represented by “rel=author” in many forums discussing it.  It is essentially linking content to the author’s Google+ profile.  This is a two-step process that involves linking content profile and back.

Determining authorship is believed to be one way of determining the quality of a blog.  The belief is based on the line of thinking that if quality writers are doing the writing in a blog, then it must follow that the blog must be quality as well. Although of course there is nothing absolute about this proposition, it provides a clue on the general direction of the blog.

It is a fact that many blogs do not put much thought on the quality of their contents.  A lot would concentrate on the quantity of posts in the misguided belief that their blogs would be perceived as quality on the sheer basis of the number of articles.  It may have been true at a certain point in time but it no longer is at this time.  The quest for quality content is a continuous process being done by reliable search engines in order to give users the best search matches possible.

A writer or author develops his or her online authority through time.  Linking all works of an author in a single area such as a Google + profile allows the quick compilation of all sites in which the author may have contributed to.  Author rank is definitely one important factor of PageRank.

About the Author:

Teresa is a researcher-writer who covers a wide range of topics in search of useful information.

Image: pagetrafficbuzz

We’ve left the first month of the year behind. How have your SEO efforts been? Did you work on a solid plan for the year? Have you diverged from the path of spammy SEO? Are you seeing results?

If you have not really sat down and worked out a plan for your SEO, don’t fuss. It is not too late to do so, and with these three simple tips, you can make a positive impact.

Good quality content

There is something about cliches that rubs people the wrong way. Perhaps because they are true, in spite of the fact that they are overused. People don’t like being reminded of the obvious at times, after all.

When it comes to SEO, though, we really cannot ignore the importance of good quality content – that is, if you want to see positive results. You can manipulate your rankings all you want, but at the end of the day, you will only get returning visitors, you will only get good conversions, if you have content that is worth spending time on.

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Syndicated content refers to materials, articles, or posts that have been made available to numerous other sites.  This is seen as a highly beneficial practice to both the receiving and transmitting site. While the receiving site use syndicated content as a way to add value and depth to other pages, the transmitting site gets the desired exposure in different online platforms.

Legitimate link building is the expected benefit of content syndication.  Links included in the content will directly point to the source site.  This will result to the appearance of the site as an authority site with regards to the specific keyword used.  Although content syndication is an important means to obtain increased traffic, certain strategies related to it may just result to being penalized if done on a way that is intended to merely manipulate.

When Google smells manipulation, PageRank is bound to be affected in a negative way.  When a site is into content syndication, it should not be used as an easy way out of honest online work.  Syndicated content is different from merely copied content which is heavily penalized by Google.

In copied or duplicate content, Google gives the copycat or the site that purposely place duplicate contents within one site a low PageRank.  Copied and duplicate contents have a malicious nature in them and are products of intents to earn high ranking dishonestly.  Syndicated contents are essentially distributed for reposting with the permission of the original author.  News articles and other like interesting stories are commonly syndicated because they are usually of high quality and of great interest to be shared.  Google generally is able to distinguish between copied and syndicated in relation to ranking.

About the Author:

Teresa is a professional researcher-writer who covers a wide range of topics in her aim to provide relevant information.

SEO Nos

We know that the basic premise of SEO is to engage in activities that will help your web site rank higher in Google SERPs, but the methods and principles have undergone so many tweaks. Gone are the days when it was “easy” to manipulate your way to the top. Google has been on the ball with all sorts of SEO tricks. Do you really expect the geniuses there to allow just anybody to one up them?

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Image: momitforward

If all the buzz is to believed, Google’s AuthorRank is about to descend on online authors and journalists in a bid to make way for a more trustworthy means of search result ranking.  It is no longer a question of if because it is sure to come.  It is only actually a matter of when.

Like any other previous algorithm updates, authors who have consistently practiced good writing need not panic in trying to save their sites since the purpose of AuthorRank is to find the best content on the basis of the relevance of content providers. Authors who have taken the time to provide excellent articles and posts have nothing to worry about this one.  However, good authors are encouraged to back their profile with commendable social network presence especially through G+.

A click at G+ button is a vote of confidence from readers.  Inclusion in a Google Circle is a vote of confidence from a group of people.  The more clicks for share and circles which the author is part of, the more stable the position of the author becomes.  Of course, the usual factors will also come into place such as the average PR, posting frequency, number of comments per post, relative authority on other social networks, the authority of the publishing site, and other external authority indicators.

Writers will also have to place special attention on Google authority which effectively links content with a Google + profile.  Google will need this link to establish the connection between the author and the created contents.  Authors will also have to get out from their own site once in a while by guest blogging on quality sites.  It is best to remember that emphasis is placed on quality rather than quantity of sites.  The key here is to maintain quality in self and make sure to be associated with quality as well.

Image: basicblogtips

For the longest time, the issue of when PageRank updates occur is again being asked.  There are various speculations flying all over but online participants  and other people of interest have placed their fearless estimates on every three months.  So if the last update happened in November 2012, everyone is anticipating the next to happen on February 2013.

There is however nothing certain about the time of updates since it has happened sometime ago that there was about a nine-month interval between updates.  It really all depends on the decision of Google and these updates come unannounced.  Wise bloggers or anyone else interested in PageRank know that their only defense against a lowered rank or no-rank is to continuously produce content that will help put their blogs or sites on a quality pedestal.

Some bloggers have a very bad practice of producing a big number of articles towards the expected rank update probably in the hope of offsetting earlier negligence in quality and quantity.  With Google’s aim of identifying the real good sites, this move is actually counterproductive.  Search engines are much kinder in tracking consistency since sudden spikes in whatever form tend to sound alarm bells.

It has been observed that newbie bloggers are the most eager to achieve fast high-ranking.  In time, the serious bloggers realize that blogging is not all about ranking.  It will always matter but it need not the be-all and the end-all of any blog.  Bloggers who really have something to offer to their audience should remember this.

Image: omegaweb

In spite of advice to the contrary, bloggers still cannot help but be worried about page rank. Every 3 months or so, blog owners or at least most of them wait with baited breath for the “judgement” to come. Making a comment that they are worried can be an understatement for some.

Blogs which have yet to get at least a page 1 rank wonder when they will ever be recognized as existing in the realm of rankings. A page 1 rank is really nothing to be exceptionally proud of except for the fact that it has finally been acknowledged to have some relevant links. It is a fact that many blogs languish at zero page rank or worse at N/A status which stands for data not available. This traditionally meant that these sites have not yet been indexed by Google. A zero page rank is said to mean that it has been indexed but do not have enough quality backlinks to merit a higher score.

Many blogs have been known to stay at such an undefined status for so long that many feel like giving up. Although blogging is essentially self-expression, a certain point of validation from Google is certainly a welcome development. It can be very discouraging when blogs which have been established at fairly the same time merit higher page rank. Take it or not, bloggers will question what is missing in their blog that is causing such stagnancy.

Blogs which have achieved favorable ranking in time are not safe from dropping of ranks. This is said to result from extended periods of non-posting, bad links, or poor content. In spite of the importance placed by many for page rank, bloggers are still advised not to worry too much about it and concentrate more on the task at hand which is to produce quality blog.

Every site owner wanting to have his site recognized as an entity to reckon with in the online environment will be particular with page rank.  It is quite difficult to ignore page ranking even when sites repeatedly console themselves with the thought that page rank is not everything.  It may not be everything but it is something when one wishes to attract the right attention especially monetary wise. Almost all SEO professionals recommend that attention should be given first and foremost to content and readers will eventually find their way.  This is actually true but some people do not have the patience to wait.  Since page rank seems to have a direct effect in a site’s popularity, there is much effort to obtain the most favorable page rank possible. The concern goes with good reason.  A high page rank adds authority to a site.  When a site is seen as having more authority, it performs better in organic search results.  Its contents also tend to carry more weight as compared to sites that have lower page rankings or no ranking at all.  It is as if Google has stamped its approval on the site, with the perception of approval increasing as the page rank goes higher. Since the algorithm used by Google in determining page rank is quite difficult to understand, site owners are encouraged to go beyond page rank and just get down to the business of producing a quality site.  Page rank will follow in time and nothing can be done if it isn’t deemed “deserving” by the entity that bestows the ranking.  Page rank is a general gauge of a site’s fitness for readership, although the system is definitely not foolproof.  Thus, it is possible to see some inferior sites in terms of contents having page ranks while sites offering much better contents have no ranking.  Google assures the public however that they are trying to correct the system, thus the regular updates