In the previous post, we focused on directory submissions in order to gain links to your site. Logic tells us that this is one of the most effective ways you can get links but as I mentioned, it could be quite tedious, especially since there are countless directories online.

Another way by which you can increase links to your site is to join forums. More than joining, though, you have to actively participate in discussions. The idea is that each time you post something in a forum, you can include your signature at the end – of course, the signature being a link to your web site or your blog URL. It is much like leaving your business card everywhere you go – you leave a trail behind you by which people can find you.

A very important thing to bear in mind when taking this route is to choose forums that are related to the content of your web site or blog. For example, if your web site is all about politics, it wouldn’t seem quite right to post in a forum about online dating and promote your site there, would it? For blogs – especially those of the personal kind, which can cover a wide range of topics – it is much easier as there are more choices as to what forums you can join.

More than creating links to your web site or blog, participating in forums actually help you established and build up your web presence. By making others know of your existence, you make them aware of your site as well. The more people that know about your site, the better your web presence will be.

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Getting external web sites to link back to your site is a good way to increase your Page Rank. But how do you go about getting other sites to link back to you? It’s not like you can just go out there and start collecting them, can you? Here are some practical ways by which you can increase back links to your site.

Directory submissions
Submitting your site to online directories actually serves a dual purpose. The more obvious one is that you have the chance to get the word out about your blog. Think about it this way, when you are looking for something and you are not sure as to what is available (but you have a general idea of what you want), what do you do? You go and check the directory – telephone directory, online directory, the idea is the same. So, in submitting your site to an online directory, you get the chance to attract more people to your site – you raise the possibility of finding your site.

Going back to the idea of getting more links back to your site, when you submit your URL to a directory, they will place a back link pointing to your site. That, of course, will count in your favor when it comes to Page Rank. Of course, you have to make sure that the directory you are submitting to is a reputable one. The higher its PR, the better for you as well.

There are free and paid directories. If you do not have the funds, I suggest sticking to the free ones – and submit to as many as you can. There is no limit! It would take some effort and could be tedious but it’s all part of “blog work.”

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I recently set up a new site for my own pleasure – just something I can play around with and use as a personal outlet when I need to vent. Just because it is mainly for my own pleasure does not mean that I don’t want to work on promoting it as well. That’s when I realized that I have to go back to the beginning and start building up the site’s PR from 0 to as high as I can get it to be.

As of now, I am not getting far – it has only been a week or so anyway. I think the hardest part is being patient. I am doing a lot of things but results do not come overnight. For now, I am focusing on getting the PR up. For starters, PR0 to PR2 would not be bad in several months. So how do I plan on going about this?

We all know that Google has not disclosed – and probably never will – how it calculates PR exactly. We do have a general sense of what they are doing, however, so we can try to work with this idea in mind.

The number of links that point to your site seems to be the major consideration when it comes to Google PR. So obviously, this is what you need to work on if you want to increase PR. So my site has PR0 right now – maybe a couple of external sites link back to it. How many do I need to get PR1 or PR2? I don’t have exact figures here (only Google knows) but Mark Walters suggests more than 50.

How do you get these many links? Let’s look at that in the next post.

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We’ve been talking about how to increase your Alexa Rank in the past two posts.  What I didn’t realize is that some people do not understand all the hullabaloo about Alexa.  My apologies to those who feel this way and thanks to Adam, one of our readers, who brought this to my attention.

So, indeed, why should we bother with Alexa Rank?  Is it really important?  More so, what is Alexa Rank?

Simply put, Alexa collects data regarding the traffic that goes through your site or your blog.  This was explained in the previous post where I quoted the text from Alexa itself.  So it is much like a system which measures your site’s popularity.

So how is this important?  Ask yourself, why are you maintaining your blog or your web site?  If it is fully for your own pleasure and no one else’s, then Alexa Rank may not be important to you at all.  However, if you want to let the rest of the world know about your site, then Alexa could work for you.

Another important thing is that Alexa is being used by a lot of advertisers and publishers.  If you are working on monetizing your blog, then you definitely need these people.  And how do you attract them?  By getting a high ranking in the eyes of the people at Alexa. Of course, there are other factors that could come into play, it is not always that simple.  However, this is the basic premise behind the importance of Alexa.

I hope that helps.

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In the last post, we talked about installing the Alexa Toolbar as the first step to increasing your Alexa Rank. Let us look at some more things that you can do to achieve this goal.

Alexa Rank Widget
This widget is something different from your Alexa Toolbar. It is supposed to add to your visitor count even if the visitor does not click on your toolbar. According to stats, the widget receives a fair amount of clicks from visitors in general.

Set your default homepage to your web site
This is particularly effective for those who are promoting a business or company web site or blog. What you can do is install the Alexa Toolbar and widget in all your computers in the office and then set the default homepage to your own web site or company blog. Of course, this can only be done for the official site – forget about doing this for your personal site or blog, you’ll only get in trouble!

Alexa redirects
Do you like leaving comments and posting in forums? Use this to your Alexa advantage by making use of Alexa redirects. It works this way – instead of using a direct link to your site or your blog, use a redirect: http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.yourdomain.com. People who click on your link will then be counted – hopefully increasing your Alexa rank. This last one is not a surefire way of increasing Alexa rankings but it just might help.

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I am quite sure that if you place any value on the concept of Alexa rank, then you would answer a resounding yes to that question. For the benefit of those who are not very familiar with Alexa rank, here are some salient points from the Alexa web site:

The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and data obtained from other, diverse traffic data sources, and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on a value derived from these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users). The three-month change is determined by comparing the site’s current rank with its rank from three months ago.

Now that you have that basic info, what should you do to increase your Alexa rank? Here are a few things that would come in handy.

Alexa Toolbar
I talked about this sometime ago and the question was whether or not you really need the Alexa Toolbar. Well, if you are going to work on increasing your rank, then you might as well install the toolbar. It is going to make monitoring much easier for you.

(to be continued)

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Some people do not do well when it comes to long-term planning.  I have to admit that I can be one of them.  There are times when I can barely plan my activities a month from now.  Then again, I do know the importance of planning for the long run and I do my best to do that.

When it comes to SEO, long-term thinking may be the best way to go.  Anyone who has had any experience with SEO and all its intricacies would know that sometimes, short cuts just don’t work.  Oh, they may get short-term results, that’s for sure.  But in the long run, what a web site owner wants is to build a lasting impression online.

Think about it, why are you maintaining that web site or blog?  Do you merely want to reap the benefits within a few months time?  Perhaps for some specific purposes, that would be enough.  But for many, the idea is to keep the blog or web site up and running for as long as it could.  More than that, you would want to keep that site popular and alive for years to come.

The only really clean way to do this would be to plan for the future.  This is where white hat SEO has the most advantage over black hat and gray hat SEO, I believe.  The latter two activities may bring about quicker results but in the long run, they may also be the downfall of the site.  Believe it or not, Google would probably catch up on these shady activities and bring the hammer down on the site.  What happens to the long-term growth then?

If I were you, I’d look into long-term results before deciding on any SEO practice.

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In the previous post, we took a look at gray hat SEO techniques in general. This time, let us take a closer look at these practices and be a bit more specific.

Cloaking
Cloaking is the practice wherein the web site owner provides information to the search engines which is different from what the site actually contains. Obviously, this is a practice that reeks of deception. However, there are certain cases when this practice can be deemed acceptable. For example, if the web site has content that is available only to members then it could be acceptable. Then again, this practice can very well be abused. That is the main reason cloaking is considered gray hat SEO.

Paid links
We all know how important links are for SEO. That is why it is quite understandable that the practice of buying links can become questionable. Purchasing links for advertising purposes is fine. However, if you purchase links solely because you want in link-popularity, then it could be considered shady. In fact, the suggestion is that you work on links to increase your traffic and just consider the increase in link-popularity as icing on top of the cake.

Duplicate content
Duplicate content can be considered legitimate in certain cases but rarely. For example, indexing and abstracting web sites may have duplicate content. In most cases, though, duplicate content is considered unacceptable.

Bottom line: when in doubt, be on the safe side.

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