It seems that we are attracting quite a bit of interest because of the posts on no follow and do follow tags.  I was actually surprised to find out that not many people are yet that aware of the existence of the no follow tag, especially as a default for most blogging platforms.  One of our readers actually tried getting rid of the no follow tag and said that he seems to be getting more visitors because of this.

So do you want to get rid of the no follow tags as well?  There are a lot of resources online which can help you do so.  I think that one of my favorite posts on this topic is by Andy Beard.  He has “the ultimate list” of do follow and no follow plugins.  Here is his take on removing the no follow attribute:

•    Lucia’s Linky Love Plugin – I was going to liken this plugin to a Ferrari, because it is built to be fast, but it is probably more like a Subaru, not just fast but designed for rugged terrain and can handle the twists and turns of comment spammers without slowing down.
•    DoFollow – many look on this as the granddaddy of NoFollow plugins – you just switch it on and it works, all nofollows are removed from comments and trackbacks.
•    Dofollow (WP Plugin) - Sometimes I wish this one has been given a better more descriptive name. It includes the ability (optional) to remove nofollow from comments after a period of time.

These are only the first three on his list.  Let’s take a look at the others in the next post.  In the meantime, why don’t you try looking at these plugins and see how they can work for you?

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If you remember, I posted an entry on the do follow and no follow tags for comments.  We received a comment from one of readers which goes (thanks for commenting, btw):

I am new to dofollow, nofollow. I understand that no-follow means no backlink, do follow means you can get a backlink, but how do you tell if a site is do follow or not? BTW, nice blog, I found you from Cour’ts D-List
Medic

So indeed, how do you know if a blog is a do follow or a no follow?  One easy “trick” to do so is this:

-Use Firefox to do your browsing.
-Click on the comments section of the blog in question.
-Right click on any link from a comment.
-Click Properties.
-Look for the value corresponding to Relation.
-If it says External, then it is a do follow blog.  If the value is External nofollow then it is a no follow blog.

I am not sure but I think the default for most blogging templates is to have a no follow tag.  So, if you want to have do follow blog, there are some things that you can do to change that.  We’ll talk about this in another post.

On the subject of finding do follow blogs, however, you can look for the I Follow logo.  Other than these things, I do not know how to find out if a blog is do follow or no follow.  Any ideas?

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One of the first things that you should consider when choosing your images for your blog posts is the size. We talked about that in the previous post. Now let us look at some more considerations that can assist in generating more traffic with the help of images.

More than the image itself, you should also consider its relationship to the text. Of course, merely scattering images in your site will not do. You have to choose images that are relevant to your content. In addition to this, take note of the location of your images. As much as possible, place them close to the text which is the most relevant. Though some bloggers make it a practice to place images at the beginning of their posts, it may be good to change this practice if the most relevant text, with regard to the image, is nearest the image itself.

Linking related images could be a good practice as well. One important thing when it comes to images is their relevance – as mentioned in the preceding paragraph. If you have related images, you may want to consider linking them together in order to increase their relevance. Just make sure that the text associated with the images are also related.

Really important images – such as logos – would recur in your web site or blog. Make sure you tag these and highlight them. They will definitely score high in terms of relevance.

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When it comes to SEO techniques and their implementation, many people tend to focus on the goal of having their URL come out at the top of the SERPs. And why not? We all want our sites to come up when someone types in a keyword or key phrase that is relevant to our site. This will definitely increase traffic – which is what we want.

One thing that many overlook, however, is the optimization of their sites for image searching. As you know, Google and other search engines have a function for searching images on the Web. If you pay some attention to the images on your site, you have more chances of coming out at the top of image search results. You just might be surprised at how much traffic you can generate from optimizing your images.

So how do you start working on this? Here are some considerations you would want to take note of.

Size of the image. The general rule is that the higher the resolution (the bigger the size), the better chances of coming out on top. This is due to the fact that many users want to see higher resolution pictures – mainly for aesthetic purposes. Just a word of caution, though – the bigger the image size, the more bandwidth and storage space it will take up. So try to achieve a balance between the quality and the storage space available to you.

Let us look at some other considerations in the next post.

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Comments are a blogger’s best friend – well, among many other things. We have been focusing on increasing Page Rank in the past several posts. However, as many of my friends online have pointed out, commenting can bring about more benefits than Page Rank. Google’s PR does have its value, but it would be good to not lose sight of the bigger picture because of it.

So what can we do with comments? Let us look at the situation from the other perspective – us bloggers commenting on other blogs. As I pointed out in the previous post, we love receiving comments but may be a bit lax when it comes to dishing out comments.

However, when we comment on other blogs, we take advantage of the chance of making new friends. This, in turn, can translate into attracting more traffic to our own blog or web site. Real traffic is something that also takes some time to build up. It depends on many factors, delivering quality content being one of them. Once you have this down pat, you still need to let the world know that your blog or web site exists. This is where commenting comes in.

I call this technique the “manual” way. That is, instead of depending on SEO professionals and techniques alone, you do your own advertising by visiting as many relevant blogs as you can and leaving quality comments as well. Remember, spamming is not the idea here. You are leaving comments because you want other people to become interested in your blog, to visit it, and to become returning visitors.

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Bloggers love comments – receiving them, that is. In fact, I would go as far as to say that most bloggers aim to get as many comments as they can possibly get. However, the opposite is not always the case. What I mean is that even if everyone wants to receive comments, not everyone likes taking the time to leave their comments in other people’s blogs.

What if I told you that you can actually use commenting to create links to your own blog or web site and, hopefully, increase your PR. This can be done by leaving your comments on other blogs and indicating your URL in the appropriate field. However, you have to note that this will not ALWAYS generate links to your blog. How so?

There are different ways by which blog owners manage comments. The Page Rank Guide summarizes them neatly.

1. Blogs that use comment moderation and “rel=nofollow”
2. Blogs that use no comment moderation and “rel=nofollow”
3. Blogs that use comment moderation and links follow
4. Blogs that use no comment moderation and links follow

The first two methods will not do much good for you in terms of links. This is because the “no follow” command means that even if you place your URL in your comment, the link will not point to your site. So before you go on a commenting frenzy, remember that the blog you should comment on has be a “do follow” one.

More so, make sure that you will not end up being a spam commenter. Make sure your comments make sense and are relevant to the topic of the post.

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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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