Attention to blogger: Make sure you use the “no follow” tag for outbound links if that link is for a paid post.

This warning is not meant to only enhance your blog’s pagerank but is really important because as Matt Cutts said in a recent post,“We do take the subject of paid posts seriously and take action on them.” In fact they take it so seriously that Matt Cutts is urging his readers to help them find violators of the Google’s guideline on link schemes by sending in reports of sites and blogs that participate in such schemes. They actually manually review links sent to them. And the penalty as Matt Cutts puts it is that “those blogs are not trusted in Google’s algorithms any more.” We know what that means – goodbye to your hopes of having a decent pagerank!

You don’t have to worry about your paid posts it isn’t what Google penalizes it’s only the paid posts that passes pagerank. So if you do have paid posts on your blog and have not been using the “no follow” tag then it’s high time you get to it by editing those posts and adding the necessary tags.

Google’s Guideline on Paid Links

Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results… Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such by either:

• Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the tag; or
• Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

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SEO is great but once in a while you should pause to make sure you are not neglecting your non-SEO efforts done to promote your site. Some of the things you SHOULD definitely be doing if you are not already doing it now would include:

Using social media sites – There are tons of social media sites out there. If you are not a member of one you should at least consider joining the most popular ones like Facebook and MySpace. You should also look into industry specific social media sites and join those to develop contacts not only with prospective clients but also to keep touch with the latest developments in your industry.

Blog - Chances are you already have a blog but I can’t help but emphasise how much a blog can contribute to your site. It’s not only a way to get fresh content up frequently, which is the SEO aspect, but it is also a good venue for keeping your regular customers/visitors updated about anything you (and they) deem important.

Promote your site the old fashioned way – Do whatever you can to promote your site. Use bumper stickers, posters, give away your business card, sponsor a charity event, etc. Whenever you have an opportunity stamp your website URL to let people know they can find you online.

There are lots of other stuff you can do to promote your site. Feel free to give suggestions in the comment section!

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Just recently, one of my blogger friends asked me again about how to remove the no-follow attribute in her blog comments. She read about the “do follow” movement and wanted to be part of that. That got me to reading up on new developments with regard to no follow and do follow…

I found an interesting article at Econsultancy, which promotes the use of the no follow attribute as part of your SEO best practices. Naturally, being a do follow enthusiast, I had to read the whole article in an effort to understand the rationale behind the statement. This is what I found out:

While the concept of ‘PageRank leak’ – the idea that you can potentially ‘dilute’ your PageRank by linking out too much – has been widely debated for years, there’s no doubt that good linking practices are important to maintaining PageRank.

Linking to third party websites that Google thinks are ’spammy’ can harm you. As Google itself advises, “avoid links to web spammers or ‘bad neighborhoods’ on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.”

This is where using the ‘nofollow’ attribute on outbound links can be a valuable SEO tool.

One of my personal blogs has had no PR for months now – after having a halfway decent PR of 3. Perhaps I am leaking out PageRank because of not using the no follow attribute. I should take a look into this. Maybe you should, too.

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In the last post, I showcased two of the most annoying SEO myths – at least in my mind. I am not quite done yet! If you enjoyed being annoyed at those myths, then here is more for you to read.

Annoying myth #3: All you need is one huge burst of effort and you’re done.
This kind of attitude irks me and I am not only talking about SEO. You know those people who, when starting a project, are so into it? They put everything they have into the project and then after some time, they suddenly seem to have lost all their interest. This is the kind of attitude that some people have towards SEO. They think that you only have to exert effort for a limited period of time in the beginning and that once you have gotten the results you want, you can stop and sit on your laurels. FALSE. Try doing that and see what happens to your SERPs in the long run!

Annoying myth #4: You HAVE to submit to search engines.
This is annoying only because I keep seeing ads about submitting to thousands of search engines. It is even more annoying because they want you to pay for the submission. I guess there is some basis to this myth because it used to be that you really had to submit to search engines. These days, though, you do not have to do this. I did not submit my personal blog to Google or any other major search engine but I can find my blog using some keywords.

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Though I maintain blogs in both Wordpress and Blogger, it seems to me that there are more developers focusing on Wordpress and as a result, there is always something new to do with a Wordpress blog.  Of course, I could be wrong – it could just be my impression.

Anyhow, I read a press release from SEO Content Solutions, an SEO copywriting firm.  They have just released a new widget for Wordpress and it is totally free.  Here is an excerpt of the release:

Bloggers can now boast the number of current and cumulative daily visitors on their Wordpress blogs, as well the locations of the 5 most current visitors. Launched by SEO Content Solutions, a leading SEO copywriting firm, the new Online Now Wordpress Widget is free to all and compatible with all Wordpress versions.

“We wanted to create something that was both fun and functional for the blogging community. Not only does the ‘Online Now’ Wordpress Widget pique the interest of a casual reader, but it also validates the blog by proving that readers from all over the world frequently read and comment,” said Christine O’Kelly, Founder and Co-Owner of SEO Content Solutions.

Bloggers who love statistics – I am one of those! – will appreciate a widget like this.  Furthermore, stats are an important part of any SEO effort.  And when you can combine fun and function, there is no need to complain!  If you want to check out this new Wordpress Widget, you can visit SEO Content Solutions and download the widget.  You can also see a preview of the widget so that you can determine whether or not the visuals match your blog.

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Spam is something that bugs the heck out of a lot of people.  Sometimes I wonder about the tenacity and motivation of the people who are behind all sorts of spam activity.  We do have a good thing in spam filters, though.  They are automated programs that do everything by themselves.  Of course, sometimes, legitimate comments get labeled as spam and we have to manually rectify the problem.  This is not as big an issue, however, as spam that are masked so ingeniously that they pass for legitimate ones.

I am talking about spam comments which are being used for SEO purposes.  They seem to be legit and written by a real person – and they most usually are – but at the end of the day, if you analyze them, they are nothing but shameless plugs that do not mean much for the owner of the blog where the comment was made.

You may be thinking, so what if they are actually spammers?  Their comments are somehow coherent anyway.  But would you want to take the risk of attracting the ire of major search engines simply because they see an association between you and these new breed of spammers?  I don’t think so!  I certainly would not!

This increase in this kind of spamming is actually troublesome.  As I mentioned, we cannot rely on Akismet and other similar features to catch them automatically.  What is left to be done is for us, the bloggers, to manually check and analyze the comments.  Naturally, this takes time and effort – time and effort which could be channeled to other worthier activities.

What do you think should be done with them?

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If you are based in the United States and you focus all your SEO efforts locally, you might not be able to relate to this post. For those of you who are expanding or thinking of expanding to other countries, however, you might find this information useful. I was reading up on SEO trends when I ran across an article titled “7 Weirdest SEO Mistakes Big Companies Make Abroad.” Let us take a look at some of them.

They have more lawyers than marketers it seems as I always get the NDAs first and am not allowed to even tell my mother who I work for. Imagine a web designer etc. not able to brag about the brands he works for. They (both) lose so much publicity!

This is really weird although I have encountered a lot of situations like these. On the one hand, there is some rationale in NDAs. However, on the other hand, wouldn’t it be better for everyone involved to at least acknowledge each other’s existence? Can anyone shed light on this matter?

I am not allowed to use the simplest and most effective SEO techniques. The corporate structure is sometimes so monolithic, the CI so rigid, the technical limitations so many that basically everything a SEO does usually is not possible or permitted. How do you build links when no press releases, no blog posts, no link baits, no nothing is allowed?

I guess that business practices in other countries limit SEO efforts and if this item is to be believed, they limit SEO effectiveness a LOT. If you cannot create online press releases, you can create blogs, and so on, how are you supposed to be as active as you can in the SEO perspective?

(to be continued)

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So you already understand that internal linking is just as important as external linking. But do you have an idea of how to create a systematic internal linking system? It is not that hard. Read on to find out more about how to link internally to your benefit.

The Site Map
This is the most commonly suggested route to take. The site map is normally present in many web sites. Basically the site map is a page where visitors to your site can find a bird’s eye view of what your site contains. From the home page to other specific pages, they can find everything here. Even better, there are links to every single page in your site. This is the epitome of an organized internal structure. When you construct your site map, do make sure that you cover every single page and that your links are all working. Also, present your links in a visually appealing way and an intuitive structure as well.

Create a blog
If you are maintaining a web site that does not really have much need for changing content, then this would be a very good idea. You can create the blog for regular new content AND create links from your blog to your web site as well. This also works the other way around – you can create links from your main pages to the individual blog posts. Just make sure that the anchor texts that you use are very relevant.

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So have you checked your keywords yet? Are you targeting the appropriate keywords for your web site or blog? If you are and you are still not getting the results that you are aiming for, then maybe you are still missing out on something.

Why don’t you check how regularly and how often you update your blog? E. Branter also talks about this point:

Infrequent Updates- Search engines have a passion for fresh content. They crave fresh content because it keeps their results relevant. For this reason, it’s crucial that you give the search engines the new content they desire. Updating your website regularly shows both the search engines and your website visitors that your company is active and worth their trust.

It is as simple as that. You need to always offer something new. For blogs, I suppose that this would be a bit easier. You can post every day, every other day, or even twice a week. The format of the blog is easier to update and by its very nature, you really should provide fresh content a lot. For web sites, you can create a page or a section where you can update the content regularly. Perhaps you can have a section for articles and you can provide fresh content weekly. You can provide a section for news and do the same, maybe on a more frequent schedule. You can even create a blog and use that to provide fresh content!

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The beauty of the Internet is that you can publish most anything you want, the way you want to. While many people tend to use text to convey their message, there is no rule against the use of photos and pictures. That is why we have such things as photo blogs or photo web sites. These are the sites which showcase the work of a photographer, whether he is an amateur or a pro – it doesn’t matter.

So if you want to start a photo blog – or if you have one already – how do you go about ensuring that you will still get good rankings in the search engines? After all, if your blog is mostly composed of photos, how can they be indexed? Here are some tips to get you going.

First of all, determine whether you are going to stay focused on one particular subject for your photos. For example, is your blog going to have photos of animals only? Is your blog going to focus on a certain type of photography? Are you going to use only a specific kind of camera? If you are going to narrow down the topic of your blog, it will be like creating a niche blog. That means that you have to check the necessary keywords that you would need to score high in the rankings.

Talking about keywords, it would be good to add content to your photo blog – content other than the visuals. I know, pictures say more than words. However, in order to get high up in the SERPs, you need to add text here and there. Devote a post to a specific picture and describe it in words. Write a post every now and then about your technique, how you got the picture, and so on.

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