In my quest to learn more about optimizing blogs and web sites, I have noticed many recurring patterns.  One of them is the idea of buying links.  I have received lots of advertisements offering thousands of links for less than a hundred dollars.

On the surface, the idea seems to be a very good one.  You only need to shell out a relatively small amount of money and you will get a lot of links just like that.  You do not have to surf, you do not have to network.  Then again, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is, right?

In this case, the “too good to be true” part is highlighted mainly because of how Google treats paid links:

This is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results.

Examples of link schemes can include:
•    Links intended to manipulate PageRank
•    Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
•    Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (”Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)
•    Buying or selling links that pass PageRank

Take note of that last point.  Google does frown upon this practice.  More so, Google looks not only on the quantity of links but on the quality as well.

Have you been tempted to purchase one of those link schemes where they guarantee a thousand links for $50?  If so, then you might want to think about it.  It might not be worth it in the end – especially if Google finds out and penalizes your site.

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I never really thought about it, but it seems that you can fake PageRanks.  Now why would you want to do that?  I can think of many different reasons but here is one of the most pressing ones.

I am sure that you have heard of people buying up domains and the reselling them for greater value later on down the road.  These people are speculators, always on the look out for potential money makers.  It is actually brilliant but not always a good thing for those who would need the domains later on.

Anyhow, one of the most important factors that domain buyers take into consideration is the current PageRank of the domain.  If you have ever tried buying an existing domain, you would understand that one of the main reasons you would want to do so is that the PR is already decent.  It would save you months of work and money as opposed to starting from scratch.

It makes perfect sense – unless the PR is fake.  Yup, there are ways and means by which people can make the PR look good when in reality, there is no PR.  Since that is not a matter of importance to us – creating fake PR – let’s not dwell on it.  Instead, let us see how we can determine if the PR is legit.

I do not have much experience in this matter but I ran across a Fake PageRank checker tool.  The URL is http://www.seologs.com/pr-check/pagerank.html.  You can try it out yourself.

Do you know of any other way to determine the legitimacy of PR?

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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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Anyone who has a blog or a web site knows about the hullabaloo associated with page rank. Indeed, if you judge things by the fuss that everyone is making about page rank, you can say that it is one of the biggest things that concerns web site and blog owners. So why is page rank important? Does it really have any advantages at all? If so, what are these advantages? Here are a few that I could think of.

The higher your page rank, the higher you will be in the SERPs

Who wouldn’t want to be on the first page of a search query on Google? I have some other blogs that I write for and one time, I did a search using particular keywords for the blog. I could not even begin to describe the feeling that washed over me when I saw that the blog was in the first page of the results! More than the feeling, however, being on the first page – or first few pages – makes for more visibility, which in turn, could increase the traffic to your site.

The higher your page rank, the more trust people will put in your site

Though this point may be debatable, it is true that if people see that your page rank is high, they will think better of your site. For some reason, having a high page rank gives out the idea that your site is reliable and of high quality. Though that may not always be the case, it is reasonable to think so, don’t you agree?

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