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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Towards the end of February till the early days of March, Google PageRank underwent some updating. This should be good, no? Well, if I were to base my answer on the various goings on in the blogosphere, it seems that something has gone not-quite-right. Then again, it depends on your perspective.

According to denizens of the cyber world, the recent PageRank update has brought on trouble for internal web pages that have no external links pointing at them. Think about your own blog or web site, which pages are not likely to have external links pointing at them? You got it – they’re probably resources and the pages that contain links that point outward! The thing is, these pages are necessary. The other thing is, you can’t really have too many incoming links coming from external sources to these pages! So do not be surprised if you suddenly see the PageRank of these pages drop – I have seen some of these pages drop to PR0 even!

So what should be your course of action now? According to Kenkai, do not panic. He goes on to say that:

It’s only an indicator that is fairly accurate for one day every three to four months and B, the longevity of a link has always been more important than whether it it PR3 or PR2.
For new links, look at the PR of the index page and how many links are on the page that you are being offered a link from. A PR0 page with 150 links on it, isn’t worth considering, but a PageRank 0 page with ten links on it may be, as long as the link ticks the other link factor boxes.

So keep your pants on. It’s not the end of the world.

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I’m not sure if I’ve made it known here at Smart SEO Blog, but I work as a professional blogger for some non-SEO blogs. When I say “professional blogger” in the context of this article, it means the following things:

I don’t own all of the blogs that I write for.
If I don’t own the blog, I’m paid to write for it.
Most of these blogs already have an existing audience.

Apart from my gigs as a professional blogger, I run some online businesses – with most of them having really competitive keywords. Let’s take the case of Business#1, my oldest-running online service. Here are the stats for the second most competitive keyword for that business (from Nichebot):

Competition: 58,900

KEI: 0.08

Predicted daily count: 123

A year ago, when the website was 3 years old, I got tired of searching amongst 20+ search engine result pages to find my site. Now, I’m on the first page for that keyword. I’m currently the 7th, to be exact. How did I get there?

As a professional blogger, I have access to blogs that have thousands of pageviews in a month. One of the blogs I write for clocks in around 45,000 monthly pageviews. Another one has at least 10,000 pageviews (a conservative estimate). All the main blogs I write for have a PR of at least 4 and above (not that it’s that important an indicator nowadays).

At this point I would like to reiterate that my website for Business#1 wasn’t within the first 20 SERPs for the competitive keyword I wanted. For three whole years, at least.
The only thing I did that made a difference in my rankings was to link to the Business#1 website. Using the said keyword as the anchor text.

And now the site is #7 within the first page of Google’s search results.

Pretty sweet. I can’t believe it took me 3 years to figure that out. (Then again, I wasn’t actively SEO-ing the site, apart from onpage stuff.)

Now the harder part is to get from #7 to #1. Here are some ideas on how I can get there:

• Get more backlinks using that keyword – not just limited to the blogs I write for.
• A small-budget ad campaign for increase visibility in the marketplace.

The rankings boost has already increased my number of clients for Business#1. I’d have to say that for an effective SEO campaign, that was pretty easy. It’s actually common sense, but it’s exactly the type of thing that you can overlook.

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Just last Thursday, Google decided to drop the PR of selected PayPerPost blogs to zero.  PayPerPost also acquired insider information that other similar networks will be affected.  Here’s an excerpt from Ted Murphy’s post at the IZEA community blog:

We now know from some of our friends inside of Google (thanks “bob”) that they are now looking for phrases such as PPP, PayPerPost,ReviewMe, Payu2blog, etc. in the text of your post. For that reason I would suggest refraining from using any type of this text in the body of your posts, sponsored or not. When you disclose thank the sponsor, not PPP.

At one point in the post, Murphy criticizes Google for not taking out on blogs like TechCrunch .  Of course, TechCrunch responds here.  But what really caught my eye was this part of their reply:

I can’t see a lot of bloggers being happy with losing Pagerank so we should see an exodus of bloggers out of PayPerPost (particularly ones with traffic) over the next few months. This will leave PayPerPost with inventory deficiencies that will result in diminished revenues making the PayPerPost business model unsustainable going forward.

 So what should the average blogger do?

If you read my post on the previous Google PR update, you’ll see that I’m a big fan of marching to your own drum rather than following Google’s because you’re afraid to lose PR.  Doing so has yielded positive results for some bloggers, like that guy who made $1500 out of the last PR update.

Don’t move out of PayPerPost immediately.  That is, if it’s been working well for you.  Some scared bloggers might move out, and if the number of advertisers doesn’t drop, you’ll have less to compete with. Wait it out a little, unless Google PR is something incredibly valuable to you.

Alternatively, you can sell paid posts (or links, for that matter) independently.  You don’t have to be part of a network like PayPerPost to do that.  The disadvantage is that you won’t be easily accessible to advertisers as you would be in the PayPerPost (or any advertising) network.  This means more work for you, especially if you’re going to be sneaky about it.

Instead of Google PageRank, use alternative statistics to measure the worth of your blog to advertisers.  There are other ways you can show this, like disclosing unique pageviews, RSS subscribers, etc.  Some people use figures from Alexa, but doing so is as accurate as a monkey counting bananas with a calculator.  Izea is coming up with RealRank, which should be interesting because the formulae, etc. will be disclosed publicly.

John Chow also wrote a post about how to sell links in a Nazi Google controlled internet.  Something you should check out, especially if you use Text Link Ads.

Any PayPerPost users among our readers?  What do you have to say about this issue?

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In my previous post, I talked about the “What now?” aspect of the most recent Google PR update. Many popular bloggers ended up on the losing end.

If there were losers, there were also winners. And I’m not talking about Google.

An anonymous Problogger reader earned at least $1500 because of the PR update. (Click here for more details)

Basically, it’s the laws of supply and demand coming into play. Most of the blogs were scared off by the result of the PR update and stopped selling text link ads altogether, but the number of people who want to buy these ads are still relatively the same. Here’s a quote from the guy’s email:

1. About 50% of the blogs in my niche that used to sell text links have stopped doing so.
2. I’ve had about a 50% increase in demand for text link purchases in the last week.
3. I have had an increase in the number of private text link sales this week.
4. The amounts advertisers are willing to pay me have gone up.

See? Sometimes, not bowing to the big G pays off

Since Google just picked the top earners or the most popular blogs selling text links, the guys directly beneath them, those with roughly the same PR, but maybe not as much popularity or clout, are going to benefit big time – if they take the chance.

Of course, it’s going to turn into some kind of vicious cycle if Google decides to strike again. The new “Big Players” will be punished, some small fry will be scared, and others will benefit from the big guys taking the heat. Then, text link ads will be mostly sold underground and will be a market that Google can’t measure or control.

Any readers out there who was on the winning end of this PR update? Feel free to share your stories, please

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