Blog Optimization For Profit - Part 3

By Author: Jim DeSantis
Total Articles: 103
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Optimizing your blog or website to attract visitors and maybe make some money can be a mind boggling experience if you are a newbie. That's because the tech-talk is over your head. Well, this series will make more sense to you.

In Part 2 of this series, we talked about how getting high quality links from authoritative websites in your field can boost your search engine rankings. Check my Author Box if you missed the first two parts. You need to check them out.

This time, we are going to explore further into linking strategies and how to determine and obtain "high quality" links. We are also going to briefly explain the much promoted PageRank system used by the major Search Engines.

First, examine a regular link. A link is nothing more than a piece of text. It is what appears in your address bar at the top of the browser you are using right now. It can also be an image that links to your blog but, for our example, we are using text.

Some of the factors that matter most are:

1) The website location which the link takes you to.

2) The actual text of the link. What does ...
... the link tell the Search Engines?

3) The PageRank of the page on which the link takes a Search Engine to.

For learning purposes you need to understand this information.

You naturally want the link to take the Search Engines to your blog but to which page of your blog? Do you want to link to an individual post or to your blog home page?

Since your blog should be a constantly updated website, it is always wise to point to your main page instead of individual posts because individual posts tend to be very time-sensitive.

One of my blogs, on News and Commentary, is a good example of this. Usually posts are outdated within hours or days of posting. The Search Engines will still list some of your posts based on the keywords. Remember Part 2 of this series? If you have not read the earlier parts of this series, click the link in the Author Box below.

The text of the link also affects your rankings for a certain keyword.

Continuing with our example from Parts 1 and 2 of this series, your blog is about "technological gadgets". Suppose there is another site that has a home page link that says "Miss USA Pageant" in it and on their site is a link back to your blog. This would not make much sense, right? You only want links to your site that contain the terms "technological" or "gadget" to greatly boost your rankings for those keywords. You see, links from other similar sites with your keywords is what the search engines read. The more accurate the keywords of the sites linking to you, the better you will rank in the search engines. Hence, it is essential to put some thought to requesting links from other web masters as you want them to link to your blog with appropriate keywords.

Now, about PageRank. We will use Google as an example. Page Rank (or PR) is basically a scale set by Google to measure the popularity of websites.

It is claimed that the higher the PageRank of a certain website, the more frequent the Search Engine robots will visit the website to index it. It is also claimed that the PageRank of a page will also help it to rank higher in search engine results. In short, having a high PageRank might bring you many benefits if you can get to the top.

Now, there is much debate among web masters about PageRank. Some web masters say it really does not make much difference. They are half right. Page Rank, in itself, is not the key. The actual power of search engines to affect your blog's visibility is in the keywords of your blog.

When people do a search, using your keywords, you will automatically get a high PageRank if your keyword combination is unique, a low-competition keyword or phrase, and matches what the surfer types into the Search Engine box.

In other words, targeting keywords is more important because your site will automatically go onto the first page the surfer sees if the keywords match what they are looking for. Again, see Parts 1 and 2 of this series.

Remember this: Page Rank is only a side effect of our real goal which is to get people onto your blog. People do not search according to Page Rank they search with keywords they type into the search box. If your keywords are poorly thought out you will not rank at all.

For example, search any keywords you like. What do you get? You get the top ranked web sites with those keywords in the title and/or description of their sites. It is called niche marketing. You can find people looking for every topic, by keywords, on the Web. When you have the information they are seeking you will be on the first or second page of search engine results.

Your new blog will start out with no PageRank at all. Once the search engine robots find your blog, through links on other sites, or through articles you post in Article Directories (see Part 4 of this series), your blog will start gaining PageRank. Then, depending on the PageRank (keywords) of the referring page, your blog PageRank will climb even more. The referring page is the website/blog that is linking back to your blog. Search engines will find your link on their referring page and follow it back to your blog. Simple, eh?

Getting high-quality links to your blog will help direct targeted visitors to your blog, who are interested in your niche, thus enabling Search Engines to find and index your blog and ultimately rank you higher in search engine results.

They call them keywords for good reason!

Yours for success in life.

Jim DeSantis

P.S. - Please forward this article to someone who can use it.
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Jim DeSantis is a 15 year broadcast News veteran. Get all 6 parts of this Free series and more Self Help Resources to create traffic to your website or blog at Jim's Blog here!