All Entries in the "Blog Link Strategy" Category
Does Your Blog Ghostwriter Spam?
While Blog Content Provider paved the way into business blog ghostwriting, there are other services up and coming. We welcome them. It keeps us on our toes. But we’ve also noticed that most of these companies charge more than we do. Recently, a competitor engaged in a spam tactic that I think you all should know about.
Trackbacking is a legitimate practice that involves linking to another blog and the post from which you link appears as a comment on that other blog. Examples of this practice abound. But there are ways to game trackbacking and scam unsuspecting bloggers into approving an illegitimate trackback that is nothing more than spam.
It happened this way for us: On our Mortgage and Real Estate Blog I recently found a trackback that needed an admin approval (I highly recommend that you set your blog settings to require approval before all comments go live). You should also visit every site by a commenter or trackbacker to ensure the site is good. If the site itself doesn’t meet your approval then don’t approve the comment or trackback. I always do this.
When I visited the trackbacking site by clicking on the URL provided, I perused the blog post of the company feigning a legitimate trackback. The problem was that there was no link in the blog post leading back to our blog. In other words, they programmed their blog software to make it appear as if they were trackbacking to our blog, but the link wasn’t there. It was hidden. That way, the search engines see it, but human visitors do not, cutting off all traffic from their blog to ours. If I’d approved the trackback then the relationship between their blog and ours would have been one sided. They would have benefited from our traffic, but we would not have benefited from theirs.
This is called cloaking. It’s a practice that all of the search engines frown upon. It’s also a widespread practice by devious webmasters who try to gain an advantage in ways that are unfair. If your blogging company engages in this practice then I highly recommend that you drop them immediately and use a company that engages in legitimate and search engine approved tactics.
This trackbacker operating under the veneer of legitimate practices was a blog ghostwriting competitor trying to target real estate agents with their services. Beware of these types of spamming operations. They will hurt your business more than help it.
BrowseRank Would Discriminate Against Blogs
Chris McElroy made a plug for BrowseRank on yesterday’s SEO Service Provider blog. Like many people in the search business, I believe that search is ready for a major innovation, but I’m not altogether sure that BrowseRank is the answer. At least, not the complete answer.
In the early days, before the Web went commercial, web pages were ranked according to how many academics thought the page was important. It made sense to do it this way because the Internet was largely a research tool for universities and the military-industrial complex. Since the majority of users were academics, more weight was placed on what academics considered weighty or important.
The second wave of what search engines considered trustworthy came when Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page invented BackRub, a tool that analyzed backlinks and use that information to rank web pages. This was a huge innovation. It was based on the previous incarnation mentioned above, but expanded on that to include links from non-academic websites. Shortly after, the Web was Google-ized and that algorithmic innovation became the norm for most search engines. New innovations that have been tried since then have tried to counter the importance of backlinks, but those innovations – every one of them – have failed to catch on popularly.
The State Of Search Today
The problem today is that many webmasters have learned to manipulate search results through uncanny backlink practices. Plus, the more-than-10-year-old algorithmic interpretation of results has made the Web a bit of a wild west due to an unprecedented increase in the number of web pages to be ranked, and a huge volume of link data to analyze, as well as a wide variety of types of websites and intent with regard to user interaction. Google’s algorithms tend to favor older sites with a lot of backlinks. That’s a problem because many newer sites are worthy of trust and recognition, but there is something to be said for longevity. So where is the balance?
The answer is, there isn’t any. Blogs and other temporal information can achieve high rankings on a short-term basis, but to achieve long-term success you’ll need to optimize your blog completely, not just each individual post. Still, there is a huge difference between the nature of a blog and the nature of a static website. So too there are huge differences between the nature of social sites like Facebook and MySpace and sites like Amazon and eBay where users may just show up, make a purchase, and leave.
Why BrowseRank Will Hurt Blogs
On the surface, BrowseRank seems like a good idea. The problem is it will tilt the weight of trust and reliability to sites where users are encouraged to remain for a long time. That doesn’t include blogs.
It is a statistical conclusion that blog readers typically read one post then they are gone. The bounce rate for blogs is very high. Many social bookmarking sites have the same problem as many bookmarkers will show up just to submit a story then leave. That this wasn’t the original purpose for bookmarking sites is irrelevant. The point is, that’s what users do. Should the sites be penalized because users don’t stick around long enough to make them more credible and “trustworthy”?
This phenomenon, of course, wouldn’t apply to Facebook or MySpace since users of those sites tend to stick around longer and use the tools available – creating applications, making friends, approving friends requests, etc. But what about auction sites and consumer sites where users just show up and buy something then leave? With BrowseRank, those sites might penalized and consumer review sites could end up ranking higher than consumer purchase sites for the same search term. Consumer blog sites would fall to the bottom.
While PageRank has its problems, I can see that BrowseRank will also have its issues. Those issues include, but are not limited to, favoritism of one type of site over another, the ease of gaming the results, and lack of human analysis since algorithms will do most of the work. Those are the same issues we have now with PageRank, but the difference will be that the problems will tilt the balance of favor from one type of site to another. Instead of older sites being favored as with PageRank, sites with lower bounce rates would be favored, but a low bounce rate is not always a bad thing.
Is There A Middle Ground Between
PageRank And BrowseRank?
I favor a combination of backlink analysis with on-site user behavior analysis. I do not necessarily mean the length of time that users remain on a site. There are other factors that are important for judging user behavior. For instance, do users tend to click internal site links or site exit links such as AdSense and display ads? If an algorithm favored the former then that might kill all those Made For AdSense sites that showcase useless keyword-stuffed content. On the other hand, it would also kill legitimate sites where the owners did a poor job of optimizing the content to encourage users to stick around longer instead of clicking the sidebar AdSense ads. That might be a good way to encourage better content.
What it necessary, I think, is a way to analyze the intended nature of a site and give weight to factors that are important to that nature. For instance, what is important for a successful blog is completely different than what is important for a successful static website. Perhaps one could be judged by the number of backlinks while the other is judged by the length of time users remain on the site. But if that static website is a consumer site where users are likely to show up and buy something then leave then perhaps it would be judged by another set of criteria entirely. This is somewhat what Google already does. Since Google analyzes over 150 search factors for any website on any given day, there is always a chance that a particular site is judged by what it does successfully AND by what it does half-heartedly or not successfully at all. It is the aggregate of the algorithmic analysis that is important, not the specific criteria.
I think we can all give kudos to MSN for attempting to take search in a new direction. MSN is certainly in a better position to challenge Google’s dominance than a new startup. The problem is that BrowseRank, in it’s current form, is incomplete. MSN could be on the right track, but before they commit to BrowseRank, they’ll need to put more thought into the nature of websites and the purpose for interaction in the first place.
How To Increase Your Clicks On Your AdSense Ads
A lot of people have high hopes for their AdSense blogs. Too high, actually. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make money on AdSense with your blog. I have one blog that only gets about 1/10th the clicks as other properties I own, but the income is double. How is that, you say?
No. 1, you have to choose a keyword niche that is profitable. Do your research. Find out what topics are clicked on the most and what keywords offer the highest payouts on AdSense.
But there is one other thing that you can do to increase your AdSense blog’s ROI and click through rate, no matter what the payout is on the clicks. This one thing can increase your CTR by 100%. It’s just a simple tweak and all you have to do is make this one change to your template’s CSS or php file and you’re in business.
What’s the tweak? The color of your in-text links. I’m not talking about your AdSense links. I’m assuming you know how to optimize your AdSense ads. I’m talking about your blog post links. If you don’t use links in your blog posts, that’s even better. Why tempt your readers to click a link that won’t make you money? But what if you do use links in your blog? Make sure those links don’t show up in blue like normal links. That will tempt people to click those links and they won’t click your ads. Instead, change your CSS file to make links appear the same color as your other text. That will make internal post links indistinguishable from surrounding text and you’ll get more clicks on your AdSense ads.
See, I Told You So
Everyone needs validation, right? Well, ghostwriter Crystal Smith recently gave me mine. She said the same thing that I’ve been saying for a couple of years now, since I started writing online. And it’s almost word for word. Here are a few snippets of brilliance from Crystal’s article on blogging and article writing:
Firms that specialize in online marketing will tell you that search engine ranking is of critical importance. To compete in your industry you need to rank well on Google and, to a lesser extent, on Yahoo and MSN.
OK, so it’s not genius level. It’s a repeat of what you’ve heard a million times. It never hurts to hear it again, does it? The fact is, search engine rankings are the most important measurements of online success and have the potential to drive your business to the highest levels of achievement. It’s getting there that is the battle.
There are two keys to ranking high – optimized content and link popularity.
Once again, two things that drive your rankings. Need I repeat them? Sure: optimized content and link popularity.
The main factors involved in optimizing content are keyword relevance and volume. Keywords are the terms used by people searching the Web. If your site is particularly relevant to the keyword term, it has a better chance of ranking well in the search engine results.
Keywords are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, if you mismanage them you could get a reputation as a spammer. On the other, you’ll be limp and ineffective. Proficient optimization requires the proper use of keywords throughout your content such that your writing appears natural but has the effect of feeding search engine spiders with the necessary food to elevate your web pages in the rankings.
To gauge whether your site is relevant to a keyword term, search engines need to see a lot of content. Pages should be between 400 and 500 words long.
There is no optimal length for web pages or blog posts, but you don’t want them too small. Anything less than 400 words in today’s competitive market is too small. Feed the spiders!
You should have a page for each keyword term you want to rank for, and the keyword phrase should appear about 2% of the time on that page. But you have to avoid spamming, that is, having the keyword just appear for no apparent reason. Keywords have to be used in context.
One aspect of optimization that many inexperienced Web writers miss is the semantic language aspect. Search engines now have the ability to analyze your content and make judgments about it regarding context. Synonyms and synonymous phrases can work wonders. It makes your content look natural and less contrived. Filling your content with keywords just to rank higher will likely not achieve the goal. I do believe in optimal keyword densities, but I would not go less than 2% on any page. Going higher depends on your content, the level of competition, the specific keyword phrase you are targeting, and your ability as a writer to achieve the necessary results.
The best way to manage the keyword ratio is to write well. Don’t just try to fill space.
Didn’t I just say that?
If there are lots of links pointing to your site, you are seen as an expert in your chosen field. As people figure out the tricks of keyword optimization, inbound links are becoming increasingly important to good search engine rankings.
People don’t realize it, but all you have to do is write good content and you’ll be linked to. If you don’t have other bloggers within your niche linking to your blog after three months then you are probably not writing good enough content.
Content for this blog post was taken from an article by Crystal Smith: Crystal Smith is a professional writer who specializes in search-engine-optimized Web site copy, article writing and blog posts. Writing samples and more information are available at http://www.tigerlilymedia.ca
Want to know more about blog optimization techniques and how to use your blog as a pre-sales tool with SEO benefits? Contact Blog Content Provider today.
