All Entries Tagged With: "link popularity"
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.
Social Bookmarking Benefits: Is It All About Link Value?
Blog Marketing Journal wrote a great blog post about social bookmarking sites that use do follow links instead of no follow. At the risk of spoiling it for you, I’d like to let the cat out of the bag:
- Furl
- Digg
- Propeller
- Technorati
- Slashdot
I can vouch for these, but I’d also like to say that social bookmarking is not necessarily about the links. At least, not the links that you can get from the social bookmarking site.
Link popularity is one of the most important measurements that you can make as a website owner. Link popularity is defined as the aggregate number of inbound links your website has pointing to it as reported by the various search engines. Most link popularity reports focus on the Big Three: Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. Although MSN, for the last year, has been unreliable and may report its links, or not, from one month to the next. That leaves us with Google and Yahoo!
Yahoo! is much more liberal in its link reporting policy than Google is. In many ways, Google, the primary motivator in the development of link popularity as a website metric, has clamped down on inbound link credits in recent years. Google is very concerned with link quality whereas Yahoo! seems to be much more concerned about link relevance – the actual relationship in topical value between a linking website and its link partner.
When checking link popularity, you take what each of the search engines report for your inbound links and add them together. So if Yahoo! reports that you have 4,531 inbound links and Google reports 123 – a disparity that is not at all uncommon – then your link popularity will be 4,531 + 123, or 4,654. A website with at least 5,000 inbound links is just starting to gain some link notoriety. A website with at least 20,000 inbound links is well on its way to becoming a powerhouse and a noteworthy authority in its niche. That’s how important link popularity is.
Social Bookmarking’s Real Value
Social bookmarking has the potential to help you increase your link popularity. If you focused entirely on the sites that gave you link value for your inbound links then you’d only bookmark your website or blog posts at five social bookmarking sites, but that would be a huge error. I repeat, that would be an outstanding miscalculation on the scale of Coca Cola changing its formula.
The real value of social bookmarking comes in getting your bookmarked items noticed by a community of interested persons who like your content. One bookmark at a well trafficked website like Digg or Propeller – or even StumbleUpon or del.icio.us, both very popular sites that do not give you any direct link value – can boost your link popularity by thousands of links within a single month. The way that happens is by making your content popular enough that people share it with their friends. Each person that visits your website or blog is a potential blogger. Every blogger that likes your content enough not only to bookmark it but also to write about it on his or her own blog becomes a one-way link partner for you and assists you in developing your link popularity.
I had an article on my poetry website last month, for instance, that drew more than 2,000 visitors. Before that, my daily traffic count was in the 40-50 range. But I had one blog post, bookmarked at StumbleUpon, that drew thousands of visitors because of its topical subject matter. That one blog post subsequently attracted hundreds of inbound links from other poetry bloggers who linked to my blog post, giving me additional link popularity. Seeing as how there are only a couple of thousand poetry bloggers, that’s not a bad run for one blog post. Now multiply that by hundreds of blog posts over the course of a year or two.
Of course, not every blog post can be that popular. But one very popular blog post in the midst of hundreds of blog posts with average or moderate link and traffic attention can give you a huge edge over the competition.
Social bookmarking is the new article marketing. Article marketing has long been a great way to develop inbound links and gain new traffic to a website. Social bookmarking offers the same benefits on a much bigger, grander scale. It’s article marketing on viagra. You can get more links faster and watch your link popularity soar! I’ve seen it and so have the clients who use our social bookmarking service for their blog content. If you try it, I know you’ll it too.
Contact us today for more information on social bookmarking.
