Tees In A Pod: Search Engine Optimization

Showing posts with label Search Engine Optimization. Show all posts

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Finding high page rank sites for backlinks

For SEO you need backlinks to your blog if you want to increase in the serps (search engine ranking positions) There are many ways to build backlinks to your blog, website, or online store. One of my favorite is by blog commenting on high page rank sites. Preferably you can find high page rank blog sites that are in your niche as the search engines reward those that build links related to their niche. However sometimes building backlinks in your niche can be a tough go as your niche may not have that many high page ranking blogs in your niche. Why should you target blogs that have high page rank? First lets talk about what page rank is. Page rank is a ranking composed by google ranking the importance of any website. Google gives a ranking of 0 to 10 with 10 being the most important. Google is the only site with a ten ranking. A site is deemed important by the number of backlinks or the amount of time someone linked to that particular site. Also a major factor is the type of site linking to the particular site. If your site gets a link from a page rank 7 site instead of a page rank 3 site the page rank seven site backlink is weighted higher in the serps than the page 3 backlink.

So how do we get the backlinks from the high page ranking sites? Well simply performing a google search can open up a world of high page ranking sites that actually want you to comment on your website. One thing to make sure to search for is blogs that are do follow. Rob wrote a piece called Follow the Linker explaining why do follow backlinks are the way to go because when you build the link googlebot follows the link and counts it for your website. If a website is no follow googlebot does not follow or count the link. Let's search for something in google that has do follow blog and high page rank in the search. How about high page rank do follow blogs as a search? As you can see when you perform this search one of the top results is 7 High Page Rank blogs that Do Follow. Click on it and try to see if some of the blogs shared still allow comments. If they do read the actual post and click on the area where it says comments. At the bottom you should be able to leave your name, email, and website. When you comment make a comment relating to the topic of the blog to show that you actually read the post. People that have blogs such as this know that many people are going to be just trying to promote their own websites but they don't really care as long as the person leaving the comment took the time to read their post. I would maybe mention two things in the post to comment on or discuss.

After you have commented on one high page rank do follow blog its so easy to find others. You can scroll through all the other links that you found on google for high page rank do follow blogs or start a new search. For a new search you can try do follow blogs with high page rank. You can also try to find high page rank blogs in your niche. For example if your niche is merchandise you might want to search "merchandise powered by wordpress" since most bloggers use wordpress. This should bring up a list of people that have wordpress blogs that talk about merchandise. Just using google search should enable a hard working searcher to find and endless supply of high ranking do follow backlinks for their blog, website, or store.

Written by Timothy Fox, Soge Shirts funny t shirts

Thursday, July 15, 2010

What Does SMO and SEO Really Mean ?

Online business owners are always looking to expand their business' growth, online presence, and profitability, but it can be difficult to do. In knowing how to optimize your website can help bring awareness to your business, while improving your business' online reputation. Knowing the difference between Social Media Optimization (SMO) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps in understanding how to make them work for your business. The ultimate question we all have been asking ourselves is, "What are SMO and SEO?"

Social Media Optimization (SMO)
There are many businesses who are improving their website's SMO without even knowing it. Today, many businesses are incorporating social media sites into the way they do business online. In knowing what Social Media Optimization really means and how your business can benefit from it, may change the way your business uses their social media sites.

What does Social Media Optimization mean?
Businesses who use media outlets found within social media sites, with the intent to bring unique visitors to their website's content, are boosting their sites Social Media Optimization. In other words, when businesses use photo sharing, social bookmarking, videos, and blogging as a part of their business' promotion on social media sites, Social Media Optimization is occurring. The main focus of SMO is to drive visitors to your website from places online, other than from search engines.

There are two main ways in which to improve your sites Social Media Optimization (SMO):

1. Social Media Features: When adding social media features to website content via RSS feeds, sharing buttons, polls, ratings etc. and also including the use of hosting sites for videos and photos, also known as third-party communities, helps in building your businesses Social Media Optimization.

2. Social Media Promotional Activities: Occurs when businesses are doing social media activities on social media sites, as a way to promote their website without promoting a specific product. When businesses blog, comment on other blogs, join in on group discussions, and update statuses on social media sites, they are also raising their website's SMO.

Social Media Optimization is a method used as a part of viral marketing, but instead of "word of mouth" by family and friends, it is done through various activities on networking sites such as, commenting on forums, photo sharing, videos, blogging etc. SMO is looked at as a major factor in gaining an online presence and is an important part of protecting and managing your sites reputation via search engine queries.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
Unlike Social Media Optimization, where you use social media sites to bring traffic to your website, SEO or Search Engine Optimization, focuses more on driving traffic to your website via Search Engines.

What does Search Engine Optimization Mean?
SEO is to increase the amount of traffic and the quality of visitors to your site by using un-paid or "natural" search results, within search engines. The key, is to have your website rank high within search engines, for the higher your site is on Google, Yahoo, etc. the more chances your site's traffic will increase.

Ways to improve your sites Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
Your websites content is crawled by search engine spiders on a regular basis for the purpose of indexing and ranking your site within search engines. There are many ways to improve your sites content which will in turn, improve your site's SEO. The better your website's content and coding, the better your site will be ranked. Here are two ways to increase your websites SEO, On-site and Off-site Optimization.
1. On-Site Optimization: Is when the information/content on your websites page (that visitors see) and the coding that occurs behind the scenes (that visitors do not see) are correctly done to meet search engine standards. In other words, if your website is coded properly and the content is filled with quality content, then your sites SEO should be good. In knowing how to properly use website coding can affect how your site will be ranked by search engines (Ex: html, CSS, etc.). In understanding what your website's content needs, for search engines to qualify it as quality content, is also very important in increasing your sites Search Engine Optimization (Ex: Site titles, keywords, descriptions, etc.).
For examples of how to improve your sites On-site Search Engine Optimization, visit the Tees In A Pod Blog Post 6 On-site SEO Tips You Can Use To day To Improve Rank!

2. Off-Site Optimization: Is when good quality backlinks are created on other sites that point towards your website. The more backlinks your website or page has, the more popular it is looked at by search engines. Keep in mind that page rank also factors into the importance of a website and that the number of backlinks a website has, helps search engines determine it's ranking. With that said, it is not just the number of backlinks that count towards how search engines rank your website, it is also determined by the quality of those links as well.

The best quality backlinks are called, "Anchor Text Backlinks", which are also known as hyperlinks or links that are created using HTML. These links use clickable text to drive traffic to your website.

Example: Tees In A Pod Facebook Page (This Text is clickable and is actually directing people to the Tees In A Pod's page on Facebook.)

How to create an Anchor Text Backlink?

***NOTE: Click above to get a larger view and then hit your browser's back button to return to post**

Anchor Text Backlinks should be placed on high ranking pages or sites that are related to your website. They are most beneficial to your site, when you use keywords you want ranked by search engines in the links "Title" and are relevant to the landing page. These type of links should remain below 60 characters.

Poor/Bad Quality Backlinks
When your website's link(s) are left on sites, pages or directories that have no real value to your website, they become bad quality backlinks. These links will lower your websites SEO and could possibly get your site banned by search engines, so be very selective in where your website's links are placed.

In integrating Social Media Optimization and Search Engine Optimization into how your business creates, promotes, and sustains it's website, will inevitably improve your sites ranking, reputation, and online presence. Get to know SMO AND SEO and watch your online business, continue to grow!

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Written By: Amanda Ryan, Creature Creations, Personalized Photo Gifts