Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Podcasting is the new buzz of the internet. A Podcast is an mp3 or mp4 file of your post article that may or may not include video. Most of them are just audio files that you can listen to on the web or download for later listening.
Podcasting can [...]
We’ve talked about keywords, meta tags and alt tags and title tags in your posts and on your site, but there’s one more key to achieving SEO totality.
Of course, I’ve left the hardest for last. This one is going to take planning and forethought on your part because it’s key to achieving your goal — listing on page one of Google (or any search engine’s) search results page for your chosen keywords.
Ok, I know you’re chomping at the bit to know just what this last mountain you have to climb is. You’re ready to reach Mohamed, so let’s get on with it.
Back links.
I’ve recently read a couple of articles on back link strategies that involve commenting on “do follow” blogs (which this is one in case you don’t already know it). One is “Link Building With Comments on Dofollow Blogs” written by Layne at Reward Rebel in which she makes a couple of salient points that many of you don’t keep in the forefront of your minds when commenting. The one that’s most important in my mind is to leave them on blogs that are in your niche.
I can’t stress enough how important it is to have back links from sites that are RELEVANT to your subject and keywords. In other words, your “competition”! I’m almost scared to admit it, but leaving your comments here doesn’t do much for you in the way of relevance because this blog is so all over the place with keywords that I have no niche 
— be that as it may, I hope my admission hasn’t shot me in the foot and run all of you off. It would be awfully lonely in here without you!
Atniz has written a post on “How to Value Dofollow Back Links” that further illustrates this point. She’s taken quite a hard-line approach to finding relevant sites and working methodically to improve her positioning in the search results. And she’s getting there! She’s got a PR of 2 for her main page. Her posts aren’t ranked, though and I think that has to do with her permalink structure which is a point I should have covered before and didn’t (so sue me).
There is a tool you can use called Backlink Checker that will check the back links to your site and tell you what the page rank and Alexa rank of the sites that have them is. There are several other tools on that web page that you might find useful as well — a keyword suggestion tool, a text link value tool and a PR Checker. Here you can see my first 19 results. You can see that I don’t do such a great job of getting back links :/
Besides this list, it also produces this graph so you can tell at a glance how many of what ranking back links you have. If you’re into statistics about your blog, you’ll find this to be quite interesting.
Having quality inbound links to your site (back links) are one of the cornerstones of the site ranking algorithm that Google uses.
Another tool you may find useful is Google’s tool that finds all the sites that link to a page that doesn’t exist on your site. Why should you care about that? Well, because people who *MIGHT* just click that link are taken to a 404 page and you don’t get that visitor, PLUS the LINK DOESN’T COUNT. Asking the site owners to fix the link just might mean the difference between PR2 and PR3 at the next update.
So, here’s your homework. Read the articles I’ve given you — c’mon now, they’re both short so quit complaining! Now find the highest PR dofollow blog you can and leave a GREAT comment on it (no spammy one-liners allowed) — think about saying something with a couple of your keywords or a long-tail keyword included.
Do this every day for the next five days and let’s meet back here and compare notes…what do you say? Are you game? I’m double-dog darin’ ya.
ê¿ê
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=d5ac62da-8097-49d1-b26f-e669aae48ea0)
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Tags: Google, Google Search, Meta element, PageRank, Search, SEO, Web search engine
Post here
November 16th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Thanks for your comment. I agree with your point on permalink. I need to change it to post title name, instead of page number.
November 16th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
This one will take adjusting to.
I just like whizzing round and commenting where I am engaged and entertained enough to (like here). But I will give that ‘double dog dare’ thing a go - so long as I don’t have to kick the brute - I’ve *quite* learned my lesson there.
As an aside - I wonder will I ever get some PR back? I gave up by a PR4 on blogspot in favour of my shiny domain but no shift from zero yet - hey! can somebody please revisit me… or something?
Ken Armstrong´s last blog post..I Tawt I Thaw a Puddy Tat’s Owner
November 16th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Ken — I’m surprised at you! Whizzing on sites — how RUDE! Anyway, there’s no reason you should fundamentally change that aspect of your routine, because from what I’ve seen you routinely hit on those sites that are in your niche, so all you need to do is find some similar ones that have a higher PR and dofollow. That shouldn’t be too onerous and you might actually find some that become a favorite marking spot
Atniz — thanks for dropping by!
ê¿ê
November 18th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
I’m still miffed that my PR went from 4 to 3 for no discernable reason. Grrrr….
Okay, does the backlink checker work better when you actually add it to the site rather than using it remotely? Because that remote situation was one serious slow load, timing out three times before coughing up the results. Actually, when I click the link “add …. to website” it does a whole lot of nothing. But it was fun looking at my pathetic stats when my results did come up.
Okay, I’ll take the dare. The real challenge is going to be finding those elusive high-ranking do-follow blogs. (How can you tell if they do-follow?) Yeesh, I’m ignorant.
Carol´s last blog post..Dualing Talk-o’s
November 29th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Thanks so much for this and the links to more info on the PR weight. While getting comments onto sites whose home page might rank highly can be effective it sounds like what we really want is to leave comments on individual posts that rank highly. Don’t forget you have archives of posts to play with. Also, while sites that share niche are wonderful a link from a high ranked site outside your niche will offer some benefit also, especially if you find a way to connect the two niches!
@ Ken: I just wanted to add for you Ken, don’t forget to chase down those sites that are linking to your old blogger site. Your old site is stealing your juice so get those links updated when possible. Also, PR updates are sporadic and can be 3 months or so apart. Give it time.
Speaking of PR strangeness, updates, and lack thereof, why is it that sometimes when I load a page it’ll show a certain PR and then later revert back to normal? My PR3 blog was registering as PR6 for an hour this morning. I was having a heart attack and googling to find out if there had been an update or something before it went back to normal. Maybe it’s a bug in the toolbar.
Rebecca Laffar-Smith´s last blog post..Direction: Google Maps Can’t Help Me!