Sunday, February 12, 2006
Publicise your blog - 2 hyperlinks.
The quality and quantity of hyperlinks that point to your blog from other blogs or websites are important factors that search engines use to rank your blog. The exact formulas they use to calculate rankings are their secrets, but many of the factors that go into the search engine rankings are known.
PageRank and Link Text determine the quality of an incoming hyperlink.
A. Google PageRank.
PageRank is Google's system for evaluating the quality of webpages based largely on the quality and quantity of hyperlinks that point to the pages.
Other blogs and websites earn their PageRank by the number of incoming hyperlinks pointing to them. Then when sites make hyperlinks to your blog you get more rank benefit from links on pages that have earned high ranks. One incoming link from a high ranking webpage counts more than multiple links from lower ranking webpages.
The best way to learn the PageRank of the webpages you visit is to install the Google Toolbar add-on for your web browser software. Then the PageRank of every blog or webpage that you visit will display in the toolbar.
PageRank is only part of the system that Google uses to determine where your blog will rank in its search engine results. Google is currently the biggest and most powerful search engine, so many of the smaller search engines follow Google's lead. Thus, even though PageRank doesn't tell the entire story, optimizing your PageRank is worthwhile if you care about earning higher rankings for your blog.
B. Link Text.
Link text is the text that people click on to activate a hyperlink (often blue text with blue underline)(on this blog hyperlinks are orange text with orange underline). Incoming hyperlinks are more valuable to your blog's ranking if the link text contains some of the keywords that describe the content of your blog. Thus, "joe's blog" is poor link text, "joe's whitewater blog" may be better link text, and "joe's whitewater river kayaking adventures" might be the best link text.
Get more incoming links for your blog.
C. Link Quantity.
Incoming links from websites related to the topic of your blog are what you need. The more the better!! How do you get these incoming links? Register your blog with online directories and search engines. Ask all of your friends to make a link to your blog on their blogs or websites.
D. Your Comments on Another Blog or Forum.
Bloggers have a unique opportunity to create links back to their own blogs when they make comments on another blog, forum or discussion board. Make sure that your comments contain a good keyword-rich link back to your own blog. Links from highly ranked sites are worth more to the ranking of your blog than links made on a low ranking site.
Other posts in this series:
Publicise your blog - 1 keywords.
Publicise your whitewater blog - 3 register in online directories.
(keywords: link, hyperlink, link text, blog, web log, forum, discussion board)
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