Rahul’s SEO WEB CONSULTING|SEO Updates| Search Engine Marketing |Link Strategy

Social Bookmarking Traffic Results

Posted by: Rahul Gupta on: June 27, 2008

The results of the social bookmarking experiment I have been carrying out are materialising. There have been some surprising results and some results that have restored my faith in the browsing public. I have been pondering whether or not to release the results as I do not want the spammers to tarnish something that is still relatively pure. But as you can see I finally decided to go ahead and publish.

I have mentioned before that I have been looking at social bookmarking as a way to drive traffic to websites. The idea behind social bookmarking is that you share your favourite bookmarks with others, the idea being that if you found these links useful then others might too. Some social bookmarking sites also allow visitors to rate the usefulness of your bookmarks, this allows the truly useful bookmarks to become the most popular. So in theory spam should be removed by natural selection. To carry out my experiment I created three articles. Two of these articles were good well researched pieces, whilst the third was self promotional spam, but not too obvious. I posted these articles to twelve social bookmarking sites and then waited for the results. The results were to be measurable traffic to one of my sites.

It was a week ago I started posting the articles so I am still measuring the results but I am able to give you the results as they all point to one conclusion. That conclusion is that social bookmarking to generate traffic does work as long as you are providing genuine, useful, good quality material. If you post self promotional spam no one will read it and it will disappear into the ether where all spam belongs.

Of the twelve sites I posted to the best performing in terms of traffic was Digg. Over a period of several days my site received hundreds of visitors from the good articles and less than a handful for the spam article I posted. Of the other social bookmarking sites the traffic was minimal, even the famous del.icio.us only managed to send a dozen visitors which I was quite surprised at.

The results seem to conclude that Digg is the out and out performer followed a long way behind by del.icio.us and squik. As yet I have had no traffic from the others, that?s not to say that they are not worthwhile as some of the sites were very new. I am going to continue to experiment and will bring you more results as they come in.

Finally I would like to say a big thank you to the guys at Digg for producing such a great site. Not only for the traffic that it produces but for also providing lots of really useful bookmarks. My only criticism is the lack of categories which means that some suggestions are not always well matched although there is a search facility.

Allan is the webmaster at http://www.blogtonomy.com/ where I will show you how to gain traffic to your site.

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15 Link Exchange Tips

Posted by: Rahul Gupta on: June 23, 2008

Establishing inbound links through reciprocal link exchanges is a very effective promotional and advertising tool. If done correctly, building inbound links can improve your rankings in the search engines by raising your link popularity, increasing your website traffic, and providing a valuable resource for your website customers and visitors. Here are 15 link exchange tips to get you started:

1. Exchange links with websites that will bring you targeted traffic. Targeted traffic means visitors and/or customers that will be interested in your products or services.

2. Keep your link title brief and free of long sentences.

3. Try to keep your link description brief (aim for 200 characters or less).

4. Do not capitalize all letters in your link title or description.

5. Do not give the webmaster a deadline on when they should reciprocate. Webmasters are very busy people and it may take from 1 to 60 days or more. Be patient and in the long run you will receive more quality link partners!

6. Never remove a link partner from your site once they have agreed to exchange links with you and placed your link on their site.

7. Do not request link exchanges from sites that are unrelated to your website. For example, if you have a candle website, don’t exchange links with a pharmaceutical website. This will not benefit your customers or visitors and the search engines may penalize your website for this.

8. Let the webmaster know that you have indeed visited their site and explain to them why a reciprocal link exchange with your website would be beneficial.

9. Be sure that your link pages are search engine friendly. Link pages are easier indexed if they have no more than 25 links per page.

10. Complete your website before requesting reciprocal link exchanges. Most webmasters will not link to a site where most of the pages are “under construction”.

11. Do not give misleading information in your link exchange request. Most webmasters are not going to believe it and your request will most likely be ignored. For example, don’t claim that your site receives 100,000 unique visitors a day unless your site really receives that many.

12. It is best to categorize your link partners. For example, you might want to have a home and garden page, a home improvement page, a candles page, etc. This is a much better way or organizing your links for both your visitors and your link partners. If you just have one huge page of links in no order, most webmasters will not approve your link exchange request.

13. Make sure your links page is linked and visible from your home page.

14. If your site is family friendly, do not add link partners that offer services or products that are not family friendly.

15. Be aware of free-for-all link programs and link farms. These are sites that basically offer nothing but unrelated links and end up collecting and sharing your email address, which results in a lot of unwanted SPAM in your inbox.

The above tips are only a few suggestions on how to build a successful linking campaign. Most importantly, be patient and take your time to find quality link partners that will add a valuable resource and bring targeted traffic to your website.

Lesley Dietschy is a freelance writer and the creator/editor of The Home Decor Exchange and the Home & Garden Exchange. The Home Decor Exchange is a popular home and garden website featuring resources, articles, decorating pictures, free projects, a shopping marketplace, and more. The Home & Garden Exchange is a unique link exchange directory dedicated to home and garden websites. Please visit both websites for all of your home, garden, and website needs.

Reference by: http://www.HomeDecorExchange.com

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Using Google toolbar features to SEO

Posted by: Rahul Gupta on: June 20, 2008

Like many other useful toolbars out there so is the Google Toolbar. I consider this toolbar must have for any serious search engine optimizer and anyone who searches the internet on a regular basis.

The Google Toolbar has grown significantly in features since inception. It now features several new useful features but the main focus of this article is on those that aid in search engine optimization. So without further ado here’s the Google Toolbar unfolded.

PageRank
Upon installation of the full Google toolbar you will notice a small bar near the center of it that may or may not be partially filled with a green color as displayed in the diagram below.

This is the Google PageRank indicator. PageRank is one of Google’s ways of rating your website and plays a role in the position of your site in their search results. This value is calculated based on several variables including the PageRank value and the number of sites that link to that page. Sites with a higher page rank tend to have better rankings than other sites if all other things are kept equal. I have personally noticed a significant increase in the search engine placement of our Search Engine Optimization site whenever our Google pagerank is increased. The Google toolbar enable you to, at a glance, view the PageRank of your website as well as your competitors’ sites. This helps when looking for sites to engage in with link building as more links coming from sites with a higher PageRank than yours help to increase your site’s PageRank. It is also said that when looking for site to link to yours that you should aim for sites with a PR 4 or higher.

A side note
There are times when the Google Toolbar will display your website as having a PageRank of 0 or even no rank at all. If your site previously had a PR greater than 0 and you notice this, watch it for a while or close your browser and reopen it to check as there are times that this feature seems to be a bit buggy possibly due to updates etc at Google.

Cached Version
When Google spiders your site it records the latest version of your site that it has spidered and this can be viewed using the Google Toolbar by going to the Page Info button and selecting cached version. Your browser must be on the page you would like to see the cached version of at the time you choose to do this.

How can this help you with your SEO campaign?
If you have optimized your website in hopes of increasing your search engine results in Google, this will indicate whether or notGoogle has updated their database with the new version of your page. If the Googlebot visits your site regularly the cached version of your site will be updated more frequently than otherwise.

Backward Links
The Google Toolbar also has a pretty useful feature that displays all the web pages that link to your web page, which Google counts towards your PageRank. This information isn’t regularly updated and can’t be expected to take between 1 – 3 months before changes can be seen. Backlinks deal with quality and not quantity. A site with 1000 mediocre backlinks may not have as high a Page Rank as a site with 800 high PR backlinks.

Highlighting
You have the option of adding a highlight feature to your Google Toolbar that highlights all instances of your search term on the web page reached from your search. This can help you see how many times your competitors use specific keywords on their pages and you may modify your SEO campaign accordingly. You may also use this to check your own pages and see if you are or are not using enough of your target keywords on your page for optimum search engine placement.

Besides those features listed above there are also some other cool tools on the Google Toolbar such as:
Popup Blocker: This only works in IE 5.5 or later but is a great addition as we all know that there are many sites on the web that bombard you with popups. Some of these even go as far as almost preventing you from going anywhere else as more and more windows keep popping up. Annoyance factor 10/10.

Google Web Search: You can easily search the web using the Google Search Engine via the Google Toolbar by typing in your search terms in the search box area and then clicking enter or clicking the `Search Web’ button on the toolbar.

Translate: Easily translate sites into English that you may be interested in for one reason or another.

There are many more features available with the Google Toolbar.
Learn more and download it on the right hand sidebar bottom.

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How Search Engine and Spider Work ?

Posted by: Rahul Gupta on: June 20, 2008

Search engine spiders and robots are pieces of code or software that have only one aim – seek content on the internet and within each and every individual web page out there. These tools have a very important role in how effectively search engines operate.

Search engine spiders and robots visit websites and get the necessary information that it needs to determine the nature and content of the website and then adds the data to the search engine’s index. Search engine spiders and robots follow links from one website to another so that it can consistently and infinitely gather the necessary information. The ultimate goal of search engine spiders and robots is to compile a comprehensive and valuable database that can deliver the most relevant results to the search queries of visitors.

But how exactly do search engine spiders and robots work?

The whole process begins when a web page is sent to a search engine for submission. The submitted URL is added to the queue of websites that will be visited by the search engine spider. Submissions can be optional though because most spiders will be able to find the content in a web page if other websites link to the page. This is the reason why it is a good idea to build reciprocal links with other website. By enhancing the link popularity of your website and getting links from other sites that have the same topic as your website.

When the search engine spider robot visits the website, it checks if there is an existing robots.txt file. The file tells the robot which areas of the site are off limits to its probe – like certain directories that have no use for search engines. All search engine bots look for this text file so it is a good idea to put one even if it is blank.

The robots list and store all of the links found on a page and they follow each link to its destination website or page.

The robots then submit all of this information to the search engine, which in turn compiles the data received from all the bots and builds the search engine database. This part of the process already has the intervention of search engine engineers who write the algorithms employed in evaluating and scoring the information that the search engine bots compiled. The moment all of the information is added to the search engine database this information is already made available to search engine visitors who are making search queries in the search engine.

by: OTCSS

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