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Optimizing your blog for fun and profit can be a daunting task. There are secret tricks of the trade that separate newbies from techies but that does not mean you cannot do some of it yourself. This article is one of a series that lifts the curtain on this shadowland of optimization. In Part 2 of this series, we talked about how getting high quality links from authoritative websites in your field can boost your search engine rankings. This time, we're going to explore further into linking strategies and how to determine and obtain "high quality" links. We're also going to talk briefly about Google's PageRank system. First, let's examine a regular link. It's a piece of text. It can also be an image that links to your blog but, for our example, we are using text. Some of the factors that matter most are: 1) The address which it links to 2) The text of the link 3) The PageRank of the page on which the link resides Let's analyze this information one by one. You naturally want the link to link to your blog but to which page of your blog? Do you want to link to an individual post or to your blog home page? Since your blog is a constantly updated website, it is always wise to point to your main page instead of individual posts because individual posts tend to be very time-sensitive. One of my blogs, on News and Commentary, is a good example of this. Usually posts are outdated within hours or days of posting. The text of the link also affects your rankings for a certain keyword. Let's say your blog is about "technological gadgets" and another site has a link that says "Miss USA Pageant" and links to your blog. Doesn't make much sense, right? You want a lot of links to your site that contain the terms "technological" or "gadget" to greatly boost your rankings for those keywords. You see, the links from other similar sites with your keywords is what the search engines read. The more accurate the keywords of the sites linking to you, the better you will rank in the search engines. Hence, it is essential to put some thought to requesting links from other webmasters as you want them to link to your blog with appropriate keywords. Now, about Google's PageRank. It's basically a scale set by Google to measure the popularity of websites. You can read more about it on Google.com/technology/. It is claimed that the higher the PageRank of a certain website, the more frequent Google's robots will visit the website to index it. It is also claimed that the PageRank of a page will also help it to rank higher in Google's search engine results. In short, having a high PageRank might bring you many benefits. Now, there is much debate among webmasters about PageRank. Some webmasters say it really doesn't make that much difference. They are half right. Page Rank, in itself, is not the key to worry about. The actual power of search engines to affect your blog's visibility is in the keywords of your blog. When people do a search, using your keywords, you will automatically get a high PageRank if your keyword combination is unique and a low-competition keyword or phrase. Remember this: Page Rank is only a side effect of our real goal which is to get people onto your blog. People do not search according to Page Rank they search with keywords they type into the search box. If your keywords are poorly thought out you will not rank at all. Your blog will start with no PageRank at all if Google has not indexed your blog. Once Google's robots find your blog, through links on other sites, your blog will start with a PageRank of 0 (zero) then, depending on the PageRank (keywords) of the referring page, your blog PageRank will also rise. The referring page is the website/blog that is linking back to your blog. Google will find your link on their page and follow it back to your blog. Simple, eh? Getting high-quality links to your blog will help direct targeted visitors to your blog, who are interested in your niche, thus enabling search engines to find and index your blog and ultimately rank you higher in search engine results. Yours for success in life. Jim DeSantis P.S. - Please forward this article to someone who can use it. ____________________________________________________ Jim DeSantis is a 15 year broadcast News veteran. For all Parts of this 6 Part Series and lots of Free Resources go to Jim's blog at http://on-line-tribune-you-can-blog-too.blogspot.com
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