13 Mar 09 How Google Calculates Page Rank – Link Building Part 3

Some webmasters constantly debate, Page Rank is very important, some argue otherwise. For me, Page Rank is not my type of tea to brag about it. But yes, you can definitely make good income with higher Page Rank, that is no doubt about it. However, SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) are not directly related but relevant with PR although I personally believe higher PR has brought some unique traffic to the site.

How does Google calculate?

The truth is, there are many variables and terms. You can actually view Google’s technology overview here. So, let’s break down a little bit about Page Rank.

PR History: Larry Page started it, hence the Page Rank, LOL. The project started in 1995 and led to a functional prototype, named Google, in 1998. Shortly after, Page and Brin founded Google Inc., the company behind the Google search engine. While just one of many factors which determine the ranking of Google search results, PageRank continues to provide the basis for all of Google’s web search tools. (Reference: Google)

PR definition: PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”. (Reference directly from Google Inc.)

PR how it calculates: Google assigns a numeric weighting from 0-10 for each web page; Therefore,  PageRank denotes a site’s importance in the eyes of Google (of course, many search engines are more or less very similar actually). PageRank is derived from a theoretical probability value on a logarithmic scale. Here’s the graphical analysis of Page Rank.

“Mathematical PageRanks (out of 100) for a simple network (PageRanks reported by Google are rescaled logarithmically). Page C has a higher PageRank than Page E, even though it has fewer links to it: the link it has is much higher valued. A web surfer who chooses a random link on every page (but with 15% likelihood jumps to a random page on the whole web) is going to be on Page E for 8.1% of the time. (The 15% likelihood of jumping to an arbitrary page corresponds to a damping factor of 85%.) Without damping, all web surfers would eventually end up on Pages A, B, or C, and all other pages would have PageRank zero. Page A is assumed to link to all pages in the web, because it has no outgoing links.”

Above PageRank is directly quoted from Wiki so that I do not make mistakes with explanation and wanted to avoid plagiarism.

okay, The $$$ part.., the most important SEO ideas about PR are…

1. The page rank of the linking page, especially backlinks
2. Relevant linkage – if your site is about home loans and backlinks, outgoing and incoming links are about home loans, you get more votes.
3. Quality of incoming links connected at the website of outgoing links
4. The number and quality of outgoing links on the page – if you put one URL 1 million time on one page, it will not only discount as a spam, also count as no quality link.
5. Get different sources of traffic - such as organic search, direct visits, referral visits. To be honest, direct visits to sub-pages many times will help you rise in PR especially with social bookmarking sites such as digg, reddit, etc. Because the subpage will also contribute the rank of the domain (Overall PageRank).
6. Have more original and unique content so that you will have more page added to your domain consequently creating more votes to your internal linkage. (if you can follow timely manner, it is the best, for example, 1 new page every week or 1 new page a day).
7. Have less dangling links (no internal or outgoing links), in other words, dead end page.
8. Don’t worry about sub-directory, worry about correct internal links.
9. Submit free to article directories (of course high PR ones) and put the direct link to your website.
10. Exchange the link with higher PR sites

There you have excellent 10 tips to build up your PageRank for your SEO jobs, Others will charge you hundreds of dollars for these. If you do it yourself when you have some sparetime, it can be achieved. Please keep in mind that easy ways such as buying links, submitting to no-follow sites, submitting to most of the directories, or spamdexing (spamming on indexing) will not only discount your PageRank, but also have a chance of being penalized. So, do the right way, your PageRank will be up consistently whenever Google updates PR.

Tags: bookmark, digg, infomm, link building, pagerank, reddit, search engine, SERP, SERPs, social bookmarking, tools, unique content, webmaster, Website

11 Mar 09 Link Popularity – Link Building Part 2

Now, we need to consider what is the link popularity for your website(s). It’s imperative to know what are these, so that you will not get confused and the meaning do not become misconceptions.

Link popularity is basically the links pointing to your webpage/websites/domains. So, it is basically called backlinks (the links you received back). For example, I would recommend CNN.com on my website and when search engine bots/spiders crawl my page, they will also note that CNN.com will get one more backlinks from my site, confirming I trust this particular URL to be linked with. Link popularity also determines Page Rank for Google as well.

Like in mid 90s search engine world, it was pretty simple, the total backlinks will give you basically higher search results, but nowadays, all big three (Google, Yahoo!, MSN Live) are well-aware and well-constructed  conditions and variables to determine the link popularity in proper manners so that people who take advantages of buying links and submitting to directories compared to those who did not will be adjusted.

Speaking of  Link Popularity, you need to think about your link relevancy, because spiders will also calculate the relevancy of your website and the backlinks to certain level, for example, In this website, I talk about SEO, wordpress, search engines, blogging. Therefore, if I link to websites about SEO, wordpress, etc, those people who received backlinks from my website will get better Page Rank as well as high relevancy. (which is why I allow do-follow commenting on my site, which is massive advantages to those who leave comments on my site especially in same topics/niches.)

Nowadays, search engines do not rely on link popularity alone, however still play a huge role. So, if you have higher link popularity, you have to build quality backlinks which is what many people are seriously building for Google PR. The easiest way to build is to make people known about your website and do not worry so much about search engines’ spiders. Like I have mentioned before, you need to build for massive traffic and let search engine love you.

Tags: backlinks, infomm, link building, massive traffic, search engine, SEO, Website, wordpress

25 Feb 09 Advantages of do-follow Plugin for WordPress

Recently, I have installed do-follow enabled comment plugin on my sites and It works like a charm. As you may all have known wordpress and most of the blogs have disabled in default, however, if you can control your spam, there’s actually better way you can take control of do-follow links.

So, i installed this fantastic do-follow plugin for my wordpress and I have actually received more comments than before just in a few couple of days. That is awesome, isn’t it?

What are the advantages of do-follow?

Of course, there are bunch of advantages for do-follow sites, I will summarize for both myself and the rest of my visitors.

1. Default settings are always on a safe side. Once you enabled do-follow link there’s imminent threat of spamming. LOL, all you need to have a a couple of top rated spam filters such as Akismet and so on. On the bright side, it’s massive traffic. There’s always an opportunity cost for higher traffic, that comes with higher spams.

2. Repeating comments, there are two ways to follow up repeating comments, one to reply each visitor comment, and another one from visitor’s reply. Confused? Bottom line, your blog post may earn more than 2 comments from each entry because many people will comment you genuinely, on the other hand, if your visitors are clever enough, they make sure they write more than 1 comment at your blog, or reply to the same comment so that the search engine bots will read them more than once.

3. Don’t worry about PR/Alexa, they are alternative ways to benchmark your site, especially I don’t believe in Alexa ranking. I would trade more traffic than getting better PR/Alexa ranking. That’s the truth. Do-follow blogs are actually giving legit backlinks to your commentors, but don’t worry, you get heaps of traffic and your ranking will grow because It just does it.

4. Encouraging your readers to comment is best thing for bloggers. You allow backlinks, you encourage your readers that you are giving something back , rather than expecting something, that builds a great relationship to your readers as well.

5. By sharing about do-follow to those who do not know, you take control of knowledge that your visitors/readers do not know yet. It is a good opportunity your readers are bloggers and this will also help them to get backlinks which bloggers indeed love.  The more you can help a hand, the smarter you sound, don’t you?

6. Since I have carefully built my site around big search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN , ask.com , etc etc. I have very confident that every single page of mine is properly pinged and quickly indexed. Make sure you use sitemap xml and site verifications with Google, Yahoo! and MSN to get faster search engine updates. Easy Breezy method for organic search.

7. It creates a larger community. Why? Because you have no-follow blog before, now you enabled do-follow site, that’s where you have massive members and visitors to make a geniune comments and in return they get backlinks for their PR or more traffic, it’s a win-win situation and you also get to know your readers. Spam filters will actually differentiate your readers and just those people who want backlinks and etc.

8. The quality backlinks are important and half the time, many people do not understand what they mean. It depends on the place where you put your comments as well as your niche. If you are car-sales category and make a comment on this infomm.com website, you are not getting quality backlinks, that’s for 100% sure. Maybe, a legit backlinks. You need to find similar niche for your site, so that you leave comment accordingly.

9. Okay, #9 is NONE , just start doing what I have mentioned above. You will see the difference. Now, start getting quality backlinks by leaving comment on this post.

Thanks for reading

Tags: alexa, backlinks, blogger, bloggers, blogs, comment, comments, google, infomm, install, massive traffic, ping, plugin, readers, search, search engine, sharing, sitemap, spams, traffic, web, Website, wordpress, XML, yahoo

17 Feb 09 Viral Traffic Generation Methods

Previously, I have posted about viral marketing for online advertising. Now, I want to share a little bit further more about viral marketing and why should we use it in order to drive massive traffic to our websites.

So, cut to the chase, WHY do we use viral marketing techniques?

1. quick to drive traffic (once it’s starting to spread, there’s basically no limit, the message will pick up the speed faster and to the bigger audience)
2. cost effective (once again, no limit, easy to start and cheap to expect the traffic, make sure your site has some to offer for your visitors to become regular)
3. niche gathering (you will eventually find where your niche is headed and your target audience in no time as long as you offer unique content that are original, photographer offers photoblog whereas geek-blog offers all technology news)

Bottom Line, traffic means money, relevant niche means more money, cost effective mean more money. So, what else shall I say?

So, this comes the question, WHAT are the techniques?

1. I am going to repeat this again, provide quality content, products or services. (provide something which is unique for your visitors)
2. Give something away (I would recommend gmail service to my friends because they basically gave away free service for e-mail, don’t they? you gotta offer something so that will create buzz).
3. Recommendation or referral on your site. (something like share this post, email to a friend, etc etc, that will create more buzz because I would really recommend to my friend if a particular website offer something nice)
4. Have some video clips, or free e-book to give away or have a personal blog about your interest on the site (that will also give some kind of expose to your visitors and yes it does really attract traffic)
5. Social bookmarking icons and links (They are basically helping you to bookmark or submit to the sites, either way, they are good for traffic, easy for search engine to index, my personal favorites regarding SEO are reddit, technorati and digg)
6. Use RSS feed or any sort of Feed (Some of my audience like RSS feed because they are firefox fans, some of them love email feed as well, so feedburner or similar service sites can offer, I use feedburner of course, you can set up either RSS feed or email subscription)
7. Do what others do not generally offer (It’s very simple but sometimes it is easily overlooked in many cases, for example, I enabled “do-follow” plugin in my wordpress, which default is “no-follow” for commenters, so I would get more visitors who will want to have do-follow link on my site and will write more comments as well.
8. Run on-site competitions (Many internet gurus are still using this method, and that’s how they get massive traffic and regular visitors)
9. Build a community and relationship with your visitors (Communication is the key to success, if you interact with your visitors, you will build the better relationship between you and your visitors that is very good for long term)

Ok, There are main 9 methods I have tested and experimented in the past and they have created impressive traffic for me.

So, start right now because what I have suggested will cost next to nothing. You can basically start with no-investment methods such as adding referal scripts, RSS setup, email subscriptions and some fabulous content first.

Thanks for reading. Now, I will go back to build my viral marketing for another site

Tags: advertising, audience, blog, bookmark, comment, comments, content, digg, e-book, example, free, google, infomm, mak, massive traffic, more, News, niche, online, pet, ping, plugin, reddit, referral, search, search engine, SEO, social bookmarking, success, unique, viral marketing, web, Website, wordpress

05 Feb 09 Yahoo Answers Traffic and Monetizations

Well, here it is another technique that I am very happy to share. I am big Yahoo! Answers fan. Before, I didn’t really put my website link in Yahoo! answers, but after a while, I tried to put once or twice in a while. And yes, it gives me good traffic, at least, 10-15 unique hits from one answer.

Of course, your answer should be unique, informative and helpful. That’s the most important thing, once they love your answer, they will definitely try to click your website which should be the source of the answer. When I answered about sports, I never put this website as a reference, it will be spamming to the audience and also to Yahoo! and i saw many people got banned for that.

SEO point of view, you will not gain anything as Yahoo! answers is no-follow link, but you get the traffic and mostly targeted traffic, that means, your true audience will read more about your site.

Nowadays, many people abuse and use yahoo answers as a tool and the bans are more frequent, so make sure you do the reference in proper way and relevant niche. Here is my Yahoo Answers account you can view. Remember, do not put too many of your links in your answers especially it’s not relevant to your website and the particular answer. And make sure you get good percentage of BEST Answer. So that people believe and trust in what you explain more. That will also help your traffic as well.

So, here is a good e-book how to get traffic, affiliate sales, or direct sales that depend on your business on Yahoo! Answers. But I definitely tried and got noticeable amount of traffic.

Thanks for reading

Tags: answers, audience, ban, best, download, e-book, earn, free, how to, infomm, make, monetization, more, niche, SEO, spam, traffic, unique, web, Website, yahoo, yahoo answers