Keyword Targeting- Patience & Planning

My Blog offers some blogger templates. I had included a link back to this blog so that visitors can know from where the template has been downloaded. The good reason, the page had a good SERP rating so my templates are being used at many blogs.Some of them are having high PR's. A thought about keyword targeting struck my mind when I saw my blog reactions in Technorati.First, I included a link back to the template post with different keywords on different templates.I got the keywords from the Google results itself for "blogger templates" .

There are some other good sites targeting :"blogger templates" , to knock them of in the first page was quite a difficult task.So I started with smaller keywords like "new blogger templates" , "blogspot templates" & "3 column blogger templates".It took time for my post to get a decent ranking even with some 400 back links to the post itself.I also changes the default from "Download three column new blogger templates" to "New Blogger (XML) 3 column templates.The reason is here

Over the past few days, I have experienced a lot of Google DanceLast month I cracked into the first page result & mind you, it wasn't an easy task.2 weeks before this post got an ranking of #1 for term "new blogger templates".But the Google dance continued.We slipped from#1 to #2 and as I write this post, I saw it at the third place.But believe me, I have taken over some reall biggies like stopdesign.com {PR8} & blogger-templates.blogspot.com {PR6.Technorati Rank #4}.

As we all know Pagerank is continuously being changed and its only history that we see in the Google toolbar, does this give a hint where the template post would be in terms of PR? I am keeping my fingers crossed...

Make Money Online with Webtalks!

Not all blogs get some really good back links.I have included the keyword "Webtalks" for the homepage of the blog and I rank #1 for it{At some bad times, I slip to #2}.Webtalks itself makes no sense{if it does, I don't know what it is}I just wanted to keep the title easy.With the Blogger Title hack , I changed it to Webtalks-Blogging,Online Money Making,Tech tips. But that too was a waste.Now I'm thinking of the ever popular "Make Money Online" keyword.So in your next visit to this blog, don't be surprised to see the title "Make Money Online".Cool isn't it?

Points to be kept in mind while keyword targeting

If you get lots of links with the same keyword.You may rank better in Google.Because Yahoo & Live Search takes take domain age into consideration.

• Don't Google Bomb.Be slow but efficient.
  
• Google will also take some time to give you an appropriate rank.Till then,experience the Google Dance.
  
• Before choosing a keyword, just go through Google Trends to find out whether the number of queries are enough
  
• The title of the page dominates the SE ranking.

So which Keyword are you targeting?

Why Updating Blog on Sunday makes sense

Sunday,a holiday..Almost all regular probloggers hate updating their blogs on Sunday.They prefer taking a break.But at the same time we, part time bloggers are free from their regular jobs.Over the last few days, I have observed that my traffic dips on Sundays.Reason being, even I used to take a break.

To maintain,my traffic I planned to post on Sunday .And the result, I get the regular traffic.

This traffic I was sure, would go to a major blog if it would have been updated.Not only this, most teenagers and the ones who are taking higher education are most of time online on Sundays which sometimes also gave a boost to my traffic from search engines like technorati.who ranks according to freshness.

You may write a whole post just before the week end and then post on sunday with which you'll enjoy both the things.

Adding to this, when I post on sunday, and any reader of mine opens his account on monday, he'll first of all read my feed.Also, Google almost crawls my site daily.If I post on sunday , and Google Crawler{who doesn't take a break} indexes it, by monday, I'll hit the top shacks on Google before any major website does and then I'll enjoy targeted traffic.

So, today's Sunday, hope you'll read this on Monday and then post next Sunday.

Its all in the URL and title

I recently conducted a small survey across the google searches and concluded some interesting things:

Say we are searching for the most blogged person of 2006 - "Harry Potter"
The first result comes out to be harrypotter.warnerbros.com. Actually harrpotter dot com auto matically redirects you to this site, transferring all of the google juice to it. Interestingly, backlinks for this site according to Google were some 1,340
and the fun is the site ranked #6 for the same query have sum 2,500 backlinks according to Google. Mugglenet dot com is a fan site of Harry Potter and contains the term Harry Potter in its title too.So why is it ranked below Harry Potter dot com?

1.Dont stuff excessive keywords in your title
Stuffing excessive keywords in your homepage may lead the Google Technology to think that the site is targeting many search terms via title eg. Mugglenet besides targetting Harry Potter also targets, Daniel Radcliffe,Emma Watson , Rupert Grint... wheras Harry Potter dot comtargets only Harry Potter term via Title.Obviously, they'll prefer Harry Potter dot com


2.URL is everything
The most common observation of me is that top rated sites in SERP's have the URL matching with the search term and the first thing you are going to do for your site is choose its URL. you can refer to a note to bloggers by me where I discuss how to choose the best avilable URL for your blog/site

Blogger by default, turns the first five words, separated by hyphens "-" as the post URL.So it is advised that you keep the most important keyword first. Although if you edit your post again and change its title, your Post URL doesn't change which is also termed as Permalink

Also try avoiding the change of your page title as it surely affects your SERP{Search Engine Result Page Rating} not only of Google.

So for that reason, mugglenet dot com should be ranked #1 for term mugglenet and so it is.

Check your back links in Live Search, Yahoo Web Search

Google recently updated its site links Google Webmaster tools{Sitemaps} which it does monthly.Not surprisingly my back links were some 1043. I had a quick look on Yahoo Site explorer results.{Backlinks 789}.


But according to Google Web Search, my backlinks range around 50 thats because Google Linking Index only displays those pages which are previously having a Page rank. I was pretty excited about viewing my back links in Live{MSN} Search. But unfortunately, Live search have disabled the old "link:" operator due to abuse of their technology and Yahoo Web search automatically redirects you to the Yahoo Site Explorer when you use "link:" operator

I received an anonymous tip in my mailbox that we can also view back links in Live Search by just changing the keywords.Have a look at this

Replace Link:webtalks.blogspot.com with webtalks.blogspot.com -site:www.example.com


Where webtalks.blogspot is your blog/site.Don't change example.com
Now view your results in Live Search and view your back links

You can also play around with Yahoo Web Search by Replacing
Link:webtalks.blogspot.com with "webtalks.blogspot.com" -"www.example.com"
Remember quotes are necessary.


Other Search Engines normally permit the "link:" operator but if you find any that doesn't leave back a comment

Is Google the only source for your Search Engine Traffic?

SEO, everybody is running after it. But does the Search Engine here referred is only Google? In recent days, I have got lot of visitors from Google Search looking for blogging tips. My site is well ranked in Google. But my next concern was that I am getting traffic only from Google whereas my site is indexed by almost all reputed search engines like Live Search and Yahoo.

I knew that both Yahoo and Live Search gave most importance the blog age. Webtalks now is almost 4.5 months old. I knew crawlers index content when we have got in-links. An interesting observation I made that despite getting some 600 Inlinks according to Yahoo Siteexplorer, only the homepage of blog was indexed by Yahoo Search. Yahoo Search crawlers were for some reason not following links on the root page of blog.

Then I tried a method called Deep Linking.I tried to link to previous posts of mine through related links using different keywords. Also then I encouraged bloggers to link to full post URL instead of home page. Slowly it showed up. But My ranking in Yahoo Search Index was still not stable.More links, more authority, more days.... My blog finally got a stable position in Yahoo. Search and got some 13 indexed pages, also my site showed up in top spot for some keywords.

It was during this time, I got my first visitor(s) from Yahoo Search.And hopefully many in future

I don't know much about MSN search. After I tried Deep linking, I was satisfied to know that all blog posts of my blog were indexed separately.Although I'm still waiting for my first Live Search visitor.

Remember, Live Search and Yahoo Search are very widely used Search Engines. You'll always win if you have grip on these SE's too.

Related:How to get website added in DMOZ Web Directory

How does Google Index Images?

Well thats an interesting question, How Does Google Index Images?
Google Maybe the most comprehensive image search provider of the web. But some webmasters don't know how to get their images indexed by Google.

Googlebot as we all know ignores images. So, how the damm it has an image search?

If your site is "Search Engine Friendly" and is a bit old, then Google must index its images too.A bit old site is required because Google dosen't update the Image Index "frequently"

If you are an impatient Webmaster, like me, Google Webmasters have an option for Enhanced Image Search. If you choose to enable enhanced image search, Google will use tools such as Google Image Labeler to associate the images included in your site with labels that will improve indexing and search quality of those images

For those who don't know about Google Image Labeler.Google Image Labeler is a new feature of Google Image Search that allows you to label random images to help improve the quality of Google's image search results.

In this You'll be randomly paired with a partner who's online and using the feature. Over a 90-second period, you and your partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see. When your label matches your partner's label, you'll earn some points and move on to the next image until time runs out. After time expires, you can explore the images you've seen and the websites where those images were found. And we'll show you the points you've earned throughout the session.

it is not necessary that you do a bit of "labeling" to get your images indexed.Few more tips are that you

• Make sure the page topic corresponds to the search term
  
• Make an image of standard size{like 800 x 600 }
  
• Make the image in .jpg or .gif format.{Not necesarry, but recommended }
  
• Use the search term in the alt attribute, the title attribute and make sure that you have included the width and height declarations

Why to use a preferred domain?

The first and the most major factor that will affect your website’s search engine ranking and page rank will be its domain. For example, this blog is having two domains ,i.e., http://webtalks.blogspot.com and http://www.webtalks.blogspot.com.

Any person will say these two means the same thing. But you are wrong. Googlebot and other search engine robots take this as two different websites. Now all my backlinks and page rank is on the http://webtalks.blogspot.com domain. What if a person visits the other domain and says this blog is not even indexed by Google! Now I kept on thinking what can be done to solve this major problem.

Then I ended up with two main factors.If you are submitting your site to a directory or any other website, make sure you submit the same domain only. If the directory has the different domain, change it immediately .

Fortunately, Google Webmasters have a solution to this. They have an option for your preferred domain in Google Sitemaps. In this, you can choose the domain in which you have the maximum back links. What Google will do is to display only the preferred domain in their indexes thus making the visitors visit the domain you have preferred. I have also applied for it and you may now see some backlinks to my http://webtalks.blogspot.com domain.

To prefer your domain go to Google Sitemaps, verify your site and then choose preferred domain. If you have any problems with verification of your site, you can have a look at A Complete Blogger Guide.

How link exchange can affect your Traffic

We have been talking about Google Page Rank since a long time. To have a page rank, you need links. For links, you do Link Exchange Programs. But let me tell you two important things, Page Rank is not everything and Google is smart enough to catch you while you are exchanging links.
According to me Page Rank is not everything. Lets take an example. Search for “Webtalks” (without quotes) in Google. This blog will be listed at the first place above another page. Now just compare the Page Rank of the 2nd postion page and my blog. The other page has 3* Google Page Rank and my blog isn’t assigned a Page Rank yet( but will be soon) but still my page is listed at top as this blog is “SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZED”.

Now you think that if you get an link from a page of page rank, take 7, your page rank will be boosted. Absolutely wrong.

Page Rank is calculated by a formulae. This is a very complicated one, but I have a an example.If we have a link from a page of 7 rank, your page rank should be 0.2/10 almost negligible thus zero page rank(if calculated according to formulae). Google appreciates genuine links or in other words, one way links.

Most of these links are commonly found within posts. For example you know a webpage which has good templates and want your visitors to visit that page, you will place a link within your post to the page which has templates wheras the page which you are linking to you isn’t linking back, in this case the crawler will remain on the page you linked to and will improve the page’s Search Engine visibility.

Now the big topic is HOW TO GET ONE WAY LINKS?
Have money? Try some business boosters for a decent amount.

Don’t have enough budget?
CONTENT IS THE KING AND DESIGN IS THE QUEEN . If you impress your visitors by any of the one, I am sure this will give you one way links. It will take a decent amount of time. Even a blog like labnol didn’t have one way links for 9 long months. But what the webmaster did is hardwork and put in decent efforts.

Today he earns around 50,000 $ per month and has a minimum of 60 visitors online. Take inspiration from him. It has come to my notice that many blogs are started to earn some income. The webmasters are on their full best in the beginning 7 days. Then their interest begins to drop. Two reasons are they don’t have traffic, they don’t have any sought of Page Rank or are not indexed by Search Engines so their earnings don’t increase.

Let me tell you kindly, you have to put in efforts for 3-4 moths consistently to have a Page Rank/Traffic. Its not just that you have links pointing to your site. As far is indexing is considered, even my blog took two weeks to get indexed in all search engines.
So its my advice to new webmasters. Never loose hope in yourself. If you know that you can succeed, definitely you will succeed. For those who want to get in Google, I have an review my blog option. Through which, I will review your blog, link your blog and even to some extent a provide a bit of traffic

When is Google Page Rank updated?

Ben, a reader of this blog has a blog. He started his journey in the blogosphere in February 2007. He drafted me a mail complaining that he doesn’t have a Google Page Rank as yet. He also mentioned that he is getting many inbound links from other websites with high page ranks. So I went on a survey to find what the reality was.

I took my blog and checked that who links to me from here. I have got a total of 28 msn links, 65 yahoo links but only one Google back link. That is why this blog doesn’t have a page rank yet. This shows that yahoo is the most frequent updater, then msn and last is Google. The Google‘s cache of the page which is linking to me dates back to February 27, just two days after I started this blog. Naturally, my blog wouldn’t have any visitors or back links at that time (It was too new). It is true that Google counts only the pages which have page rank of 1 or more. Now the interesting thing was, one of my favorite blogs, Blogger templates is having a page rank of 7* and is linking to me. Still Google has not indexed the link.

Google Page Rank is an algorithm which calculates the importance of your web page on the basis of Inbound links from other indexed sites.

So we know Google last updated it on 27 February 2007. Google Algorithm was sleeping in March. Possibly the next update will be soon. Experts say that Google Page Rank on the Google toolbar would be updated in the first half of April.

So lets keep our fingers cross and wait to see whether we get Page Rank increased this time or not.

Update:: seochat.com has an interesting future page rank check tool . Try that out

Future PageRank Tool © SEO Chat™ URL Valid URL Enter Captcha To Continue To prevent spamming, please enter in the numbers and letters in the box below

Something For Webmasters

One of my friend ,Shiva, keeps on asking me about some tips that he requires to drive a much “heavier” traffic to his blog. These tips may also be useful for a newbie in the world of blogging

How to choose site’s url and title ?
Well you need to be careful while doing this. Some complaints have also come that Google Adsense is suspending the websites/blogs that have the term “google” in their URL. Today, there are millions of blogs on blogger, so you won’t get any common name like myblog.blogspot or technology.blogspot . Lets take an example that you need a blog on technology news, here is how to choose it. We will cut short technology into tech. Now we have the first part. Another key thing about search engines is that they take “-“(hyphen) as a space between words. So I tried to test it. I started two blogs ashwinikhare.blogpsot.com and ashwini-khare.blogpsot.com. I submitted both to google. After a few days when I searched for “Ashwini Khare” in Google, I saw ashwini-khare.blogpsot.com at the second position but I couldn’t find the other blog .Then I did another search , this time “ashwinikhare” then ashwinikhare.blogpsot.com was there. Hence the above statement verified. So let your blog be tech-digest, tech-space or any other which you like. Also make a quick search on Google with the search term as your blogs “title”. If you find a similar website/blog with a page rank of 4 or 5, change your Title immediately. I also recommend that you choose a short and easy URL to remember.

Have a control over your links
Links are perhaps the most important aspect of your website. If you are having a link exchange with any other site, you must have a visit to linkhonesty.com where these problems are sorted out. With this you can assure that the person, who is exchanging link and traffic with you is loyal. Some people like Shiva are too impatient about getting traffic and getting indexed by Google and other leading search Engines. To get assured placement in Google you should visit Google Wemaster Central and Submit your site’s Sitemap. The quickest way to get in Google is to have an inbound link from any website that has already been indexed by Google. This statement is quite common in every Search Engine Optimization list. But each webmaster thinks how to have an inbound link? Here is a simple solution. Write your site’s Description , Keywords in a notepad file. Make a banner of size 468 x 80 and upload it on any free image hoster and save the link in your notepad file. Now visit some Blog Directories ( look in left sidebar) and submit your website. Some of them would also want a back-link to their directory from your website. Although you won’t be assigned a Page Rank for that but your blog would be indexed quickly.

Megaglobe. The future Google?

I went on a survey over the internet to find about a new search engine titled 'Megaglobe'. Now lets see what the officials speak

All over the world, people are logging on to the Internet, and they need a search engine that will cater to their specific needs, in the language they are most comfortable with,” says Danial Moore, CFO of Megaglobe. “Megaglobe is that search engine, and it will end Google’s time at the summit.

Now lets have a deeper analysis on the features that are going to be provided by Megaglobe

• Megaglobe would be providing searches in 45 languages. Good for international users
• Megaglobe will have its own advertising networks. They are now using a new term " Pay Per Valid Click" for protecting Advertisers from Click Frauds
• Good news for Advertisers, Magaglobe will take a comparatively less amount to display an advertiser's advertisement on search result page
• Publishers of Meglobe Ad network will higher percentages of click through profits than that of any other
• A new Magaglobe Page Rank would also be their for giving their site visitors best results for their searches, trawling through more than a billion indexed pages to give users exactly what they require.

Big promises are being made by the officials of Megaglobe even though it hasn't been launched yet.At this time, Megaglobe Search isn't functioning and is accepting new websites/blogs to get into their indexes.Click here to add your site.For more information on Megaglobe Advertising Networks , you can contact Megaglobe team at press@megaglobe.com