Information about Google

Article Navigation

Click Here for more articles

Why Blogs Have Become the Search Engine Optimization Equalizer

by: Hunter Waterhouse

ALEXA WEIGHS IN...

Those who are unaware of Alexa, it offers an interesting tool to webmasters. The service is designed to value websites based on the number of people who visit those sites and the activities of those people while they are on a site.

Keep in mind that their results are skewed to the activities of those who use the Alexa toolbar. If your website is Business-to-Business oriented, then the results may be useful to your needs. If your site is Business-to-Customer oriented, then the Alexa results are far from accurate in documenting the importance of your website.

The reason why the Alexa results are skewed to the Business-to-Business market is because most people using the Alexa toolbar are involved in Business-to-Business activities, either as an user or provider of B2B services.

On May 24, 2005, Alexa's ranking of the Top Ten English Language websites were as follows:

* http://www.yahoo.com
* http://www.msn.com
* http://www.google.com
* http://www.passport.net
* http://www.ebay.com
* http://www.microsoft.com
* http://www.amazon.com
* http://www.fastclick.com
* http://www.google.co.uk
* http://www.aol.com

( This info was is from: http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500 )

WHAT EIGHT OF THE TOP TEN WEBSITES ALL HAVE IN COMMON

Sure, five of these top ten sites are search oriented sites, but that is not the answer.

Passport.net is owned by Microsoft and must be accessed when someone is logging into the msn.com network. Fastclick.com is a site that helps advertisers buy advertising across a huge network of sites. These two sites do not fit the profile.

The one thing that eight of our top ten sites have in common is that they are content driven destinations and they add new, original, and exclusive content on a daily basis.

BLOGS ARE THE GREAT EQUALIZER

Blogs are the great equalizer because they simplify the task of adding content to a website on a daily or weekly basis. They make it simple for the average joe to add content to their site on a daily basis with just a few clicks of the mouse.

What is more, the spider search engine companies recognize this and make it a point to spider the blog networks on a regular basis, sometimes a daily basis.

It may take a spider search engine up to three months to spider your site if you go directly to their submission page to add your domain to their database. On the other hand, with a blog, you can put a story about your domain on a blog with a link to your domain, and your website can generally get crawled within a week or so of putting your link on the blog.

BLOGS REQUIRE A COMMITMENT ON YOUR PART

Daily additions to your blog should be your goal. If you do not have time to do daily additions, you should at worst do a weekly addition to your blog.

Just like in the real world of websites, if you don't update your blog on a regular basis, the spiders will save their time and resources by not spidering your blog on a daily basis. If however you do update on a daily or near daily basis, then the spiders will visit your blog with the same fervor you bring to your blog.

Additionally, it sometimes seems like the search engine spiders are giving some addition weight to the results culled from the blogs. The point in this additional weighting is that blogs are filled with personal comments and recommendations rather than sales pitches.

BLOGS ARE EASY TO SET UP, EVEN FOR THE RANK AMATEUR

There are in fact several blog programs available that you can either load into your own domain or that you can use from a third-party, remotely-hosted server.

To see a list of the blogging programs that are available, check out this link:

http://keywordtext.com/redir/blog-list

My personal favorite is http://www.blogger.com which happens to be owned by Google. Blogger allows you the ability to use the software from their servers or to integrate the blog software into your own site with very little effort on your part.

I was able to integrate their software into our own site and to customize the display of the blogger to fit our domain's format, and I was able to pull that task off in just about 30 minutes --- with most of that time dedicated to the custom display of our blog.

Add to the simplicity of setting up the blog, the fact that since blogger.com is owned by Google.com, they will always be very keen to spider our blog on a regular basis.

From launch of our website, to the spidering of our site by Google took just about ten days. Within three days of the launch of our site, Google had spidered the main page of our site. Within ten days, Google had already spidered the whole of our website.

Compared to other websites we have launched, this was the fastest turn-around time from new release to traffic from the search engines. We believe the difference in this case study had to do more with the addition of the blog on the day of our launch than anything else we may have done to promote our domain.

EQUALIZE YOUR SITE WITH THE SITES OF THE BIG BOYS

The big sites on the internet got to be that way because the consistently add new, original, and exclusive content to their websites.

While you and I may never have as much content on our sites as the big boys do, we can benefit from the lessons they teach to us.

Now that you have also learned this important lesson, it is time to put this knowledge into action. Make it part of your daily or weekly schedule to add fresh, interesting content to your website. Your banker will thank you.

About the author:

Hunter Waterhouse is one of the editors at: KeywordText.com "Keyword Text" managed to bring together several writers and editors to provide a few low-cost writing services for those who are working hard to become more profitable. They offer Content Creation Services which include: Exclusive WebPage Content and Reprint Articles. Keyword Text also offers very attractive Volume discounts. Compare us to our competition, you will be surprised.

Circulated by Article Emporium

Read Articles:

Search Isn't All About Google Anymore

Before You Register a Domain Name for Your New ...

Getting Approved by Adsense in a Jiffy�

Four Sure-Fire Ways to Generate Targeted Traffi...

Blogging for Dollars

Traffic Arbitrage- The new kid on the block

The Life Blood of Internet-Based Home Businesse...

"If an RSS feed is the Yahoo backdoor, is a Blo...

How to Find an Affiliate Program For Any Niche ...

Are You Ready for a Plain English Guide to Inte...

Adsense � The Powerful Passive Income Generator

Understanding what Reciprocal Linking means

Google Page Rank - important or just another nu...

Free Web Traffic Through Page Rank

Of Spam and Sandboxes

How to Get Targeted Search Engine Traffic Quickly

Winning the (r) Google AdSense War

A Smart Trick for Attracting Higher Paying AdSe...

Monitor and Increase Your Search Engine Visibil...

Understanding the Game of Search Engines.

Online Home-Based Businesses Can Give You Searc...

Why Google Blog Search Matters to Your Business

Your Online Home-Based Business Can Lead To Sea...

The Search Engine Optimization Game Is Getting ...

Tips for maximizing Your Google AdSense Revenues

The secret of how I got GoogleCash for free wit...

A Home Based Business Modeled After Google

Google's own AdSense Tips

A five minute task that is saving me $750 A MONTH!

The Ultimate Free Google Ranking Tool

Google Adsense Page Positioning

Introducing PageRank - shattering the myth

Meet Adwords, AdSense�s Fraternal Twin

6 more free steps to making money online

Press Release + PRWeb = Top Google Rank... True...

Grow your Internet Business with Pay Per Click ...

Keywords: They Unlock All The Right Doors

Is Click Fraud Really a Problem?

4 Tricks For Lightning Fast Indexing�

AdSense is Stupid When...

More Article Pages 1 - 2 - 3

5 Ways Google Will Help You With Your Traffic
by: Tinu AbayomiPaul

If you�ve ever had a severe drop in your Google rankings in search results, you may think of Google more of an enemy than an ally.

But if you knew what I do, you�d realize that there are tools provided by the search engine that help you learn more about your traffic, and may even help drive visitors to your site.

Here are five ways that Google provides free traffic assistance.

#1 - Google will Help Your Pages Get Discovered with Google Sitemaps
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

Google Sitemaps is a program that gives you the opportunity to present your site�s pages to Google in XML or text. Google will then come by and spider the pages, getting you indexed faster.

Take note that this doesn�t necessarily mean that your pages will be listed for your favorite keywords, only that discovery will take place a lot faster than with manual submission. Google Sitemaps will also give you some basic site stats if you verify your site, such as the top keywords for discovery, errors it found when crawling, and the types of documents at your site.

If you find compiling your sitemap for Google in the correct format difficult, try the SOFTplus GSiteCrawler Google Sitemap generator. It�s my favorite Sitemap generator, free and easy to use.

#2 - Google Will Talk To You and Your Webmaster In His or Her Native Tongue or Plain English with the Webmaster Section
http://www.google.com/webmasters/

The Google Information Page for Webmasters should be your first stop when you want to know more about anything that has to do with your site and its relationship to Google and any of its many flavors of search such as Froogle. Particularly for new site owners or operators, checking this page first has saved many from needless anxiety.

Most of the basic information is in straightforward language, with links to details for geeks like me.

#3 - Google will Tell You What It Knows with Web Page Information

If you type info:yoursite.com into Google, Google will tell show you a page that has your link at the top of the page, with a short description, and the following phrase �Google can show you the following information for this URL�.

This special page compiles several queries about your site including pages that contain your URL (all the pages Google knows of that are linked to you).

#4 - Google will Help You Analyze Your Traffic with Google Analytics
http://www.google.com/analytics/

After a recent purchase of Urchin Stats, a free online version has been made available, and re-branded as Google Analytics. This cookie-based invisible visitor tracker can give you information that go a bit beyond standard stats such as bounce rates, visitor loyalty, keyword discovery results for a single day, click paths through your site, and page views per visit.

With the ability to analyze your traffic, you can help learn where the holes in your site are, and how to keep them on your site for longer periods of time, as well as better ways to steer a visit towards a specific action, such as a subscription. Results come in flavors for the executive and the search marketer alike.

There�s currently a waiting list to use Google Analytics due to popular demand.

#5 - Google Will Advise On Getting the Most from Your Traffic with Conversion University
http://www.google.com/analytics/conversionuniversity.html

Google Analytics also has two content sections that are available to all, called Conversion University. While the articles are decidedly slanted towards AdWords users, a prudent read yields many clues that can be applied to preparing for visitors who arrive through organic search discovery. One reference area is called �Driving Traffic�, the other �Converting Visitors.�

At the end of the day, the process by which your site gets ranked in Google search engine results is a computation of a complex algorithm, which means Google - the search engine - really isn�t capable of being your best friend or your worst enemy.

Meanwhile, Google - the company - also provides access to resources that will help give your site a fighting chance.

This Static Spot is open for sponsor

This Static Spot is open for sponsor