The last two articles have addressed keywords and social media. Today’s article looks at using the social media and keywords together to not only increase traffic, but too also improve your Page Rank. Bloggers have been networking for a long time. Some bloggers have built up large blogrolls of fellow bloggers - these blogrolls are often link exchanged. Are you one of them? How big is your blogroll?
If you take the time to visit some of the top blog sites, those with high Page Ranks, you will see that their blogrolls are often either small or non-existent. The reason is fairly straightforward. When assessing Page Rank, Google does not particularly like to see link exchanging, particularly if you have linked to a site that is not in the same niche as yours.
To be effective, links need to be seen to be one-way. They also need to be within the same niche as yours. Finally, to be really effective, links should be keyword based and linked from articles - preferably linking to another article, not just to the front page. To enhance links, you should also be using your keywords to link back to older articles within your own blog - an activity that most bloggers don’t even think about when writing their articles - and this is perhaps a good thing. If you can write your articles with only a passing interest in the keywords, the article will be natural and will not appear contrived.
The biggest problem facing bloggers is getting another blogger to link from their article to one of yours. This of course is where networking with social media sites can be a real bonus. You have several options. You can build strong relationships and, when an article appears that you particularly like and contains information either similar too or is likely to enhance yours, you link your article using keywords. You also comment on the other site - perhaps even with reference to your article. This is fine as far as the other blogger is concerned - they have another inward link, but it is an outward link for you.What you are hoping for of course is that at some time they will return the favor - and if your ‘friendship’ with that blogger is good, they may well do - you could even suggest it to them.
There are many other ways of getting links including leaving comments, joining blog carnivals and participating in other activities such as the recent Acts of Kindness that was conducted through the Blogcatalog community.
You can also join in an organized program where bloggers from the same niche come together with the aim of including links to related blogs in their articles. One such program is currently being organized here. Check it out if you are interested.
Finally, I mentioned earlier that you should be using keywords to link back to other articles you have written. I don’t suggest you fill an article with links. It only takes one and that does not necessarily have to be included at the time of publication. You can go in at a later date and link your documents. This will work for search engine optimization, however, if you do it at the time you write your article you may find your visitors using the link to go back and read some of these articles - after all, that is one of the reasons you write - furthermore, the longer they stay, the more likely they buy or see an ad that they click on.
Optimizing your blog with keywords is an essential part of blogging. Building strong relationships within a blogging community is also necessary. Combine the two and you will find that over a period of time your traffic will grow with the added benefit of a growing page rank.
