PureBlogging

Happy beginning-of-the-week, everyone. As promised, I saw The Dark Knight over the weekend and, unsurprisingly, nearly pooped my pants with glee. A little plot-heavy, a little crazy at times… but good gravy, what a Joker. And that Aaron Eckhart was pretty damned unbelievable as Two-Face as well. I still haven’t seen Mamma Mia (nor have I heard good things about it, sadly), but that’s why the good lord made weekday matinees. I’m pretty sure they got made on the fourth day, somewhere between naked mole rats and Tejano music.

So, let’s see what’s going on in the world this week…

(opens newspaper, shakes creases out)

Freelance Writing Gigs asks: Is a Blogger a Writer? My answer: Sure! Every blogger is a writer! Not every blogger is a good writer, mind you…

Two good Twitter-related posts over at friend-of-the-site Crenk: Steven Finch points out ten great tools for using Twitter, and Luis Sandoval offers the top ten Twitter add-ons for Firefox. I’m about the world’s worst Twitter user; I tweet about once per week. Or I won’t tweet for five days, then make between six and eight updates in two hours. Then I’ll neglect it all over again. You know where I belong? 1850, that’s where.

Speaking of Luis Sandoval, he’s got a great post that asks one of the purest and most important questions every writer should ask his- or herself: Are you writing intentionally?

The folks over at SEOmoz are in the midst of a great discussion: What part of the SEO process is hardest for you? For me, it’s pretending I know what I’m talking about. Kidding, kidding. Or… am I?

At the Writer’s Bag, there’s a brand-new post about semicolons which does two things: Settles a discussion I had with commenter PS3 after my comma post, and makes completely obsolete the post I had planned on semicolons.

Cracked offers up its holiest of holies in two articles: The Top Seven Secrets for Writing a Cracked.com Top Seven List, and Seven Cheats for Hitting the Front Page of Digg. My prediction is that they won’t work for you. But then, I’m a depressive, pessimistic bastard who likes seeing other people fail, so I may not be the best source of advice. Again, I’m kidding. We all know by now how awesome I am.

Now: Stop reading websites and start writing something that excites you.

Well, it’s still Monday morning on the West Coast. For a little while longer, anyway.

37 Signals offers some great motivation (and good ideas) for finding revenue streams.

Hacker News has a great discussion on the nature of SEO.

Copyblogger has tips on managing the length of your blog posts.

Men With Pens asks the Ultimate Question: Why do we blog?

Seth Godin makes a great observation about Wall-E and the bravery of creating great content.

Has anyone seen Wall-E, by the way? For my dollar it’s the best movie of the year. If I ever make it as an actor, I’ll be able to cry like a hungry baby, on command, just by thinking of the scene where EVE is trying frantically to find a new circuit board to replace Wall-E’s broken one. See, there I go right now. Big salty tears, right in the keyboard.

As a blogger, I’ve found a lot of inspiration for things I have written by reading the comments in the blogs that I read.  I have learned a lot of new information from the commenters who keep up with the latest developments, and I have quickly learned who to listen to, and who typically gives bad advice.  I’ve also noticed that there is a lot of repetition of opinion, which a spread of misinformation and leaps in logic that can lead readers that are less informed to make poor decisions when setting up their blog..

The world of blogging, internet marketing, and search engine optimization is constantly changing.  The things that gave your pages a huge boost in the search engine results yesterday aren’t nearly as important today.  Likewise, the things that weren’t considered important in the past are now being preached about by SEO gurus.

The unfortunate thing is that some of these techniques that are deemed to be less important are being abandoned.  One cause of this is the Google effect.  Because Google is such a powerful force in search engines, a great deal of the SEO advice that is given is designed to get your pages to rank on Google.  Because some SEO techniques aren’t as important to Google, they are cast aside.  It’s like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

META Tags

One of the techniques that is being ignored by a lot of sites lately is the use of meta tags in the design of their site. 

Meta tags are lines of HTML that are in the <head> section of your web page.  In WordPress you can edit it by editing it in the Header section of your theme.  There were a multitude of lines that could be used but the tags that were considered most important were Meta Description, which contains a brief description of the page, and Meta Keywords, which is a list of keywords and phrases that you feel are relevant to your page.  Because search engines list individual pages, not sites, each page in your site could have very different meta tags to describe that individual page.

These tags were once considered a critical part of getting listed well in search engines, but have really fallen out of vogue.  The reason; many search engines ignore meta tags.

One reason that some of the search engines abandoned meta tag information was that it is too easy to manipulate.  It’s possible to write keyword and description tags that weren’t really relevant to the content of your site.  It was a great way to draw people to your site that weren’t really searching for your information.  As search engines struggled for ways too deliver more relevant results, meta tags were abandoned.

Reason to use this:  Some search engines still use meta tags in determining search engine positions.  While some of the search engines ignore meta tags when they spider your pages, not all of them do. There are a few that look at that information and include it in their algorithm.  To my knowledge, there are no search engines that will penalize your page for having meta tags.

Another reason to include meta tags is that some search engines and directories draw from the meta description tag for the summary that is included in your listing.  When someone searches for your keyword, they will see what you have written in your meta tag under your page name on the results page.  This gives you a lot of control in what message searchers will see.

Direct Link-Backs

When I wrote about Page Rank last week, I said that links to your site were a huge part of what Google looks at in determining your Page Rank.  It is known that one-way links are more powerful than two-way links.  What I mean by that is, if you link to my page without me giving you a link back, it is given more relevance by Google than a link to my page when I give a link back to your page. 

Because of this, I have seen comments advising site owners to abandon direct link backs, and you are seeing more and more three-way linking, where Page A links to Page B which links to Page A. 

Reason to use this: While one-way way links may carry more clout, reciprocal links still work, and ignoring them will make it much more difficult to attract traffic to your pages.

 Direct link backs still count toward your Page Rank.  It may not carry the same weight as one-way links, but they still contribute. 

Also, as more people develop schemes to try and get around Google, they run the risk of doing something that Google will decide isn’t right.  I’m not the only one who reads SEO and internet marketing forums.  Google has their people reading as well, and if I know that these schemes exist, you can bet Google does, too, and they have someone working on a tweak to the algorithm to penalize them.

Best Practices 

Best practices are called “best practices” for a reason.  They work in the long run, and they work for multiple search engines.

It is an ever-changing sea of what Search Engines do or do not pay attention to.  Things that do not seem to affect your search engine position today may return to vogue tomorrow. 

My advice is to base your decisions on good intent.  If you are using a technique with the intent of fooling or getting over on the search engines, stop.  If your intent is to provide relevant information, products, and services to your readers, then do it.

And remember: it is possible to rank well on several search engines.  Google may be the biggest dog, but it isn’t the only dog.

If you’ve done any work at all on getting your website’s pages to rank higher in Google you are at least aware of Google Page Rank; you may not understand what it is, but you at least know it exists.  Since Google’s latest ranking algorithm update, there have been claims that Page Rank is dead, or at the very least isn’t as much of a key in how pages are listed in the Google search engine.  I’m here to tell you that despite what you may have heard, Page Rank is alive and well.

What is Google Page Rank?

First a quick explanation about what Page Rank is, and how it is calculated.  Page Rank is a measure of the number and quality of links that point to your web page.  It determines the quality of links by determining if the links are relevant to the topic of your web page, and by looking at the quality of the links that  point to the page that is linking to your page.

What that means is, suppose you have two incoming links, one from Page A and one form Page B.  Page A has 100 links pointing to it, and they are all from other pages that are related to your page.  Page B has 100 links pointing to it, but it exchanges links with anyone that will trade, and most of those links are unrelated to your page.  Google would determine that the link from Page A is a higher quality link, and it would be given more weight in the ranking algorithm.

What This Means To You

I am making an assumption here that Google does not intentionally spread misinformation.  They can be very secretive about what all is considered in who pages are ranked, but they do not outright lie about what they are doing.  That being said, you can determine whether or not Page Rank is still important by looking at what Google says.  They claim “The heart of our software is PageRank™…”

To me, that sounds pretty darn important.

So, for you, that means not just link building, but quality link building.  All things being equal, a link from a PR 5 page is of much greater benefit than a PR 3 link.  That’s if all things are equal, which they seldom are.  To go a step further, a PR 4 link that is relevant to your page is of greater value than a PR:4 link from an unrelated page; and it is probably of greater value than a PR:5 (and maybe PR 6) link.

There has also been talk that getting links from pages with a lower Page Rank will hurt your ranking.  It doesn’t.  Google understands that you have no control over who links to your pages.  If they penalized you for low ranking links, all your competitors would have to do is set up a lot of low quality sites and link to you, which would drag your ranking down.  That’s not the way it works.

Page Rank is believed to be set on a Base 8 formula (remember your high school math?).  If that is true, it would take 8 - PR:1 links to equal 1 – PR:2 link.  To get an equivalent of a PR:4 link you would have to get 8 x 8 x 8 PR:1 links.  That’s 512 links, so if you are going after lower ranked sites, you better get busy.

Does that mean you should ignore lower ranked sites?  Absolutely not.  It just means that all tings being equal it will take a lot more work if you rely on lower Page Rank pages.

Don’t Ignore the Evidence

I can already hear the arguments forming.  But before you get too indignant, look at what the SEO gurus are doing and saying.  While some are decrying the death of Page Rank, they still tell you that it is important to build quality links to your page, which is the very thing that Page Rank measures.  If Page Rank was truly dead, then links, either internal or external, would not make any difference in where your page lists on Google.

Another exercise is to look at a search term that no one optimizes for.  Go to Google and type in “Click Here”.  The #1 listed site is Adobe Reader.  If you dig a little deeper you will see that the words “Click Here” do not appear anywhere on the page.  Adobe Reader has its #1 listing because of all the other pages that link to it using the anchor text “Click Here.”  All of those links pushed Adobe Reader up to a PR:9, and a #1 listing.

You can find the same thing searching for “Home.”  The #1 listing goes to the New York Times (PR:9), which beat Home Dept and Realtor.com (Homes for Sale).  The Times does not optimize for the word “Home”, but they get a #1 listing because of a far greater number of quality links, which gives it a higher Page Ranking.

There are a couple of things to consider.  First, while no one knows exactly what Google looks at when determining where pages list, there are believed to be around 100 on-page and off-page elements that are considered in the Google algorithm.  Second, Google is constantly updating the algorithm to a) give more relevant results in the search engines, and b) to combat black hat SEO techniques.

Every time Google updates the algorithm the ranking of individual pages fluctuates.  Things that may have gotten you a first page listing will now kick you out of the top 100 listings.  Getting highly ranked has never been a “Do it and forget it” venture.  It is an ongoing process.  You have to continue to work at SEO to maintain the higher listings.  You’ll move to the top, then Google will update, and you have to climb your way to the top again.  Frustrating?  Yes, but Google is still the king when it comes to driving large amounts of traffic to your site.

My advice: Don’t lose sleep over what your Google Page Rank number is.  Go out and build quality, relevant links to your site, and your Page Rank will take care of itself.

There’s an Indian restaurant just a few blocks from the apartment I share with my girlfriend. It’s beloved by everyone who goes there. There’s always a crowd of well-dressed people waiting to get in. I actually caught the models on America’s Next Top Model eating there one night, when I watched America’s Next Top Model for the first time. Some friends of ours all but demanded we go there. So we tried it one night.

We hate this restaurant. The chicken tikka masala tastes like Chef Boy-Ar-Dee and the service is miserable. We love Indian food — it’s always our default decision when we’re trying to think what we’d like for dinner, and for the most part, we have yet to find an Indian restaurant that we really dislike. But this place… oh, man. I’m not sure if anyone who works there has ever even been in the same room as a good curry. But hey, for some reason, people seem to love it.

Seth Godin made a great point this week:

Here’s the thing: unlike every other species, human beings make decisions differently from one another. And the thing that persuades you is unlikely to be the thing that persuades the next guy. Our personal outlook is a lousy indicator of what works for anyone else.

Not everyone is going to like what you produce. And I’m not just talking about niches — some readers may not like your writing style, some may disagree with your assertions, and some may be put off by your design. You’re not going to win ‘em all.

Which is why you should pay attention to what your readers think… but not too much attention. When you write content, follow three simple rules:

Write what you know best. OK, I admit: There’s a big problem with this rule. If people just wrote what they knew, we probably wouldn’t have science fiction. We wouldn’t have Harry Potter. We might not have any kind of writing that involves pure imagination. But you can bet J.K. Rowling knows her characters inside and out — so I think the real thrust of this rule is “Know what you’re writing about.” In other words, don’t crap out on yourself. Do the research — even if it means researching your own thoughts.

Write what feels good. As a copywriter, part of my work involves writing about topics that are about as interesting as late-night C-SPAN. One of the consequences of this situation is that it’s hard to get motivated; another, more dire consequence is that I run the risk of writing something that doesn’t represent my best effort. If you’re in charge of your own blog, be sure to write what feels good to you — not what you think someone wants to hear about. Ultimately, the content will be more appealing to readers if it looks like you had fun writing it.

Write what you want to read. The best way to find good content is to produce it. Much like the previous rule, following this rule ensures that you’ll write things that bear the mark of someone who enjoys writing.

When you pay too much attention to writing something that will get hits, or writing something that everyone will talk about, you’re losing the game before you’ve even started playing. Writing is about creating something that, whether perceptibly or imperceptibly, is about you.

Earlier this week, Jim stressed the importance of striking the balance between good writing and good marketing. He did so by contrasting bloggers who excel at writing but fail to market effectively with good marketers who skimp on content.

If you’re just starting out as a blogger, I’d recommend being a writer first. You can always apply the latest marketing techniques to your blog, or edit keywords into what you’ve already written. It’s harder to sit down and create huge swaths of good content if you don’t have any.

Don’t assume there are writers out there whom everyone loves. And don’t assume there’s a formulaic path to creating something that everyone will read. Write what you know, and what you love. That’s the only real secret.

I came across an interesting article at SEOmoz.org the other day that talked about the top 35 factors that SEO experts believe Google uses in it’s page rank algorithm.  While no one is exactly sure how Google ranks pages (most experts seem to think that there are over 200 factors in all), there is some agreement on many of the major factors that influence that ranking.  If getting a Google ranking is something you are hoping to accomplish for your blog, this knowledge is gold.

When trying to figure out what counted for and what counted against your site, each expert gave the factor a rank between 1 and 5, with 1 representing low or no influence, and 5 being high influence.  The results were averaged to come up with the final score.

What Google Loves

1.) Keyword Use in Title Tag (Score: 4.9) - This was an almost unanimous choice as the number one factor.  If you want your site to rank well for your chosen keyword, you better get those keywords into your pages title.  If you really want to optimize this, make sure that you not only use the words, but use them grouped like you think people will be searching for them.  If your blog is about Facebook Widgets, use the phrase that way, not “Widgets for Facebook”  You may still get some love from Google when you use the words in the wrong order, but not nearly as much.

2.) Anchor Text of Inbound Link (Score: 4,4) - What this means is that while inbound links influence your pages ranking, the biggest boost will come from getting inbound links that contain your keyword phrase.  A link with the “Facebook Widgets” will mean more valuable than a link from “Facebook Add-ons.”

3.) Global Link Popularity of Site (Score: 4.4) - If you want to rise in the rankings, you have to make friends that
are more influential than you are.  You will never soar if you are tied to a rock.  I’m not exactly sure how you can program an ego into an algorithm, but Google seems to have found a way.  If it likes a page, it expects you to like that page as well.  And if a page that Google thinks highly of likes you, then Google will assume you must have something going for you.

4.)  Age of Site (Score: 4.1) - For Google’s purposes, your sites age is when Google first started indexing the content.  When you are brand new, you will spend a little time in the sandbox before Google lets you go out and play with the other kids.  There seems to be a belief that while Google has always factored age into it’s rankings, this has become more of a factor over the past couple of years.

5.) Link Popularity within the Site (Score: 4.0) - I’ve always heard that linking to yourself is important, but this is a little more specific.  What this means is that if a lot of your internal links point to one page, that page will get more of a boost.  This gives you the ability to focus your articles toward a particular phrase, and consistently linking back to an anchor page that you want to rank well on Google.

What Google Hates

1.) Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots (Score: 3.8) - Not only does Google want it’s bots to be able to see your page, it wants to be able to see it every time it looks.  When the bot looks and your page isn’t there, you will drop in the rankings.  If you have used code that instructs bots how to look at your page, you want to make sure that it is formatted correctly, and that Google can see what you want it to see.

2.) Content is Very Similar or Duplicate of Content Already in the Index (Score: 3.6) - Write original content for everything you post on the internet.  I’m not talking about copying material from someone else’s site (if you do that, you deserve to dwell in the Google basement).  I am talking about not posting your article in more than one place.  I don’t care how good you think the piece is, it only gets posted one time!

3.) External Links are of Low Quality (Score: 3.6) - I wrote before about Google liking links from sites that rank higher than yours.  This is the other side of that coin.  Too many links from sites that rank lower than you will drag you down.  When doing link exchanges, make sure you are targeting quality sites, and not just agreeing to tie yourself to anyone who comes along.  The better the link quality, the more your ranking will be helped

4.) Participation in Link Schemes (Score: 3.3) - There are a lot of “link farms” and “buy-a-link” sites that tell you that the more links you get, the more Google likes you.  That is true for quality links, but Google doesn’t really seem to care a whole lot for massive pages that are just a collection of outbound links.  In fact Google dislikes them so much that it will ding your rankings if you take part in one of these programs.

5.) Duplicate Title or Meta Tags on Many Pages (Score: 3.3) - Give each of your pages a unique name.  If your permalink settings title the page the same as the title of your blog post, make sure each post has a unique name.  Don’t title every post “Facebook Widgets.”  Show a little creativity (after all, you are a writer).  You can still use your keyword phrase as much as possible, but do it with some variety: “Track Friends with Facebook Widgets” or “Facebook Widgets for Twitter.”  I think you get the point.

Google’s goal is to look for relevant content on the web.  If you are focused on producing a quality web site, and you make friends with other quality web sites, you’ll do alright with Google.  As soon as you start trying to scam the system, or running tricks to increase your rankings, you run the risk making Google angry, and you won’t like Google when it gets angry.