Using blogs to get search engine juice is something you can do easily to increase traffic and improve your website’s ranking with very little effort.
In order to generate back links with blogs, three things are necessary.
First, you must first find relevant blogs that provide “do follow” commenting on their site content.
After carefully reading the blog, you need to make a useful, relevant comment on the content that the blog’s administrator is likely to approve.
In addition, you need to include relevant anchor text with your back link in your comment.
Once this is accomplished, you need to repeat the procedure with as many blogs as possible. “Rinse and repeat” is the name of the game.
When using blogs to get search engine juice, there are a number of reasons why including relevant anchor text is important, but for now let it suffice to say that it is.
When allowed by the blog administrator, try to include your website URL back link in the blog’s comment box.
Be sure you use anchor text properly to describe the website that you are directing people to visit.
To do this, you need to include some HTML code to create your back link with your anchor text.
Make sure that you include RELEVANT keywords in the anchor text. This insures a higher ranking for these targeted keywords.
Never use keywords in your anchor text that are already part of your website’s title or domain name.
It’s better to focus on new unoptimized targeted keywords that you hope to rank higher with, than keywords that are already optimized and included on your existing website.
For instance, if I were using blogs to get search engine juice and was leaving a comment to generate a back link to www.dogtraining.com; I would use alternative keywords in my back link that would be relevant to my target audience such as “How To Housebreak Easy To Train Breeds” and post accordingly.
These keywords are RELEVANT, are not already optimized on the website, and would direct visitors from the blog that I made the post on, to the specific post (“How To Housebreak Easy To Train Breeds”) on my website.
When using blogs to get search engine juice, focus on building a back link campaign on relevant blogs that have the same or similar theme as your own site.
This is a double whammy because in addition to increasing search engine traffic, it also attracts the attention of visitors who read your blog post and link to your site.
Don’t bother wasting time making posts on sites that will not attract targeted visitors to your site.
Time is money and wasting time costs you weather you realize it or not.
Here are some tips on how to go about identifying RELEVANT blogs:
Firefox has a free plugin available from SEO Quake that allows you to find blogs that allow “do follow” back links at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collection/seo-tools.
You should already have a file of RELEVANT keywords and phrases that relate to your niche market. Use these targeted keywords for your blog comments.
If your website does not already have individual pages of articles with high quality content, it’s time to create some.
Your website content should be able to attract and hold the attention of visitors who link to your site via your blog comments.
It’s a waste of your time and effort to get visitors to click on your site and have them click out because of unrelated or bad content.
Create articles that provide information on specific topics, then post a comment on a related blog with your back link. This generates traffic much faster and easier than posting on unrelated blogs.
If you are interested in obtaining repeat traffic, never direct your visitors to a sales or so called “money” page.
Page rank is important to the search engines, so when using blogs to get search engine juice, focus on commenting on blogs that have a higher page rank than your site. Avoid linking to unestablished blogs.
This is where the SEO Quake plugin comes in handy. It readily identifies a blog’s page rank.
As a side, it should be noted that commenting on educational (.edu) and government (.gov) sites will tremendously increase your search engine juice because of how difficult they are to obtain.
The internet is changing and blog commenting matters now more than ever before.
Google makes more than 200 changes to their algorithm every year and the latest penguin update has hit people building obvious and manipulative back links hard.
Using blogs to get search engine juice is perfectly legitimate “white hat” link building.
Google loves it, the blog owners love it and so do the visitors.
I have yet to find a blog owner who doesn’t appreciate a sensible comment from someone who knows their niche inside and out.
Since using blogs to get search engine juice is a perfectly legitimate endeavor, why not get started today?
Here are 10 online trends to watch for 2013 if you currently make money online or plan to in the near future.
Historically, with the absence of regulations that online retailers currently enjoy, some traditional store front retailers have had difficulty competing with online sites like Amazon.
However, savvy store front retailers have been keeping up by implementing some of the same online benefits such as more liberal return policies, more varied product selections, free shipping, etc.
Illinois Senator Dick Durbin’s push for the implementation of a national law, similar to what 12 states have already enacted requiring Internet retailers to collect sales tax, will eventually come to pass and online shoppers will sooner or later be required to pay sales taxes on their purchases.
Even though this proposed legislation has not yet been passed by congress, the seed has been planted and it will eventually happen some time down the road.
The net effect for retailers is that the line between online and offline retail sales is slowly blurring and with the advent of a so called “even playing field”, will eventually cease to exist.
For now it should be a good year for online retailers, so here are 10 online trends to watch for 2013.
- Good deal sites like FatWallet, ConsumerSearch, Dealnews, etc. that cut through the maze of websites that clutter the Internet, are steadily gaining favor with consumers who are interested in targeted information about good deals and who do not want to spend unnecessary time “surfing”.
These deal aggregators collect and categorize legitimate offers for consumers and save tons of shopping time.
- Recently Walmart implemented in store pickups for orders that were placed online.
Some of the larger retailers like Kmart, Sears, etc. and even many smaller food service providers have gone a step or two farther by delivering online purchases/orders to your car and in some areas even to your home.
This trend extends to Farm Stores in Florida that now allow shoppers to order their groceries online and pick their orders up at a drive through.
- The trend for “pick up depots” is gaining in popularity with many smaller retailers who don’t have expanded store networks like Sears or Walmart.
These smaller retailers have been opening designated pick up locations for consumers who make their purchase online.
- The trend for smartphone mobile apps has been growing by leaps and bounds, especially those that provide coupons and those that offer pricing comparisons to consumers.
In addition, more consumers will be using their smartphones to pay for their purchases. More of these type apps targeted towards shoppers can be expected in 2013.
- Since smartphones now account for more than half of new mobile devices purchased worldwide, and for 2013 the growth is expected to skyrocket, some of the top mobile wallet payment platforms like Google Wallet, Passbook, Square, etc. are expected to continue to trend upwards.
For small businesses, offering a mobile payment solution to their customers enables them the flexibility to pay for purchases online and the potential to generate more sales.
For example, if you decide to use Google Wallet to handle your company’s mobile payments, you could design a special online offer that highlights the option to pay for purchases online and promote it on your website.
- Online retail sites have been successfully using customer generated videos as a marketing strategy to bolster their product sales for some time.
Videos made by customers reviewing new purchases, modeling clothing, detailing the success of a new strategy, the odor of a new fragrance, etc. are an online trend that will continue to pick up during 2013.
- Along with video marketing, online user reviews will continue to gain favor with retailers during the upcoming year.
Historically, consumers have not responded as well to the so called “virtual” dressing rooms and other flashy smart phone apps that are intended to describe retail products and services as they do to online user reviews. The trend continues towards online customer reviews.
- Facebook and Twitter continues to play a gigantic role with online retailers.
Even though Facebook in particular has not yet been adequately “tested” in the social shopping arena and since “social shopping” is still in it’s infancy, (many online retailers haven’t done anything with it yet) evidence suggests that Facebook offers a good return on investment.
A few retailers like Victoria’s Secret and J.C.Penny have been using Facebook and other social media to successfully sell their products online, and if Facebook “likes” are any indication for success, Victoria’s Secret currently has over 12 million consumers “likes” to their credit.
The trend appears solid for consumers to continue to “like” and follow their favorite retailers on Facebook for “specials”, deals, tips for getting discounts and for requesting information from retailers.
For the time being, even though there are some sites online with smaller communities of like minded users in their networks, Facebook literally owns the retail based social network market.
- Another online trend to watch for 2013 is the use of flash sales and daily deals.
Sales and deals have always been popular with online consumers, as can be attested by how quickly many items are sold out after the initial notifications of a sale has been made, and you can expect more online retailers to take advantage of this trend.
- Global e commerce is also trending upwards.
There is a small but growing niche of online retailers who are conducting a progressively larger percentage of their gross sales outside of their own country’s boarders.
Although many are specialized in nature, more and more e commerce retailers are targeting their online business to reach shoppers in other countries, particularly the U.S.
As online shopping continues to grow, the benefits to consumers on and off line will continue to increase.
They will continue to have more choices and more things to buy; it will become easier for them to compare prices, evaluate and compare products, find hard to get items, etc.
In addition, brick and mortar stores will be inclined to provide more knowledgeable sales personnel equipped to deal with tech savvy online shoppers.
The 10 online trends to watch for 2013 that are outlined above will likely improve the brick and mortar shopping experience for consumers and if you are currently making money online or plan to in the near future, should help you in your marketing.
Here are several search tips to make using Google more productive in your everyday life.
Although there are many ways to make Google searches easier and more reflective to what you are actually searching for and many more which will be posted in the future for additional SEO purposes, the following are the most frequently used.
- When you already have a web address, you can save yourself some time and eliminate irrelevant search results from Google by simply entering the URL into the web address box of your browser to find the site you want.
- Google’s search engine in most cases uses simple nouns to locate the search results you need.
Modifiers can be used to refine the simple search, but entering too much information into the search engine will limit your search results if Google cannot find pages with all the words you entered in them.
Providing too much information in the search query will often give undesirable results.
Capitalization and punctuation marks are irrelevant in most search engines and will not change the search results.
- When you want to exclude a word from the search engine results query, ad a minus sign (-) before the word you wish to exclude without a space between it and the word and the term will not be recognized in the search query.
For instance, if you want to exclude all results for freshwater fishing lures when searching for fishing lures, simply place a minus sign before freshwater in the query. fishing lures -freshwater
Likewise a search for Cats -movie, would return information on cats without any movie related search results.
The hyphen (-) can also be used to indicate that the words around it are very strongly connected, such as in twenty-year-old-cat or cross-cut saw.
By default Google looks for all the terms you enter into a search query and bases it’s results on those terms.
- When you need to separate terms from a search use OR in your search query.
For instance when you want to find web pages about both saltwater fishing lures and freshwater fishing lures, enter saltwater freshwater fishing lures and you will get pages on both.
If you want your results separated, use the OR command.
For instance, entering saltwater OR freshwater fishing lures will provide pages about each kind of fishing lure individually.
- When searching for exact phrases, use quotation marks in your search query before and after the sentence or phrase you are trying to locate.
Synonyms will often replace some words in your original query but by enclosing a keyword or strategic phrase in quotes, you can prevent this from occurring.
The quotation marks (” “) exclude all other variations of the search phrase and provide only pages that have the exact phrase in the exact word order you requested.
- In many cases different terms are used to describe the same thing.
You can tell Google to include synonyms and related search terms to the search results by adding the tilde (~) directly before the term you are searching for.
In most cases the ~ will give too much information about what you are actually looking for, however in some cases it gives positive results.
For instance ~sex will provide information on stories, positions, mistakes, psychology, trafficking, positions, education, addiction, appeal, etc.
Searching for the term ~fish provides you with facts, for sale, aquarium, names, recipes, card games, how to, facts, plastic fish, places, pictures, definitions, etc.
Searching for ~notebooks will provide information on laptops, notebooks, portable computers, tablet pcs, etc. which is more usable to the searcher.
Typing the tilde before any single word will provide you with synonyms for that word. Example: ~arduous, ~polysemous, etc.
- Occasionally when you need to search for information, you forget the specific details in a name, date, etc. In such cases you can fill in the unknown by using an asterisk in your search (*) term. The asterisk literally fills in the blanks you forgot.
For instance if you make a search for Dwight David Eisenhower and forget his middle name, just insert an asterisk and Google will provide the correct response.
Dwight * eisenhower or * eisenhower will provide search results for Dwight David Eisenhower. On the other hand, Dwight* will provide numerous search results for the first name Dwight, including Eisenhower.
The asterisk can also be used to fill in the unknowns in a specific search query.
For example, searching for Newton discovered * in * will provide you with what he discovered in what date. For research purposes, this can be extremely useful and time saving.
- Periods and hyphens can be used in a search engine query to find information for specific dates and price ranges.
When searching, use either two periods to connect the numbers or a hyphen between them with no spaces on either side of the periods or hyphen to get information for that specific time frame.
For example, searching for world sport fishing records 1800..2012, provides information on the top fish caught during this period.
Use the dollar sign to search for price ranges using the same format.
For instance, flat panel tv $200..$800, or flat panel tv $200-$800 will provide information on flat panel televisions within the price range requested.
- There are many times when you need to conduct a search within a specific website.
You can easily do this by by typing your search terms into the Google search engine and then add site: followed by the web address.
For example; instead of going to the Fox website and searching for featured videos, just type Featured Videos: fox.com into the search engine and it will provide featured videos on Fox’s website.
- If you need a dictionary and forgot where you last placed it, (in 1955) just type define: immediately in front of the word you need information on.
Here are several more search tips to make using Google more productive that you may at some point need.
- Converting measurements has always presented a problem for me however, Google makes it easy to convert measurements.
All you do is enter the conversion you want and hit enter.
For example enter 5k to miles in the search engine and it gives you 3.10685596 miles, if you enter 25 pounds to kilograms it gives you 11.3398 pounds, etc.
- With the holidays coming up you might need to use Google’s package tracking feature. All you need to do to track a FedX, USPS or UPS package is enter the tracking number into the search engine for up to the minute information.
- Need to find who belongs to a phone number? All you need to do in most cases is enter the number with the area code into the Google search engine and it provides you with the information.
- If you are marginal using math, use Google instead. It’s a great substitute for a hand held calculator and does almost any function.
The asterisk is used to multiply and the slash is used for division. Simply enter the problem with the equal sign and hit enter.
For example, 5280/2= or 20*93,000,000= . Once you get the hang of it, you can use Google to solve more complex equations like 200*3.1416-cos(86)= 628.703698.
Some of the search tips to make using Google more productive in your everyday life that are noted above are not commonly used by most searchers, however we hope that after reading this article more readers will discover how Google can assist them in making their everyday lives more productive.
