Business Blogger

I’m a little late on this I know but Problogger has poped back to a page rank of 6 from the dreadful deduction down to a 4. What was Google thinking when they hit him with the penalty. Immediately everyone thought that they were getting hammered for having basically a link fest between their blogs but now it doesn’t look like that at all. Apparently Darren Rowse called them up and gave them a piece of his mind or at least that’s what I’d like to believe.

Now he’s back to that page rank of 6 and why not? I was thinking after my last post, hey Google basically has a huge link circle set up with their sites and blogs, buying up sites and placing links on them, are these considered purchased links? Apparently they just don’t like the companies that sell links and make their algorithm worthless. After all we all know that Google won’t penalize you for linking in between sites now, (maybe) at least they won’t penalize Darren, but the selling links thing is a big no no. Google has slapped every big link selling site and the big link sellers to go along with it.

On the other hand I did notice that Yahoo is now a page rank 9? Is that because they are selling links Google, really now? Or, is it because they haven’t taken the text link sellers out of their search results like you? OK the cloaking thing maybe? Anyhow, I feel like I have to talk about page rank even though it really doesn’t have any effect on traffic to a site, for non other than the fact that it gets everyone so fired up. I guess it’s a sign of internet maturity for some that work so hard on their sites and understandably so, that’s why Google invented page rank in the first place. The single greatest piece of link bait in internet history.

When you sit down to write a blog post you usually focus on the topic at hand, right? While focusing on your current topic is exactly what you should be doing, there’s another important aspect of blogging that you need to take into consideration. Along with your current post you should be thinking about an internal linking strategy.

Although an internal linking strategy may never have crossed your mind it happens to be one of the most important strategies for bloggers and webmasters alike. Your internal linking strategy could be the strategy that makes or breaks you. The search engines can either look at your site as a valuable information source or as an unimportant information source. What it comes down to is; which do you prefer? You want to be seen as a valuable information source, right? Isn’t this why you put so much time and effort into your blog or website?

What happens here is that sites without internal linking may actually be undervalued because they don’t have internal links. If you write a blog on a focused topic and not just ramblings, then this should be no problem at all.

What should you link to?

• Previous blog posts that are relevant to your current blog post
• Your domain name

How should you link to your previous posts?

• Use keywords that appear naturally in you current post and hyper-link them to your previous post
• If you can’t use the exact keywords you would like because they don’t appear naturally in your current post then you can still use a particular keyword or keyword set by making use of the “alt” attribute; by using the “alt” attribute you can place your keywords there and tell the search engines what the link is about

Why is this important?

• You are telling the search engines that a particular post you had earlier is relevant to what you are currently talking about
• You are telling the search engines that your blog or website is important

If you’re haven’t been thinking about an internal linking strategy then don’t worry, it’s not too late. You can go back through your posts and link to all the relevant posts that you can find. This may take a little time but the results you will see in the search engines can be dramatic.

While search engine traffic may not be the “be all end all” it can have an impact on the amount of users and readers that find your website on the Internet. Users and readers are the “be all end all.” I know that I’ve found plenty of great resources through search engines and without these strategies in place I may have never found some of the sites that I visit on a daily basis.