Global PR Blog Week 2.0

By Wayne Hurlbert | Blog Business World

How many people are linking to my blog?

That’s the question asked by most bloggers, whether to measure the blog’s popularity, or to vaguely place its ranking in the various search engines. Most bloggers have heard somewhere that having more incoming links improves rankings in Google. Very few blog owners move beyond that point in their SEO efforts.

While the total number of inbound links is definitely important in any search engine optimization (SEO) effort, it’s not the end of the story. In fact, it’s barely even the beginning of the overall importance of links to SEO. There is much more to blog SEO than simply counting links.

Links: Beyond the raw numbers

Counting incoming links is easy. There is a raw tangible number of sites and blogs that link to your blog. All links are not created equally, however. Each page on the internet has a finite amount of “Google Juice” to share with other web pages, including those on blogs. As the number of outgoing links from a web page increases, the amount of link power sent to each page is reduced proportionately. Your page gets more value from a page with one link than from a page sending you to a hundred pages.

Links from web pages, sites, and blogs sharing the same or related themes to your blog have more value as well. This is referred to as theme relevance. Google’s search algorithm, which calculates the relevance of a page to any given keyword search, takes theme relevance into consideration. If your blog is about football, sports themed blogs will provide much more linking power than a blog about giraffes.

Blogs have internal linking considerations as well. The blog home page is linked to all of the other pages in the blog through archive and category links. As such, the link power of the blog is shared between the various pages. As you link from a fresh post to a previously written entry, the older entry receives a boost from the fresh page. The new page also benefits as it strengthens the themes developed in previously written postings.

Blogs can strengthen internal linking value by adding permanent links to important older posts. As the home page almost universally contains the most search engine ranking power, internal linking helps older pages to rank well for their specific posts. By adding proper internal linkage, older pages can join the home page in maintaining strong search engine rankings.

Link anchor text is one of the most powerful techniques to maximize internal linking power, as well as link popularity boost from external web pages and blogs. Link anchor text is simply the words that form the clickable link on any web page on the internet. Instead of using vague terms link “click here” or “read more”, theme relevant keywords that are important to the linked page are a much better option. Descriptive keyword rich link text helps the search engine better understand what forms the themes and topics of the receiving page. Search engines reward helpful bloggers with higher search results.

Content counts too

Links arrive at a blog or web page that contains interesting and informative content. People link naturally that is of interest to themselves and their readership. To help attract links for topics searched by others, however, the blog page must contain the searched for keywords. It’s not likely your blog will rank well for blueberry muffins if they are never mentioned on your blog.

Keywords and keyword phrases should be sprinkled throughout blog posts to ensure the search engines take notice. The appearance of a particular keyword phrase, two or three times during the post, is pretty clear evidence that the search term is important to that page. This SEO value is enhanced if the keywords are a topic usually appearing on the blog. The search engine power is multiplied again if the topic is a key component of the blog’s overall theme. Keyword rich content is the foundation from which the links will grow.

It’s important for a blog to maintain only a few related topics for discussion. Allowing for occasional exceptions and flights of fancy, a blog shouldn’t range all over the spectrum of entirely unrelated topics. The lack of a coherent theme hurts the blog in the cold mathematical eyes of the search engines. If no evidence of theme relevance is displayed, the search engines will be very stingy with their search placements. Their algorithms place strong emphasis on theme relevance, as should you.

A very convenient and powerful location for any keyword phrase is to place it in the title of the post. Since most blog titles are bolded or included in h2 or h3 or h4 CSS (cascading style sheets) tags, the title words are given more importance in the search engines. This is especially important to Yahoo and MSN Search, with Google giving the titles strong emphasis as well. The main post title is no the only place where it appears. The post title also forms part of the page URL in most blogging systems. As a result, the search engines are able to place even more importance on the titles of individual posts.

Other SEO considerations: Playing tag

Along with adding fresh keyword rich content in the form of blog posts, additional SEO power can be achieved with careful use of title tags. Seen at the very top of every web browser page, the title tag tells the search engine what the page is about in short form. Changes to the title tags are made in the head area of your blog template. Simply replace the existing wording with keywords of your choice, but make certain that the keywords appear in the blog text to get the full title tag benefit.

The best use of title tags is to place the most important keywords for that page where they are highly visible to the search engines. Many blog systems automatically generate title tags for each blog post. Check to see if they can be altered to better reflect the important keywords, as not all blog platforms are the same. Often a simple title tag change is all that’s required to achieve page one rankings for lightly competitive terms.

Technorati tags provide search engine benefit as well. Since the important keywords for the blog post are spelled out in the Technorati tag, and are part of a link, they have real SEO value. Google gives strong consideration to Technorati tags, whether post generated automatically from code or pre-existing categories, or from manual coding for individual posts.

Most blog templates accept the use of CSS (cascading style sheets) coding and it’s often built directly into the template design. As a result of the CSS placement, it’s wise to use the opportunities presented by CSS tags. The main CSS tags to check are h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6. The h1 tag is usually reserved for the blog title and one use per blog page is plenty. The h2, h3, and h4 tags are often used for posting titles and for sidebar menu headings. The h5 and h6 tags are used in a similar manner. Judicious use of CSS tags, keeping the use limited to no more than three per page above the h2 level, can generate search engine value for your blog.

The blog’s search engine future

Your blog’s current search engine rankings, regardless of placement, are not the final stage in search engine optimization for blogs. The levels of search engine power extend far beyond single set of keyword rankings. Authority site and hub site status is highly sought after and very desirable to achieve.

Achieving the status of hub site in the Google algorithm is a very desirable and obtainable goal for bloggers. As free and generous linkers, with often thousands of links into and out of the blog, hub site status is frequently obtained. Hub site status appears to have almost been created with blogs in mind, and once achieved, a blog is difficult to displace from page of keyword searches within its themes and topics.

A goal of many website owners is to achieve Google’s authority site status. Based on a high number of inbound links, strong theme relevant content, and constant page SEO, there are several authority sites for virtually every keyword phrase and theme. Once the authority site level is granted by Google, a blog or traditional site are almost immovable from the first page for that search. An authority site is precisely that: an expert site on the theme being searched.

Conclusions

By thinking beyond simply counting your blog’s inbound links, an entirely new world of search engine optimization opens before your very eyes.

Stop counting links and start thinking about the big picture. Your blog will achieve SEO success.

About the author

Wayne Hurlbert provides information about marketing, promotions, and public relations for websites and business blogs on Blog Business World. Wayne also writes daily roller derby commentary, from a business perspective, on Wayne’s Derby World. He can be contacted at blogbusinessworld@yahoo.com.