As I've publicly blogged before, Paul Lima's keyword and link farm strategy is wrong and blogging takes no more time than email. Do you have time to respond to email? Then you have time to blog. The benefits to your search engine rank and public profile (blogging is the best form of conversational internet marketing we have today) greatly exceed the few hours a week it will take to blog.

FROM Confessions of a search-engine optimizer: globeandmail.com : Globe TQ:

QUOTE

To optimize my site, I first determined the keywords people might use when searching for a writer with my expertise. Then I wove those keywords into my website copy. I also associated keywords with images on my site. If you go to my website and place your cursor over my picture, you will see a yellow flag containing some of my keywords.

Those words can be read by web crawlersautomated programs that access websites and follow the links they contain. The web crawlers then index website addresses and associated content in search engine databases. Web crawlers cannot read images. So, if you have an image-based homepage, you have feed textlike the keywords associated with my pictureto the web crawlers. Otherwise your graphics-only homepage will not show up in search results.

I also included my keywords in meta tagsa keyword list, site description and page title. Other than the page title, meta tag information is not seen by regular site visitors. Many SEO experts say using meta tags are a waste of time, because web crawlers tend to ignore them. But, writing meta tags helps you think about your keywords and how you want to describe your site. As well, when a visitor bookmarks your site, a title meta tag makes the site easier for people to find it in their favourites list.

However, all this keyword work won't necessarily get your site listed in search engines. While you can submit your website information to search engines, it can take several months (or longer) for your site to be included in search results. What you should do is make it easy for web crawlers to find your site.

Since web crawlers swing from site to site looking for links, you need to have other websites linked to your site. What you want is quantity and quality. To acquire links to my site, I entered reciprocal arrangements with several writers and other associates. They provide links to my site and I provide links back. As well, I sold several articles and chapters of my e-books to content sites that now link to my own website.

Many SEO experts recommend that you maintain a weblog, also called a blog, or an on-line journal. Bloggers frequently read other people's blogs, and if they find something interesting, they often will comment on it and link to it. This creates links that web crawlers will find. But if you think you can boost your search-engine rank by simply littering thousands of blogs with links to your site, think again. Web crawlers are able to detect this type of "blog spam" and can issue the search engine equivalent of a death sentencethe removal of a site from the search engine database.

While blogs can help with SEO, I don't maintain one because of the time it requires. However, as an alternative, I am looking at generating Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds from my site. RSS is a way of notifying site visitors and search engines of new content on your blog or site. Like blogs, RSS can drive traffic to your website and boost your search engine rank.

END QUOTE

Leave a comment on github