Do you really need to have all those blogs in your sidebar site wide?

You could also just put them all on one page. It’s well known that Google and other search engines penalise site wide links, so it’s better to keep them all on one page. Further more, you are also likely to prevent or lose visitors from browsing through your site as they get distracted and go to external sites. It is the same situation for links to individual post pages, you should ensure that they are content related, if not it does not help your site or your friends.

Clear, direct and captivating titles draw readers to your site

Now that your permalink structure has been fully optimized, it is time to consider SEO friendy titles for your posts.

WordPress titles are by default configured to the following format: Blog Title > Blog Archive > Post Title

However, higher traffic can be achieved by reversing this order. The reason for this is that search engines place more importance on early words in a title. Therefore if your keywords are at the start of the page title, there is a higher chance that your page will rank higher. Furthermore, people looking at search results tend to glance through the early words first and are more likely to go to your page if they see something that interests them straight away.

To edit the title structure, you need to firstly go into HeadSpace settings and configure the following titles:

• Pages & Posts:  %%title%% – Blog Title
• Categories: %%category%% – Blog Title
• Archives: %%page%% – Blog Title

Through the plug-in HeadSpace2, you can also optimize individual post titles more specifically by overriding these settings.

For a more detailed review of the HeadSpace2 plug-in and further elements that it can be used to optimize, Urban Giraffe provides a great overview.

Here is the first post in a series of how WordPress bloggers can increase their search engine rankings. WordPress is already one of the best optimized CMS systems available to bloggers, however there are a few things you can do to make your blogs more search engine friendly.

• Permalink Structure. Changing the permalink structure not only makes the URL of your post more attractive and professional looking, but it also helps increase your ranking in search engines. Using rich keywords to describe the topic of your post and placing this in the URL will enable people to find your posts quicker. This is far more effective than sticking to the default permalink which does nothing to increase your visibility.  You can also combine the name of your post with the category that it’s in. This might also tempt readers to look up your other posts on the subject.

To do this:

1. Go into: Settings > Permalink settings
2. Select: Custom Structure
3. Then in the box, type the following: /%category%/%postname%/

This is the first thing you should do after installing WordPress. And if you haven’t done yet, I’d reccommend doing this now.

Following a few simple guidelines can make a big difference to the quality and exposure of your blog

Whether you have only been blogging for a few weeks or even a few years already, there are a few important guidelines to keep in mind. Here are a few tips which will help increase exposure and maintain the quality of your blog.

1. Update your blog as frequently as possible.  Regular updates will not only tempt your readers to keep coming back, but it will also invite search engines to spider your pages more frequently. This is rewarded with increased visibility in search engine rankings.
2. Keep your posts topic related. You should try to define a running theme/topic throughout your blog and stick to it. This will help create a loyal readership who will keep coming back to read up on any new topic related updates.
3. Use rich keywords related to the content of your post. Using descriptive and related keywords wisely will undoubtedly help increase the visibility of your blog in search engine results. The title of your posts acts as a powerful tool, so choose your words carefully.
4. Try to keep your language clear and simple. Don’t forget, your blog can be accessed by anyone in the world and (contrary to popular belief) not everyone speaks fluent English! So watch out for those idioms and acronyms, this should help keep your blog accessible to the rest of the world.
5. Spell check and proof read. Always take a few moments to read over what you have written before you post. This saves any embarrassment and will help ensure that your readers take your blog seriously.

Keep your sites from pointing towards spam!

Third post in the series on maintaining the quality of your blog – the dangers of inserting page rank buttons on your site.

The main problem with installing these buttons/bars on your blog is that they automatically link back to the site you downloaded them from. These sites tend to be created solely for advertising purposes as it’s an easy way for them to get cheap backlinks and traffic by giving out free buttons.

The key issue here is that Google and other search engines consider these sites to be spam. And as we know, any sites linking towards spam are seen to be part of a bad neighbourhood. This ultimately impacts negatively upon the rankings of your site and subsequently reduces potential advertiser revenue.

So keep away from these obsolete and useless buttons as they will do no good for the quality of your site (or its monetization!).

Don't let your content become obsolete!

The second part of our current series on how to maintain the quality of your blog focuses on the importance of updating original content on a regular basis. This is not just to give you general advice, but also to give you an idea of the criteria we use here at LinkLift to examine a blog and its potential value.

It’s a good feeling to make a great blog and generate some money from it. However, one thing many bloggers often ask themselves is if it is still possible to keep making money once you have stopped blogging? Let’s take a look at the answer in a bit of detail…

The decision not to update your blog regularly does not impact its existing quality. This is particularly true when you post quality content (original content, up to date, popular topic etc…), all your old posts are saved and archived safely. However, your blog does lose significance in the eyes of search engines who consider regularly updated content a vital aspect of a site’s quality.

First reason: the probability of receiving new links pointing towards your site drops considerably. People talk (and tweet) less about your site’s content when there is no new material to discuss or debate. Backlinks are one of the most important factors in the eyes of search engines to increasing the importance of your site.

Second reason: is also SEO related (Search Engine Optimization). There is a component of Google’s algorithm called QDF (Queries Deserve freshness) which aims to rapidly index new information as quickly as possible.

So basically, the more a site is updated, the more attention Google is willing to give to it (through its googlebot which “crawls” regularly updated sites more frequently). If you forget your site and decide not to update it frequently, you the run the risk that Google will forget about it too.

1. First risk: your site loses any visibility that it might have gained in search engines
2. Second risk: advertisers who placed links on your site (to increase their own visibility) also lose their own visibility!
3. Third risk: your site risks losing advertising and your monthly revenue will also fall

Even though LinkLift is not an agency that compensates publishers through pay-per-click, a blogs declining readership clearly provokes a dip in advertiser revenue.

Try to keep your links out of "bad neighbourhoods"

Every year we go through thousands of websites to ensure that we maintain a high quality catalog of sites. Once they are approved, we then ask publishers to try and stick closely to our quality criteria to try and keep them that way. However, the task of going through each of the 200 or so elements of “quality criteria” would probably create enough material for a small book (which i’m not sure you’d fancy sifting through) . So what we have decided to do instead is simply pose the question: what can I do to reduce the quality of my blog?

Answer: create links to sites that are considered to be “bad neighbourhood“. These are primarily sites related to the 3 P’s: Pills, Porn and Poker. Whilst it may seem financially rewarding in the short term to link to a “bad neighbourhood” site, there can be negative consequences and risks in the long term to your blog.

Let’s take a look at each category of the 3 P’s in a bit of detail:

The first P: Pills

This category relates to all types of pills and substances such as Viagra, anabolic steroids or any type of forbidden drugs. According to the law, it is forbidden and considered a serious offence to sell these type products by mail without a valid medical prescription. It is important not to links to such sites, especially those selling Viagra (only available on prescription) which can be ordered without a valid prescription.

The second P: Porn

Porn sites are not well ranked by Google. It is not clear why, however,  Google often removes porn sites from the top ranking results. The most suspected reason is that Google views porn as not apporpriate for the wider public. Therefore, linking to porn related sites can have negative consequences for your own blog’s ranking.

The third P: Poker

This category relates to sites such as online casinos, gambling and of course…poker! If you are not already linked to one of these sites, try to avoid it. A lot of online casinos are often based in tax havens which provoke tense relations with certain countries that often try to block the advertisement of these sites on search engines. The bottom line is: search engines associate poker and related sites as spam. And linking to spam damages the integrity of your blog.

Google’s selection criteria can often be ambiguous, however, there is little doubt regarding their position on spam. Try to avoid linking towards Pills, Porn or Poker sites for the following reasons:

• You will run the risk of being penalised by search engines
• Your blog can be considered part of a “bad neighbourhood”
• Advertisers will not want to buy links from sites that are regularly pointing to “bad neighbourhoods”
• Google doesn’t like the 3 P’s and neither do advertisers

If you want to maintain a high quality blog, remember to avoid linking toward the 3 P’s. This comes naturally to most bloggers; however, it’s worth bearing in mind the reasons why. Furthermore, remember to keep your site protected by keeping up to date with the latest WordPress or CMS versions to keep out any potential hackers from secretly creating these links. We often see good quality blogs inadvertently infested with links to Viagra or poker sites without their knowledge.

A good way to check this is to perform the following request on Google:

site: myblog.co.uk poker

or

site: myblog.co.uk Viagra

And so on, and so on…

Is your blog well protected?

It has been almost two years now since Google announced controversial plans to penalize paid links, a decision which provoked a considerable reaction across the online community. At the time, it seemed fairly straightforward:  paid links were bad and if you were caught buying or selling them, your PageRank would take a hit. But the question of whether Google is really capable of detecting paid links has long since been in question. So what is the situation today?

As you may have guessed, this post is not a birthday message. It is actually in response to recent announcements by the search engine to remove the famous green bar which indicates PageRank from its Webmaster Tools. So what provoked this change of position?

According to Susan Moskwa, a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst:

“We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true.”

In other words, Google is trying to say that we have known for a long time that PageRank is not the key indicator of a site’s value. So what does this change?

1. For SEO professionals: Nothing. PageRank only helps SEO’s that have little idea about optimization (apart from the fact that PR gives a good indication of how fast pages will be indexed). It has been clear for a while that PR only plays a minor role in evaluating a site’s value and its positioning.
2. For webmasters: not much either. PR still remains in the Google toolbar, even though it is has been devalued by its developers. All in all, Google shows that the green bar is nothing but a well orchestrated marketing tool. It feeds speculation for millions of webmasters and internet users that don’t really know true sense of PR.  The webmaster community can  in revenge start to slowly become aware of its devaluation.
3. For advertising agencies specializing in the promotion of text links (like LinkLift). This doesn’t change much either. LinkLift has been at the forefront of the latest developments in Google’s algorithms for over three years now and we have closely monitored the evolution of thousands of sites. We are well aware that other key factors other than PR have to be taken into account.  Here is our list of key criteria:

• Age of the domain
• Quality of backlinks (relevance, age etc…)
• Quantity of backlinks
• Quality of content
• Frequency of updates
• Number and quality of external links on the domain (relevance; no “bad neighbourhood” links : porn, pills, poker)

To conclude, we are not surprised by Google’s turnaround. It doesn’t surprise anyone in the SEO community, and we have in fact been waiting for this announcement for a while now. This development simply introduces the possibility of finally pushing aside what has been viewed as an icon in the webmaster and blogger community. We should remember that:

1. Google will always need blogs to optimize its index, which includes those who sell links or have low PageRank.
2. Bloggers can choose to blog for themselves and the blogging community, and not for an internet company based in California.

Bloggers and advertisers alike can choose to create and establish link partnerships with whoever they wish. That is why there are specialist agencies which exist to help facilitate this process.

Pay-per-click and flashing banners are not the only advertising options open to bloggers and webmasters!

Over the last ten years, the “blogosphere” has seen many changes and developments…

Long gone is the era of conservative, one-way and hard to set-up “web-blogs” that dominated the nineties. Thanks to dynamic publishing platforms such as WordPress, everyone is now free to enjoy and benefit from interactive easy-to-use platforms that virtually allow anyone to become a potential blogger.

The rise and influence of the “blogosphere” has also given the blogging community the opportunity to make some money back from their site through a diverse range of advertising options open to bloggers and webmasters to explore.  However, according to a recent survey by Technorati, 72% of bloggers surveyed (2,828 respondents in the US) reported to make no income from their blog. This group regard themselves as “hobbyists” and chose not to make any financial gain from their blog or site. But why not fund your pastime to help develop your site further or compensate yourself for those hours spent developing unique content created for others to enjoy?

The topic of how to make money from your blog continues to provoke eager discussion in the online community. Whilst most bloggers would like to earn some income from their site, the fear of losing editorial control or the vision of flashing banners taking over their homepage often act as a major stumbling block to pursuing the idea any further.

However, sponsored reviews, pay-per-click ads, flashing banners and annoying pop-ups are not the only advertising options available to bloggers (and high traffic is not the only determination of a site’s value!).

So how is LinkLift unique and how can even small personal blogs and websites make money?

• Here at LinkLift, we specialise in the promotion of text links and we value the quality of content created (not just the traffic that it generates!).

• LinkLift doesn’t pay according to the number of clicks or traffic generated from a website. This way bloggers and webmasters can focus on developing high quality content without worrying about how to attract thousands of visitors before making any money.
• LinkLift only takes a 30% commission, whereas other competitors regularly take 50% commission on the price of a link sold.
• LinkLift pays a fixed monthly fee to publishers with links usually configured for around one year or more.
• The quality criterion (which allows us to determine a fixed monthly price) is not based on traffic generated. We look primarily at the age of the site, the quality & uniqueness of the content, the number & quality of backlinks which exist and the visibility of sites on search engines.

So if you are interested in making a fixed monthly income from your blog and prefer a discreet text link ad (instead of a flashing banner darting across the screen), sign up and give us a try! You don’t need a high traffic blog or site, just some good quality content which is updated regularly.

Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

guy.fitzpatrick (at) linklift.net

Over the past two months LinkLift has not only had its third birthday but  the UK department has also officially gone live!

I am the new country manager and I would like to welcome Guy  to our team. My name is Aishah (pronounced eye-sha!) I am from Brighton and the other guy Guy (!) is from Manchester. We both studied in the UK and have moved over to beautiful Berlin for work and to enjoy the city but mainly to BUILD LINKS!

We have a very diverse team here with people from across Europe and even Latin America. We offer our service not only in the UK but also in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Latin America.

Right now, in the UK department, we are building up our database of websites so are avidly looking for anyone who wants to make money with their .co.uk site.

We offer a service that caters to each individual in order to find the best way to monetise each site the most effectively. Our service sets us apart from our competitors because we offer a fixed rate per month. This has made us a popular option amongst webmasters throughout EU and Latin America so far and we are hoping it will make us appealing to the UK market too!

So, for tips on how to optimise your site and advice on the best ways to earn cash with your projects, STAY TUNED!