Ok everyone lets talk about some web stuff here. I have been trying to
increase my website's traffic and popularity.

Those of you are familiar with it may know it as SEO which is short for
Search Engine Optimisation. I have found through a bit of research that
you can in fact have a PageRank of 0 and be listed the number 1 result
on a search. Therefore, you might think that pagerank does not matter
much. While this is true if your are competeing for search phrases like
"interior decoration of ping pong balls", If you are trying to get to
the top of a search for a more common search like "Web Design" you need
a high rating to maintain the first page position. The current leader of
the web design search results box has a 7 page rank. That page is
actually owned by About dot com.


In all I have read the only thing that seems to increase the pagerank on
a page is how many other sites link to your site and what level of
quality and relitivity they have to your site.

Every website on the internet has a monetary value to what a link is
worth. If you get one related website that has a PageRank of 9 to link
to your site your pagerank will increase to a 7. to get the same results
with a page rank of 1 linking to you it would take thousands of links
from different domain name to your site to get there. That being said
most webmasters who make the decision to link to you or not do it based
on the value your site has to theirs or their visitors.

Here is a bit of wisdom:

If anyone asks you to link to their site from yours the first question
that should come to mind is what is in it for me or my visitors.

The second question should be If I do are you going to cleanly link back
to mine?

________________________________________________________________


Ok so now for the big questions.

Anyone out there have ideas on how to effectively aquire backlinks to a
website with decent ratings?

Anyone out there know of a free way to speed up being listed in the
DMOZ? I was previously listed with them but since their server crash
they seem to have forgotten about me. I am still on Google, Yahoo and
MSN as well as several other small ones.

I am not looking for black hat tips to get better ratings. Ia m looking
for more advice on how you might go about getting better ratings overall
as well as a higher pagerank.

HUH ?

I thought this area was reserved for techies till I saw Spay in here.

I am guessing this topic is only understandable by the upper end of the
techie culture.

I wonder what spay thought about the javascript I posted on a different
thread here. I guess it looked like a foreign language to him at best.

Hi Spay.

Kevin, i don't have any tips, but thanks for your post, i learned some
things.

aw kev if I had a clue I would help you out ,, but you are one of the
most knowledgable people I have run in to here ,,sooo ,,I think it is a
bit of an alien language to most ,,I am trying desperatly to learn all I
can ,,your site was VERY helpful its content is very good , and I think
I get what you mean with the page ranking thing ,, the first always are
the best it seems ,,now how you place your self there ,,hmmm good
question.

No problem I will work it out just will take me a bit of time. I have
gotten pretty deep into SEO at this point but it seems so easy. Mostly
common sense.

I have actually done a great deal of SEO work on the home page of my
site Now I jsut have to do the same sort of things on the other 10 pages
or so and have it all done within the next few days before the search
engines come by as well as the april 15 release of the new page rank
bar.

The key is posting it prior to the search engines crawling it.

I just had a bad thought. Imagine if Spay actually worked for the DMOZ.

If you do work for them spay I am sorry just get off that couch and list
my website will you.

Page rank is important and at EES I have been up to a PR6, down to PR3,
back UP to PR5, down to PR0 and back up... and down again. LOL. It blows
your mind sometimes how fickle google is. They used to change the
algorithms every 3 to 4 months or so and plenty of times it did not
matter all that much (1 point up or down) until you drop from 6 to
zip... that does s**k lemons!

The on target linking is somewhat over-rated though. Sure, it matters
but it is not the end all and be all of everything to have a topped out
PR. I got one client on page one of every major SE and listed in the
top 10 sites and he had a COW if it ever listed below the top ten for
his major keywords. He paid me $10.00 a month for SEO maintenance for
his site and griped all the time about THAT TOO. I finally just told
him that if he was not getting orders maybe he should do some of his own
advertising in other places (he had tons of quality links that I spent
FOREVER getting for him.) and not depend only on SE listings. He
thought he was paying me too much. You simply cannot please some
people, no matter how hard you work for them. OOppss, whine, whine,
whine.

I look at PR every couple of weeks but don't freak out anymore as I have
the traffic I need at my long term sites. It does get frustrating
sometimes though... YOU KNOW?

I do work on links all the time, continuously for all the sites. Two
sites that I took down are now back up but with hardly any links to
them. Kevin - I will get with you on this as they are the same type as
yours. I think you might know which ones I am talking about... although
I have plenty of other updates to get done on those.

As far as PR in general, incoming quality links are hard to get on an
ongoing basis and belonging to many "link partner" sites does help but
you also get lots of requests for linking that you would not want. It
can be a hard task, I know, but keep plugging away, it will happen,
sooner or later.

Kevin3824 - I got this in one of the newsletters in my inbox this
morning - funny it came TODAY, just when you are asking!

Here it is:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In this issue:

* How to Get Credit for All Your Inbound Links: Consolidate
WWW and non-WWW Links

I'm always looking for ways to raise PageRank on my sites. Here's a
remarkably straightforward approach that could help
significantly, if you already have a number of links to your site --
though it takes a bit of technical intervention. Ross Dunn's
recommendations in this issue's article are worth going to the trouble
to implement. I did.

God bless you,
Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, Editor in Chief

------------------------------------------------------------
How to Get Credit for All Your Inbound Links: Consolidate WWW and
non-WWW Links by Ross Dunn, StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc.,
Victoria, BC
http://www.wilsonweb.com/linking/dunn-www-linkpopularity.htm
------------------------------------------------------------
Does your website have an alter ego? Strangely enough, the
following addresses are considered separate websites by the search
engines:

* http://www.yourdomain.com (the "www" version)
* http://yourdomain.com (the "non-www" version)

Though visitors see the same content, in the search engine world
this situation poses a serious issue relating to link popularity. If the
"www" version of your website has 300 inbound links and the "non-www"
version has 300 inbound links, then each version is getting credit for
only 300 links rather than the total 600. Here are some immediate steps
you can take to minimize the problem:

1. Make a Choice. Decide which format to keep. I recommend the
"www" version because this seems to be the most common method used to
type in an address. If you agree, use the format
http://www.yourdomain.com on every link you can control.

2. Website Review. Review your website and fix any links that use the
"non-www" version. For example, if you have a link on every page back to
your homepage and it uses the non-www format, switch it to the
www-format.

3. Fix What You Can Offsite. Repair any offsite links that may be
directing traffic to your website using the wrong version of your
address. If you have partnerships with other websites or
advertising campaigns that use the wrong URL, ask them to change
the links where possible.

4. Remove the Problem Entirely. Next minimize the damage of
incorrect backlinks from any other sites by having your webserver "tell"
the search engines that the non-www URL is now permanently redirected to
the www-version. After you do this, if someone types in or clicks on a
non-www version URL, they'll be automatically redirected to the proper
www-version URL. Best of all, search engines interpret this redirect
positively and will forward all link popularity to the www-version URL.
Consequently, you will have consolidated the popularity from both URLs
into a single website which can significantly increase link popularity
and search engine rankings.

Implementing this "server-side 301 redirect" will require the aid of a
technical person comfortable with making website alterations. Refer your
technical aide to the following tutorial: "How to 301 Redirect Non-WWW
to WWW URLs" (www.stepforth.com/faq/non-www-redirect.htm).

Google offers a feature in Google Webmaster Tools
(www.google.com/webmasters/tools/) that allows you to tell Google which
version of your domain to use within the Google search engine. You'll
need to login to an existing account or create a free one for your site.
Once you verify that you control the domain, on the Webmaster Tools My
Sites page, click on the link to "Manage http://yourdomain.com". In the
left navigation menu go to Tools > Preferred domain to make your
selection. Realize, however, that is a Google-only work-around and not a
fix. It's far better to implement the 301 redirect described above which
corrects the problem for all search engines.

Once you've consolidated the value of all the links pointed to
your site you are another step closer to securing better search
engine rankings.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Maybe this will help too. I get the WilsonWeb newsletter delivered to
my inbox when it comes out and usually read the whole thing too. Many
good tips to be had in every issue on a wide range of subjects having to
deal with web site building, ranking, you know, SEO issues.

There is another good newsletter I get um... will have to go look and
see where it comes from. LOL.

Verb

Hi Verb,
I am actually pretty familiar with the 301 redirects already. I am
looking at making a couple pretty drastic changes after the next PR
release which is supposed to happen on or about April 15.

At that time I will probably be changing web hosting services as well as
relisting my site entirely on the search engines with a
http://www.subdomain.mydomain.com solution to my problem here. The thing
is it will not only mean implementing 301 redirects but will also mean
relisting with the search engines entirely. During that waiting period
to be listed on the search engines I cannot have both sites funtional as
that would create duplicate content and could get me banned from the
search engines entirely.

The end result of going with the sub-domain will add alot of weight to
my keywords for my website that I could not otherwise aquire.

I am to the point where the lack of traffic during the changeover period
should not hurt too much more then it already is hurting me. I am hoping
that the local businesses here will recognize my capabuilities within
the next month or so when out of nowhere my site starts getting as high
or higher a PR rating as theirs.

I am also planning on doing an email to each of the local businesses in
the chamber of commerce introducing myself and offering my services to
them. If that does not generate business I will extend that email to
include the members that do not have a site at all listed in the chamber
database.

If at that point it is still not working I live in an area that has
other chambers of commerce available to me locally as well. Being a part
of the tri state area there is a tristate chamber of commerce as well as
chambers of commerce in neighboring counties which comprizes 3 different
states. I live within 10 miles of both NY and NJ which adds 2 more
counties of chambers to my available list.

I have found that you do not even have to be a member to access their
entire list of members contact information typically including their
websites and email addresses.

Go get 'em Kevin! You got a good plan there. Yeah, there are a lot of
newletters that send out redundant stuff but I had no idea exactly what
you were looking for.

Hey if this all works out Verb maybe someday I can convince you and soem
of the others to come out and join me as I am sure there will be enough
work for us all if I do this thing right.