Earlier today I read a great blog post by Lisa Udy, entitled Want More Google Juice For Your BLog? Here's The Ticket. In it, Lisa emphasizes how important linking is to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and gives some great ideas on how to build links, where to go to list your blog or website so more people will know about it, and some great advice on differentiating anchor text. If you don't know what I just said, I suggest you go read her blog!
Links are such an important aspect of SEO, that many people end up going "Link Crazy", linking all of their Social Networking sites to one another and to their blog, to their website, then linking everything back until what you end up with is a sort of spider web of web links.
What you may not realize is that 2 way links do not give you maximum search engine optimization. So if you have your blog linked to your website, and your website linked to your blog, search engines will notice that and will place less value on those links. If you think about it, this makes sense, because otherwise it would be too easy to game the system. The reason links effect SEO so strongly is because a link is a good indicator that there's some good content at the destination of that link. Think of a two way link as one hand washing the other. Both sources respect one another and link to one another its a trade. Truly good content doesn't have to bargain, or trade for links. People are captivated by it and want to share it, therefore they take the time to link to it. In this way, a one way link represents a more organic representation of a websites value and carries more weight in Search Engine Algorithms.
If you want to verify this you can use Yahoo or Google's link checker and you'll notice that they don't register sites in which there are 2 way links. You can also read Wikipedia's definition of Methods of Website Linking - Please notice Multi-Way Linking.
I imagine you reading this with a scowl on your face, wondering, ok then how do I get more links to my blog, and more links to my website...what can I do to increase my SEO? I'm so glad you asked! ;-). There is a way to make your blog and website work together as a linking machine. It's called a link chain, and I'm going to attempt to explain to you how it works, or at least how I use it.
The first thing I do is have my ActiveRain blog announce my new blog posts into my Twitter stream. You do this by going to the settings option on the sidebar of your profile. It's easy. All you do is provide your twitter username and password and ActiveRain makes an automatic announcement in your Twitter stream every time you post a new blog. (See Below)
Of course the key is to have at least one, if not several links to your website embedded in your blog posts. Again, read Lisa's article above for some great ideas how to do this. You want to link your blog to your website as often as possible (Write a blog post everyday that includes links.) in order to get the best results. I like to write about how to help businesses get more business by getting more referrals in order to highlight my website. Just to re-iterate, this whole process is designed so that all of your links from your AR blog go to your website, but your website never links back to your AR blog.
Now you're wondering how you get more links to your blog.
To make a chain you have to add another link. I did this by creating what I refer to as a "Drone Blog" through Blogger. This is the blog that my website links to. The sole purpose of this blog is to provide links to my ActiveRain blog. I never write content for this blog. It's not another blog that you have to write for, at least not the way I use it. Instead of writing content, I recycle content from my ActiveRain blog. You're probably thinking that it sounds like a lot of work, copying and pasting blog posts, etc. That's not what I do at all. If I were to do that, I would end up with a second blog that had a lot of links back to my website (the website links to the second blog, so the value of the links would be canceled) and that would be a waste of time. I know this can get confusing, so I want to just emphasize - what I'm doing with this "Drone Blog" is providing a vehicle to have more links to my ActiveRain blog. How do I do that? (See an example of my "Drone Blog"/Summary Blog Below)
Remember a couple of paragraphs ago, I explained how ActiveRain announces my new blog postinto my Twitter stream? By using Tweetdeck I can now email that abbreviated announcement, which contains - A LINK TO MY ACTIVE RAIN BLOG POST! The great thing about my "Drone Blog" through Blogger is that I can post a new blog just by emailing it to a specific email address that Blogger provides. So I email my New Blog Post Announcement from TweetDeck to my Blogger "Drone Blog". I have a signature line set up in my email account that contains my name, my contact info, and a link to my website. When I email this infomation, my email signature line along with the New Blog Post Announcement from Twitter ends up getting posted to my "Drone Blog" as a blog post.
The website signature line link back to my website serves two purposes:
1. It directs anyone who should "happen" to land on it to my website, where I actually make my money.
2. It cancels out the link that is coming from my website to the "Drone Blog".
I would never want the drone blog to compete with my Active Rain blog for Google Juice, because the ActiveRain blog has all the great content and my "Drone Blog" is just has a summary. The end result is that the circle is complete and by writing a single post, I'm able to generate to non-competing links to the most important two sites to my business - My Website and My AR Blog. The circle is complete. (See How to email from TweetDeck below)
I also use this strategy with Social and Business networking groupssuch as Facebook and LinkedIn. My profile on these forums links to my website, but my website links to a group or page that I've set up within the forum to promote my business. It's a great way to keep people informed about how connected you are without canceling out the value of those connections.
I hope with the pictures and everything you are able to understand the process I'm trying to convey.
I guess I'll have to see what the comments say! :-D Let me have it, what do you think?
Jason Sanders
Business Networking Specialist
I am not sure I did this right...but I saw the tweet..Thank you
e to you on the phone,,and the tweets worked
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