As a writer, blogger, or business Web site owner, it’s important to get your message out there and have people read all of the great content that you are working on. The Google Panda update that happened last year (2011) added some significant changes to the rules of the game, many of which I think are for the best.
Google is working on addressing (fixing) the old spammy techniques of getting your site known that used to be effective. Ignoring these changes and continuing with old Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques can now actually be counter-productive and end up ranking your site lower in the search results than when you first started. Things like meta tag keyword stuffing, keyword density, and submitting the URL for your site to anyone around are no longer viable options.
One of the take-home messages Google is giving Web site owners is that quality matters. This means both the quality of the content on your Web site as well as the quality of the sites linking back to you make a big difference. Having 1000 links from low quality sites linking to your Web site will have very little impact on your search engine rankings, whereas having just a few links from respected Web sites will increase your site’s rankings.
This has led to the popularity of high page-rank blogging platforms such as Squidoo, Wizzley, and Zujava.
The advantage of this type of site is that Google considers content and links that you add to your Squidoo articles as authoritative content that will boost the page ranking of your primary Web presence.
There are several keys to finding and working with high page-rank sites. They must:
- Have high search engine ranking strength (links from low ranking sites won’t really help you)
- Allow you to add content that is related to your external site and have more content from your sector (ie: technology)
- Allow you to add links to your external site
- Not apply a rel=”NOFOLLOW” tag to your links
- Actively work to rank your content higher (ie: by featuring articles you write)
- Pay you for advertising revenue they make from your content
- Not require a reciprocal link (reciprocal links diminish the quality of the link in the search engine’s eyes)
Justin Cooney 