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Completed So Far:

So far, we have covered pretty much all of the basic information we need to know on how to optimize a blog so that search engine bots and spiders can find the site and rank it high on search engine results pages so that visitors can also find it. The final basic search engine optimization technique looks at the third type of link, incoming links.

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New Developments:

Of the three types of links (internal, outgoing, and incoming) incoming links are by far the most difficult to achieve, and, of course, are one of, if not the most important search engine optimizing technique you can have on a website/blog.

Incoming or inbound links are links that are made from someone else’s website/blog to your website/blog.  These links connect the two sites, encouraging visitors, and search engine bots and spiders, to travel for one site to the other. Like everything else related to search engine optimization, there are different qualities of incoming links.

The best incoming links are:

• from sites that are highly ranked
• are relevant to your topic, and
• use relevant and searched for keywords.

Incoming links that are not so great include:

• links from link farms
• link exchanges from sites that have no relation to the topic that your website/blog is about.
• purchased links. These can get very expensive and be quite risky. In fact it could backfire on you if you have to many of this type of link on your website/blog.

Techniques that you can use to use to generate incoming links are often referred to as ‘link bait’ and include such things as:

Use great 'link bait' to attract high quality incoming links. source: lalajean, Flickr Creative Commons

• creating great content. Useful, informative, well written content can generate interest in your site and encourage other website or blog author’s to link to your content as a way to enhance their content
• interlinking your own sites. If you write more than one website/blog, then you can generate incoming links to each of your sites from the other one(s). Be careful not to overdo it. Search engine bots and spiders can detect if too many of your incoming links are from the same server as your site, and they don’t take too kindly to that.
• using search engine directories. Most, if not all search engines have directories, lists of websites and blogs that have been accumulated and sorted into topics. Google’s directory can be fond at http://directory.google.com/. There is some question as to whether the effort of getting your website or blog listed in a directory generates enough traffic to you site t be worth the effort.

ProBlogger’s book, ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income lists some ‘link-bait’ techniques that can be used to successfully attract incoming links to your site:

• Tools: create a useful, fun, newsworthy or interesting tool.
• Quizzes: create quizzes, surveys, and tests.
• Competitions: organize a contest or drawing with a valuable prize.
• Scoops: be first with the news or to try something new.
• Awards: create an award for your niche.
• Lists: create a list of the 10 best blogs in your niche, or the top products, etc.
• Statistics: do a survey and release the results.
• Freebies: give away something of value.
• Interviews: interview a celebrity or someone popular in your niche.
• Resources: create the ultimate resource of reference for a topic.

By following the search engine optimization techniques and by updating your site regularly, you should be able to attract both searching spiders and bots, and visitors to your site.

There is a quick and easy way to check to see if Google’s spiders and bots have been to your site and listed all of the contents. Go to the Google search site and type: site:(yourwebsite’surl), which will generate a list of all the pages and posts that Google’s spiders and bots have located. So, for this blog, I would type site:www.agelessnomads.com to check out this site. You’re welcome to type that into Google if you’d like, see what pages Google finds on this blog.

You can also check to see if any other websites or blogs have linked to your site. Again, go to a Google search box and type in link:(yourwebsite’surl). This will generate a list of all the websites or blogs that have linked to yours.

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Next Step:

An extra step in Search Engine Optimizing Your Blog is to explore some of the more advanced options for adding keywords. These techniques take us out of the realm of WYSIWYG and into the realm of HTML and Meta-tags. Fortunately, this step is really not as difficult as it sounds.

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If you liked this post, you can read this series on Search Engine Optimizing Your Blog from the beginning by going to the Introduction post.

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