That’s right, this is not a new change at all in the way the nofollow attribute works, nor is it a new update from Google. Those changes were in place and effective since last year already.

So whatever effect this had on your site or not, depending on what you have been doing, the truth is that you have been living with it for about a year now.

So why all the buzz?

It’s simple once again people thought that they were smarter than Google, and once again they have been proven wrong.

The rel=”nofollow” is a link attribute that has been created by Matt Cutts back in 2005 with sole purpose to combat spam abuse on blogs. You know, when people comment just to get a backlinks, even more so when the comment in question is not really a comment…

One particularity of this attribute is the fact that it prevents link juice to flow through the link it’s attached to.

Some people started then to extrapolate on this theory and began using the rel=”nofollow” not to combat spam anymore, but rather to control the flow of their link juice, thus trying to prevent as many "leaks" as possible towards other sites.

Well, you know the saying, selfishness is never rewarded!

So, since the last year update of the rel=”nofollow” attribute, this one is no longer bouncing link juice for people to accumulate for themselves, but instead will absorb that link juice.

What does it mean?

This simply means that the link with the rel=”nofollow” attribute won’t get link juice from you, but also that you won’t get any more link juice either by nofollowing a link.

If you are using the rel=”nofollow” to prevent spam abuse on your site, then you probably haven’t see any difference at all, and won’t be affected in anyway by this change.

If you are using the rel=”nofollow” to control link juice, then you may get disappointed because it’s more likely to work against you than for you.

Now that said, most of you probably haven’t noticed that change either way, simply because for site sculpting (through methods similar to the use of rel=”nofollow”) to have any bit of effect on your site, this one should have at least 1,000 pages…

So if you haven’t yet published 1,000 posts on your blog, that’s just one more reason not to be alarmed. That being said, unless you have a mega site with 100,000 pages or more, there’s no benefit for you to do site sculpting.

In fact building more quality backlinks is way more effective to increase your PageRank and link juice volume than trying to do some sort of sculpting.

It’s like trying to build your online business empire on a dial up connection because it’s cheaper than ADSL; focusing on making more money will be much more rewarding than just trying to save a few bucks on your internet connection.

I already can hear what some or you are thinking:

“Should I remove the links on my comments?”

Sure enough, if you were to remove the links on your comments, you’ll be preventing some of your link juice to flow away, but again consider whether the trade is worth or not. I’m pretty sure that if you do that, the number of comments on your site will drop considerably.

Personally, readers are worth a lot more to me than a bit of link juice.

Lastly, I want to talk to you about a popular misconception:

“The more I will have links on my page, the more I will lose authority!”

Wrong! Your page authority level is defined by the incoming links, not the outgoing links, so regardless of whether you don’t have links on your page or if you have 100 of them, your page authority will remain the same. What will be affected however is the amount of authority this page can transmit onto other pages.

In Conclusion

This discussion about the change in the rel=”nofollow” is made much bigger than it really is. Don’t focus on saving link juice but rather acquiring more of it!

Just like in sport, the athlete should focus on victory and not on what if he can’t make it; likewise in business, we should focus your time and energy not on wondering what we would do if we fail, but rather putting all that time and energy to make sure we succeed.

See how huge is internet and how much link juice is out there waiting to visit your pages!

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Thanks for visiting and supporting this blog of mine. For those of you who are new to my work at home blog, as a small gesture of my appreciation, the Top Commentator for each month will be recognized and rewarded with one of the sponsor prizes. I’m making a little tweak in terms of who gets which award provided I received at least 2 other sponsors with a total of 4 prizes. I’ll let you pick your own award and the top commentator gets to choose this followed by the others.

My sincere thanks and appreciation to the sponsors for adding some spice into the flavor of this fun Top Commentator contest.

June’s Sponsors

1.Work At Home Blog (Me) offers a free 125X125 Banner and text link ad (both 1 mth)

2. Ben Pei from BenPei.com offers a free banner design, any size.

3. Toan from http://chotoan.com offers a free 125X125 Banner (1 mth).

You Can Be A Sponsor Here

I am looking for more sponsors to add some excitement to this Top Commentator Award. I’m now seeking out sponsors for July month’s TC Award. Do you like to sponsor paypal cash, banner ads, text link ads, ebooks, blog reviews just to name a few. This will not only give our readers more reasons to give comments on this blog but give sponsors good exposure to your blog. You’ll also get backlinks with your chosen anchor text. Your links will always be on this post as well as on the post announcing the Top Commentator Award. I hope more of my friends or readers would be a sponsor here. Just leave a comment if you are interested to be one. I will be really grateful!

July Sponsors

Lee Kahoong of Make Money Online offers a free 125X125 Banner (1 mth)
Ben Pei from BenPei.com offers a free banner design, any size.
3. Toan from http://chotoan.com offers a free 125X125 Banner (1 mth).
[next]

This Top Commentator for the month of June goes to …(drumroll) Alan Mater. I can see Alan coming to my blog almost daily giving his support and sharing his vast experience both as a blogger and Internet Marketer. In fact the last two months he missed out getting the top commentator award by just a whisker. I just realized he has broken tradition here by being the only top commenter who did not write a guest post here (got the hint Alan ). So Alan thanks for sharing your knowledge, wisdom and supporting this humble blog of mine and helping other newbies who visit here too. Congratulations on your well deserved award.

The following persons will receive the sponsors’ awards:

Legit Business Opportunities - a free banner design, any size from Ben Pei
Make Money Online - please comment and advise your choice of award
Nicolas Prudhon - please comment and advise your choice
Lax transportation

Now what do the rest of the Commentators get as a reward? You’ll get link love from yours truly of course as a gesture of my appreciation to you for supporting and contributing your comments on this home business blog.

Top Commentators-Jun 2009

• Alan Mater (31)
• Make Money Online (30)
• Nicolas Prudhon (30)
• Lax transportation (27)
• Vitamins (25)
• internet marketing reviews (24)
• Jewelry Making Supplies (23)
• Make Money Blogging (20)
• Xbox 360 cheats (9)
• Home-Work-Newbie (8)

Grab The Bookmarketer For Your SiteSimilar Posts:

• Top Commentator-Feb 2009
• Top Commentator-Jan 2009
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All my websites and blogs including this Home Business Blog are NOW hosted at HostGator.

I have to say in our Internet Marketing journey, we sometimes have to make many tough decisions. While some of them were good, and you pride yourself for having good foresight, there could be others that sometimes come back to haunt you. The thing is there is never a perfect business, a perfect marketing plan or a perfect solution to our problems.  We sometimes deal with the problem when it comes or we take action when we can’t let it go on the way it did. Like my good old web hosting

.

Why Did I Change My Web Hosting

The cost is one BIG factor…. I was paying $15 each month to host my home page and another $5 for each new domain I included. That is a hefty $30 per month expenses for almost 2 years although additional domains were only added recently. Since I switched to Hostgator, that’s a good 200% savings I’ve enjoyed as I now pay $9.95 with unlimited domains. Now I don’t have to worry about incurring additional costs each time I think about purchasing a new domain.  Not that I go crazy about adding new domains, but it’s nice to be able to start a new website or a blog when there is good reason to do it. Like working on a profitable niche website.

The Trend Towards Niche Products

Of late everyone I speak to or whose blog I’ve visited seems to be focusing on a niche marketing strategy or in the process of creating a niche website. I have to admit I myself have joined in the bandwagon just to see if there is light at the end of the tunnel. Yep and Hostgator helps to make it a little easier to do this than before.

A New Web Host Offers New Tools

One major reason that convinced me to switch to a new host provider was the fact that my old host (Host4Profit) does not provide C-Panel capability. I remember once having to ask a friend to help me install a new blog and it took him 20 minutes to complete the process. Yeah and all the time laughing at that old dinosaur and exclaiming “this is so 90’s”.  In Hostgator I’ve twice set up my WP Blogs in 4 minutes using Fantastico. Glad I don’t have to rely on anyone to set up my own blogs. Whew!

Why I’ve No Regrets Changing Web Host

It’s just been one month after changing to my new web host (I haven’t even been billed yet as the first month is a mere 1 cent charge with the coupon, but so far I’ve never felt happier with their support and service. Absolutely impeccable! I like it that each time I send in a request, it provides an automatic acknowledgment and from my experience someone actually attends to me and provides a solution within half an hour, yes even in the wee hours. I actually started promoting it before even before using it - not quite what I usually do whenever I recommend something to someone. So I guess it now seems practicing what I preach all over again.

Some things you should do before you finally pull the plug

Don’t be too quick to cancel your old web host just because you’ve found your new web host provider. Remember to take care of these things first:

• transfer all your domains to the new web host. Hostgator gives a free transfer to one selected primary domain.
• after all domains and files successfully transferred, change the DNS (domain name servers) to the new web host provider and check your websites to make sure everything looks OK. That’s how I found out some missing images on my blog and Hostgator checked and fixed it.
• When everything seems good, do a one last check. Check your IP address to confirm that your sites are loading from the new web host servers. It’s a little technical here, Hostgator or your new host provider will guide you.

Share Your Thoughts

I like to do a review of some good web hosting on my review blog eReviewer. So do you have a good web hosting or have you like me just recently changed yours? Tell us your experience - good or bad. We like to hear from you.  You can be sure that I may use your recommendation for my review if they are good. So over to you….

Wanna know how Pot Pie Girl makes $3000 a week using her ‘One Week Marketing ACTION Plan’. Read my ‘One Week Marketing Review and grab her first 18 pages sneaked preview FREE! Grab The Bookmarketer For Your SiteSimilar Posts:

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• How To Start Making Money With Adsense

There seems to be no short of blogs making money with adsense or at least trying to. Indeed the way blogs are created nowadays seems to be totally different from when I first started my very first blog. My first blog was set up primarily to compliment my online business opportunities homepage, used more to promote the products I offered and as a means to effectively communicate with my readers and subscribers. Today things are pretty different. Niche marketing seems to have taken the online world by storm and niche blogs seem to have found their way to everyone’s lives. There’s definitely increased interest in bloggers trying to come to terms with this evolution and finding the best possible techniques in making money with adsense. To what extent this unsurpassed level of interest grows remains to be seen but I suspect it’s going to get even more exciting.

Here is a review I’ve just written today on my new review blog entitled “How To Increase Google Adsense Earnings“.

But before you do that, just remember if you ever want to increase your adsense money a little more, I’m also using the lazy way to do it:

If you have found interesting ways to increase Google Adsense Earnings I hope that you will share them with us. Just put a comment either on my eReviewer or this blog and share with us how you did it. We really like to learn any new ways that we have not tried out. Over to you….

Wanna know how Pot Pie Girl makes $3000 a week using her ‘One Week Marketing ACTION Plan’. Read my ‘One Week Marketing Review and grab her first 18 pages sneaked preview FREE! Grab The Bookmarketer For Your SiteSimilar Posts:

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Going along with the recent post of Peter, Article marketing is probably one of the most discussed topics in my forum with people asking me daily whether or not it really helps with SEO.. People are divided between 3 categories when it comes to talk about article marketing on internet:

1. People who love article marketing.
2. People who hate article marketing.
3. People who don’t know about article marketing.

This article is for the people in the 3rd group, namely the ones who have no experience with article marketing and are wondering what its worth.

What is Article Marketing?

Article marketing is an online strategy that consist of you writing a quality article (in theory), and making it available for other people to use and republish on their site. Of course, since all labors require compensation, you’ll be rewarded for your generosity with a one way backlink towards your site, as well as a short biography of yourself. Here are the traditional steps taken:

1. Write an article.
2. Submit it to an Article Directory.
3. Wait for your article to be reviewed and approved.
4. Once your article is approved, it will be made available to visitors of the Article Directory.
5. People download your article.
6. People publish your article on their site.
7. You get visitors and backlinks from all the sites that re-published your article.

Your personal involvement pretty much stops at step #2, after that you can just sit back and relax, everything else is automated and doesn’t require your participation. Depending of the article directory you submit your piece to, it can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few months to get your article reviewed and approved. Also, keep in mind that all articles submitted are not automatically approved, so take the time to write properly.

Why You Should Love Article Marketing?

When it comes to SEO, article marketing offers an incredible feature, and that’s to build a potentially unlimited and constant flow of one way backlinks towards your site. The leverage on article marketing is huge as one person only needs to write an article once, submit it to a specialized directory where more and more people will then re-publish it giving you more and more one way backlinks without you having anything to do for it. Each of the articles have submitted in the past is being reused 300 times in average at least. That means for each article I wrote, I got over 300 one way backlinks. Another interesting aspect of those links from a SEO stand is the fact that they come from diverse domains, which is a great thing, and that they don’t appear all at once, but rather over time as all the people don’t publish your article at the same time. It’s a onetime effort, and a lifetime one way link building machine.

Why You Should Hate Article Marketing?

There’s a sound difference between theory and reality. Most of the articles in those article directories are of very low quality and some really limit spam junk. This having for resulting effect that you are very unlikely to ever get your article noticed further than the article directory itself. If spending so much effort for that, you are better of publishing on your own site instead. Even if your article get picked up, more often than not, it will be by automated scrapping software, and your article will be published on a rubbish site where no one will see it. Not only no one will see your article and you won’t get traffic from it, the pages where your article will be published are most likely to be in the supplementary index, if indexed at all. In SEO term, this means that the backlinks you get from there are worthless. At worst, you’ll get dishonest publisher who won’t give you credit at all, and steal your work to make it theirs. Article marketing ends up being a huge waste of your time, resources and talent. If you want quality backlinks, there are many other ways to do so.

In Conclusion

The truth is that no one side is more right than the other. I personally like article marketing as it helps in many other ways beyond SEO, such as branding to me. I’ve got thousands of visitors coming from those republished articles to my site, and in some instances was even lucky enough to get my articles in pages on the primary index and get people commenting on them, building valuable SEO backlinks and reputation for myself. On the other hand, I’ve also experienced people trying to steal my content, and honestly, majority of the backlinks I’ve got don’t bring any or much link juice. If you really plan to get a high PageRank, I don’t feel that article marketing is the way to go for you. On the other hand, if you plan to increase your exposure, or do increased of deep linking on your site, I would strongly recommend you to include Article Marketing as part of your SEO campaign.

Grab The Bookmarketer For Your SiteSimilar Posts:

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• Article Marketing

As always I’m pretty excited to announce my top commentator and May seems almost as good as last month ’s fantastic number of comments received. 97 comments were received just from my 3 top commentators out of a total of 226 comments from my top 10 commentators. Really amazing number of comments. Thanks for visiting and supporting this blog of mine. For those of you who are new to my work at home blog, as a small gesture of my appreciation, the Top Commentator for each month will be recognized and rewarded with a free one-month 125×125 ad banner on this blog. May month seems to be the second month I managed to get 2 sponsors from my 2 buddies Lee Kahoong and Dennis Edell to contribute some prizes too. But I AM looking for more sponsors for June TC Award (oh come on my friends, be my sponsor will ya?)

May’s Sponsors:

1. Work At Home Blog (Me) offers a free 125X125 Banner and text link ad (both 1 mth)

2. Make Money Online Lee Kahoong offers a free 125X125 Banner (1 mth)

3. DirectSalesWebMarketing Dennis Edell offers $10 via paypal

You Can Be A Sponsor Here

To give a little more excitement to this Top Commentator Award, I’m now seeking out sponsors for June month’s TC Award. You can sponsor paypal cash, banner ads, text link ads, ebooks, blog reviews just to name a few. This will not only give our readers more reasons to give comments on this blog but give sponsors good exposure to your blog. You’ll also get backlinks with your chosen anchor text. Your links will be on this post as well as on the post announcing the Top Commentator Award. I hope more of my friends or readers would be a sponsor here. Just leave a comment if you are interested to be one. I will be really grateful!

June’s Sponsors

1. Work At Home Blog (Me) offers a free 125X125 Banner and text link ad (both 1 mth)

2. Ben Pei from BenPei.com offers a free banner design, any size.

3. Toan from http://clickkt.com/ offers a free 125X125 Banner (1 mth).

4.  [next]

This Top Commentator for the month of May goes to …(drumroll) Lee Kahoong of Make Money Online. Well with 40 comments, Lee has contributed lots of ideas and shared with us his experiences in money making blogging and he was a guest blogger on this blog too. So Lee thanks for sharing your knowledge and bringing some cheer to those who have learned a thing or two from you. Congratulations Lee.

The following will receive the sponsors’ awards:

Make Money Online (40) - a free banner design, any size from ME!

article drip robot (31) - a free 125X125 Banner (1 mth) from Lee KaHoong

The Medical Billing Trainer (26) - a $10 via paypal from Dennis Edell

Nicolas Prudhon (26)- a text link ad (1 mth) from ME! You will be informed by the sponsors very soon to claim your award. Now what do the rest of the Commentators get as a reward? You’ll get link love from yours truly of course as a gesture of my appreciation to you for supporting and contributing your comments on this home business blog.

Lee as my top commentator for May, please provide me your banner details for me to upload it here. You earned it buddy! Nicolas, send me yours too.

Grab The Bookmarketer For Your SiteSimilar Posts:

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If you’ve gone through my blog archives, you would have noticed that I don’t have many posts on article marketing. That’s not to say I don’t believe in it or know how essential it is for getting backlinks and free traffic to your website or blog.

As always I’m pretty excited to announce my top commentator and May seems almost as good as last month ’s fantastic number of comments received. 97 comments were received just from my 3 top commentators out of a total of 226 comments from my top 10 commentators. Really amazing number of comments. Thanks for visiting and supporting this blog of mine.
I stopped writing to article directories temporarily for at least a year because I wasn’t getting any traffic then, despite getting lots of backlinks. I used that break to focus on other aspects of the business, blogging being one of them. Well now I’ve resumed doing article marketing. Want to know the reason why?  Well I am now doing freelance writing articles and every week I write at least 5 articles and publish them at selected article directories. But most importantly I found the mistakes I made that caused me not to get much traffic for the articles I posted one year ago.

Article Writing Mistake #1 - Lack of Article Marketing Research

When I first started article writing I did so without doing any research on how successful authors write and the techniques they used. My mistake was to just focus on the relevant keywords and start cracking. As a result, my posts were generally too long. The correct technique is to write short articles about 270 - 300 words.

Article Writing Mistake #2 - Article Contents not Scannable

Whenever I visit an ezine site looking for ideas, I usually don’t like to read long articles. I’ll just read the first paragraph and moved on. However if it’s long and has good sub headers, I’ll just read these headers only. If they are long, without eye catching presentation, I skip them. I realized now I was guilty of many of these same article writing mistakes then.

Article Writing Mistake #3 - Article Headlines didn’t grab my readers’ attention

I learned that in an article, there are just 2 places where you can grab the attention of a reader. The first is the title or headlines and the other is the bio text. Looking back, I have to admit most of my articles’ headlines or bio text could have been better written in these 2 areas.

How you can use these article marketing tips to help improve your web traffic?

1. Reaching out to more people

If you think you have written a good article, don’t you want to share it with others. When you choose this method of submitting your articles to ezine directories, nothing really stops you getting the traffic. If you are are new marketer, it gives you better results than writing on your new blog which may not be indexed, have no traffic or no search engine ranking. But when you submit to article directories, all it needs is good content and good article writing technique to bring in traffic.

2. Get High Search Engine Ranking

Even with a short article, you could make it search-engine friendly by optimizing your article using good keyword phrases that can give your articles a high search engine ranking.However avoid using too many keywords. In fact for a 300 word article, I usually use about 3 keywords.

3. The Use of Readers’ Comments and Testimonials

When you received good reviews and testimonial, put them to good use on your website or blog. Find a relevant post in which you can use them to promote your products or substantiate an opinion on your topic of discussion. It does give you that extra weight besides looking nice on your blog or website as it helps to build your reputation, or the authority that you site projects or at least tries to.

IMHO testimonials are very powerful statements as they come from people who shared similar experiences or who have just used and loved your product or services. Sometimes they serve as your customers’ deciding vote before buying your product.

Final Thoughts

Even after one year of neglecting article marketing, I’ve finally realized how much I could have gained had I known some of the things I learned only recently. But on the other hand I prefer to look to the future and not what could have been. I’m pretty fired up on article writing especially after having learned some of the best kept Article Marketing Secrets from the gurus.

I’ve been very encouraged by the good article stats I’m seeing in my Ezinearticles submission. In fact it was this one post which got 100+ views the day after it was published that got me curious as to how that came about, something unheard of when I last wrote articles for them.

Wanna know how Pot Pie Girl makes $3000 a week using her ‘One Week Marketing ACTION Plan’. Read my ‘One Week Marketing Review and grab her first 18 pages sneaked preview FREE!Similar Posts:

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There are dozens of ways to attract more readers to read our blog post and stick to our blog for days and the method of writing a blog post might affect a first time visitor to stay or leave. I’d actually participated in Darren Rowse’s 31 Days Build A Better Blog project a few days ago, I’d learned a lot from this project. At the 2nd day of the 31DBBB project, he wrote about writing a list post. I’d compiled some information and written my list post, it was “66 Professional Bloggers You Should Follow“. With this list post, I’d attracted a lot of new visitors to my blog and the list post received tonnes of page views as well.

When we talk about make money online, traffic is what we want, especially organic traffic or search engine traffic, because only organic traffic could convert well into money. Writing a list post is easy, simply write your article and list your points in point form, list post must not be a long one, a short one will be better as well. Writing more great and interesting list posts could be able to make you money online indirectly, this can be explained further.

As I told you above, organic traffic is what we want in order to make money online, in order to get more organic traffics. Of-page optimization is very important, such as number of quality backlinks that point to your blog with the relevant anchor tag. With that said, list post is what we should be practicing to get more quality backlinks. Based on my experienced on the “66 Professional Bloggers You Should Follow”, I’d added more than 66 professional bloggers into the list post, after this I’d received a few backlinks from other bloggers who wrote an article and linked my list post.

How To Write A Good List Post

1) Numbering your list
We should always be practicing this while writing a list post, numbering your list, easy for yourself and your readers to read them. Sometimes your list is long, numbering them should be good in reading.

2) At least 10 items in your list
If you’re going to write a list post, this means that you should have dozens of ideas about the topic for your list post, it’s not ideal to make your list post with less than 10 points. If you don’t have enough points, you can save your post in draft and keep adding more points into the list post day by day when you have the ideas, publish it once you have enough points in the list post.

3) Link back to your older post into the list
You can always link back to your older post into the list post. Let’s say you’re writing about “10 Tips How To Improve On-Page Optimization”, and you have an older post talks about “A Good Title Tag And Description Help Your SEO”. In this case, you can add this post into your list and insert a link back to it, you can get the list longer and make your blog sticky because they will spend more time reading your older blog post if the older post is interesting.

4) Make your long list post in series
Sometimes you have dozens of ideas and points to add into the list post, say 160 points. In this case, you can separate the 160 points into a series, let’s say 2 series, 80 points each. Try not to waste your interesting list post in only 1 post, make them 2 series. In this way, you can get backlinks from other bloggers. Besides this your readers who read the first series might be excited enough to come back and read the 2nd series, so you’ll have more and more returning visitors.

5) Ask your readers to continue adding the points into the list
Always ask your readers help to contribute or share their ideas about the list post. As you know, knowledge and ideas from 2 persons might be different, so your readers might have more different points compared with yours. You should give a backlink to your readers who contribute a new point to the list post, as a credit to them, I believe that they would be happy to contribute and share.

6) So, it’s your turn to add your points into this “non list post” and make it a list post. Kindly share your points below in the comment box.

In Conclusion

Writing a list post might have the chance of getting backlinks, but there is no guarantee. It’s the same for me, I linked to more than 66 bloggers and wrote the list post, I didn’t know whether they’ll be linking back to me, it’s all about “Give and Take”. Bear in mind, don’t be too mindful about this, just write your interesting and unique list post, people might be more than happy to link with you in future.

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Knowing the Difference

Choosing the right blogging platform is essential in maintaining a blog. Remember that you have to assess your skills before picking the right platform to use. There are those that may require advance technical skills involving the use of Javascript or HTML. There are also those that require a certain fee to keep the web space running.

Blog platforms come in two types: Hosted Blog Platform and Stand Alone Blog Platform. A Hosted Blog Platform is by the word itself “hosted” by a particular server using their own domain. More often than not, these are the widely used blog platforms in the internet; the standouts include Wordpress, Blogger and Livejournal. The process of site customization is not that intricate and tedious for Hosted Blog Platforms. There are user-friendly codes that you can use to manage your account. Most layouts are ready-to-use and the packages are usually cheap or free of charge.

A Stand Alone Blog Platform, on the other hand, aims for personalization. Your blog can be noticeable with its own domain and with modified applications. A number of the existing Stand Alone Blog Platforms include Movable Type, Expression Engine and b2Evolution. These platforms can configured to your own liking and have various plug-ins that are constantly updated.

Getting the Criteria

Since each person has different skills in using online softwares, you may also opt to create your own criteria in choosing your blogging platform. Remember that in doing so, you must think of which possible server can best maximize your site visibility.

Plug-ins. One effective way to make your blog stand out is to insert plug-ins. These are usually additional features that serve different purposes. To guard your guestbook against spam, you may indicate the requirement of typing codes. You may also tag related articles depending on the topic of your entry as well as RSS and Syndicate features.

Budget. Make sure you know how much you want to spend. The bigger your budget is, the more chances of purchasing a better domain. You also have to make sure that you get your money’s worth by choosing the platform that you can manage and configure on your own.

Tech-savvy. Know what you can and cannot do. Although the platform may be promising in its applications, you have to make sure that they are useable. Some blog platforms are also not compatible with other media sites like Flicker, YouTube or Photobucket.

A Piece of Advice

It always pays to research on your own and to check if some of your friends are using those platforms. Most of the time, the best advisers are the current users of the application.

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If there was one simple way of summarizing the major changes made by Google it would be to say that Google is looking for results as “natural” as possible.

Perfect is not Natural

Imperfection is the name of the game. Clearly doing great SEO work be it on site or off site certainly helps a lot; yet doing too much of it can hurt you too!

I don’t think I need to elaborate much on on-site over-optimization, most of you probably have heard about that recently.

You know, when you place too many keywords too well located in a too consistent manner on your page, it triggers a signal to Google that you are doing something with the intention of influencing the search engine ranking.

Google doesn’t like that at all, and before you know it, you could be relinquished to the rank of a spammer… not so good.

This is why your on-site optimization should have some flaws, not major ones of course, but your optimization shouldn’t be “perfect”.

One major trigger is often the abuse of keyword in ALL the “alt” text of your pictures. Sometimes having a link to the home page labeled “Home” may just work better for you than a nicely optimized “Make Money Online” in this regard.

Off Site Over Optimization

If most of you are aware of on-site over-optimization, I’m pretty sure however that you hardly ever think of off-site over-optimization.

We all know (though I hope you do by now) that off-site optimization is probably the most important factor in calculating your ranking position in the search engines.

It’s all about inbound links and their anchor text.

Getting a lot of inbound links is great and getting them with powerful anchor text is even better, but like for on-site optimization, too many good things become a bad thing because it’s not “natural”.

Unnatural Link Growth

Google is very wary about abnormal link growth. Sure enough, your exponential link growth could be due to your excellent marketing skill or use of a viral marketing tool and in such case you shouldn’t worry too much thanks to the new upcoming link velocity algorithm.

On the other hand, if your work has been “enhanced” by joining one of those programs that will get you 10,000 links instantly, or even simply 100 (depending of your usual link growth rate), you’ll trigger a red flag signal to Google.

I know, if you are really conscious about your site and your SEO this is relatively unlikely to happen but nonetheless I have to mention it to you.

However, what comes next is an entire different story…

Anchor Text Abuse

Ah… the so ever famous anchor text… people use it and abuse it over and over.

Depending on what anchor text is used, we know that a site can rank very differently for given keywords. This is why it’s very important to choose your anchor text very carefully.

So, what is a “natural” anchor text?

A “natural” anchor text would be anything that people would normally use to refer to you or your site. The most common choices are your brand name (if you have one), your name, or your website name.

Now you have to agree with me that someone you don’t know is very unlikely to link to you referring your site by writing something like:

“I recently came across this great site [link]refinance your mortgage, mortgage for all, instant refinancing for student and unemployed[/link] about mortgage financing.”

Instead, the anchor texts are more likely to be something like:

• “I recently came across this great site [link]http://www.example.com[/link] about mortgage financing.”

• “I recently came across this great site [link]Finatec[/link] about mortgage financing.”

• “I recently came across this great site about mortgage financing by [link]John Doe[/link].”

• “I recently came across this great [link] mortgage financing site[/link] by John Doe.”

If more than 10-20% of your anchor text links are optimized ones instead of the more “natural” ones, you may raise again a red flag and may get the value of those backlinks devalued too.

This is another cause of loss of PageRank recently alongside with the “unnatural link exchanges” devaluation.

In Conclusion

SEO is very important for your site, and I’m aware that you are conscious about it. Being penalized for over-optimization doesn’t mean that you are a spammer; it just states that you are trying too hard.

So keep in mind, too much good is bad when it comes to SEO with Google.

Keep things natural and allow yourself not to be optimized all the time for everything everywhere!

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