Important Things To Follow To Become A Successful Webblogger

A web log is a website where a user (a blog owner) post his/her entries in chronological order (commonly displayed in reverse chronological order). Blogs can be created and maintained ranging from different subjects, topics, commentary, news to personal interests like online diaries, photo albums, etc. A blog mainly combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic with the important ability for the readers to leave comments on the postings. Mainly the blogs are created as textual but some blooger focus also create blogs on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting).

Anybody can start and own a blog of his/her interest and post some relevant articles but the fact is very few people can successfully pull it off. Anybody who want to become a successful blogger, he/she need to know some important things:

1. Passion for the Topic
If you choose a topic you love, your passion will show through. If you choose a topic you don't know much about only because of the high paying keywords, that will be apparent as well.

2. Creative and Innovative
You're going to need to update your blog, at the very least, several times a week. A successful blogger is creative enough to come up with fresh, engaging content every time.

3. Good Idea
Not the same idea as everyone else. Not a copycat of someone else's blog. But your own unique, good idea. If you want to make it as a blogger, you have to have great content and a fresh idea.

4. Good Work Ethic
If you think blogging is just writing a quick five minute post and forgetting about it until next time, you couldn't be more wrong. You're going to spend hours on your blog designing it, writing it, promoting it and more. Most bloggers spend two to five hours on each blog every day.

5. Able to Work Alone
Most bloggers work alone. You have to be able to shut out all of the distractions of home or the coffee shop and concentrate on creating a good post.

6. Notebook
You're going to come up with ideas at the oddest times. What if you're not close to your computer? It's helpful to have a notebook or PDA handy so you can jot down ideas.

7. Thick Skin
You're going to be flamed, you're going to be trolled and people are going to pick your blog posts apart and call you names. You can let it get to you or you can develop a thick skin.

8. Thriving Social Network
It helps to have people to talk to, network with, and shoot ideas off of. This will not only help to eliminate the loneliness some probloggers experiences, but by interacting with others you're sure to come up with fresh new ideas.

9. Motivation
What keeps you motivated? Passion for your topic? Advertising revenue? The adoration of your public? Whatever it is, channel it and use it to keep you driven.

10. Longevity
Blogging isn't a fly by night operation. If you want to succeed, if you want your readers to trust your name, you'll want your blogs to last through the ages. The most successful blogs have been around for a few years. It's the people who cut bait and run after two months of blogging that fail.

11. Vision for Long Term
Do you have a plan? Where do you see your blog two years from now? Five years? Ten? A successful blogger has the ability to see into the future. I'm not saying you know exactly what you're going to blog about, but you'll need to think about how your blog is going to succeed for years to come.

12. The Ability to Work Odd Hours
Blogging isn't exactly a 9 to 5 gig. Ideas hit at any time. Many probloggers even work well into the night or the wake at the crack of dawn to fit blogging into a busy day.

13. Willingness to Learn New Things
As a blogger you want to continue to feed your readers new information. This means you'll have to set a portion of your day aside to read other blogs, books, magazines and websites in your niche.

14. Open Minded
Sometimes bloggers need to completely change their line of thinking. What might have worked a year ago, doesn't work now. Tools and techniques become obsolete. Keep an open mind, don't be afraid to admit defeat and always be on the lookout for new trends and ideas.

15. Teaching Ability
Blogging isn't about talking about yourself. It's about sharing what you know with someone else. Many bloggers are teachers, not story tellers. Though the ability to tell a story is also something a successful blogger must possess.

16. Patience
Patience always pays off and similarly blogging isn't instant gratification. It also takes time and patience to build up a successful blog. And if you wish to have instant pay out, stick with copywriting.

Importance of Inbound Links

The perfect and quality inbound links are important to achieve high rankings on search engines. Inbound links are the most important factors for top rankings on major search engines. Its quite difficult for a website with less inbound links, to achieve top rankings for a highly competitive search term. Getting the right kind of quality inbound links is very important for a particular website. Its easy to get better rankings with 25-30 good inbound links than with 100 bad incoming links.

Some important factors that can make any link a good incoming link -

1. The inbound link should use any relevant keyword in the anchor text - if you wish to get high rankings for a particular search term then the links to your website should use the same search term. The anchor text used to link to your site influences the keywords or keyphrases for which the website will get high rankings.

2. The inbound link should come from a relevant website or a page - inbound links from relevant webpages are more useful than any other links from the unrelevant web pages. Although links from unrelated pages will not hurt the rankings of your website but search engines gives priority to the links coming from the most relevant websites.

3. The inbound link should direct to a relevant page on your site - to get links to your home page is better than to get links to the page that is most relevant to the chosen anchor text. If you are using a particular link text then the link should direct to a page relevant to the text. If the link text matches the content of the linked pages then it's more likely that your web page is really relevant to that term and you'll get high rankings for that search term.

4. Link from an authority site is also useful - Links from pages with high authority will increase the TrustRank of your website. Links from websites with high PageRank have a positive effect on the rankings of your own site.

5. There should not be a nofollow attribute in the inbound link - The nofollow attribute is used to tell the search engines not to follow a link. Links with the nofollow attribute can't help in achieving high search engine rankings. Check the HTML code of their link exchange partners to find out if they are using nofollow attribute to link to the website.

If the link building for the website is done on the basis of some simple factors, the website will definitely get the top rankings on major search engines.

Website EvaluationTips

The article will provide you a brief description of:
1. Website evaluation issues,
2. Recommended changes to make the website search engine as well as user friendly, &
3. Get your website ready for search engine optimization process.

Simple concept - "Small changes make a BIG difference..."

Due to the ever changing nature of the algorithms, programming and indexing techniques used by the major search engines and directories, it is always suggested that the website should make the recommended changes to gain faster & better rankings generating higher page rank value for the website.

As we all know that most of the website traffic comes from search engines, thus the implementation of the proposed changes will make the website search engine friendly and help in generating more qualified and relevant traffic to the website through search engines.

Search Engine Compatibility Study

Search engine spiders/ crawlers / bots like standard static HTML pages. Such pages are easy to crawl through and get indexed in search engine database and hence help gain top rankings. They never like dynamic pages, database driven pages, flash pages, and websites with linking done through JavaScript etc.

This study reveals many serious search engine incompatibility features/ elements in the site which will hamper our SEO efforts:

SEO-Straight Issues

1. Server Side Details & Issues

Checkpoint 1: Hosting Details
Server Type (Apache or IIS) & IP Address

Checkpoint 2: IP Spam Blocklist
If the website is potentially on an IP shared with other spammers. Being on a spam block list can have a negative impact on your search engine rankings.

Solution:
The website must be placed onto a dedicated IP address or moving to a different server. The costs are minimal and can be set up through your ISP.

2. Duplicate Issues:

Checkpoint 1: Canonical URL
Major search engines like Google consider 'www' and 'non-www' version of domains as two independent websites and index them separately, thus creating a duplicate website problem.

Solution:
Scenario 1: IIS Solution - If your website is hosted on an IIS Server. In order to solve the canonical URL issue, creation a Google sitemap is recommended and fix it OR place a 301 Permanent Redirection from http://xyz.com/ to http://www.xyz.com/

Scenario 2: Apache Solutions - If your website is hosted on an Apache Server, we recommend placing a 301 Permanent Redirection using ".htaccess" file from
http://xyz.com/ to http://www.xyz.com/.

Checkpoint 2: "Home" & Logo Link
If the "Home" link and the link on the "website logo" on all website pages of http://www.xyz.com are linked to its respective index.html page.

For Example: http://www.xyz.com - The "Home" link and the link on the "website logo" linked to http://www.xyz.com/index.html.

Google consider both these types of URLs as duplicate pages and might penalize one or both of them for duplicate content.

Solution:
In order to solve this issue, we recommend changing the "Home" link and the link on the "website logo" as follows:
http://www.xyz.com/index.html to http://www.xyz.com

Checkpoint 3: Duplicate Domains
The presence of duplicate/ mirror website for your website, http://www.xyz.com. http://www.xyz.com and http://www.abc.com/ share the same content, style and design and thus is categorized as duplicate websites by search engines. Google has also already identified this issue and has placed all website pages of http://www.abc.com/ as "supplemental result".

Solution: We recommend following options to solve this issue:

Option 1: Drop/ Remove one of the above websites, preferably http://www.abc.com/.
Option 2: Re-design one of them to look different.
Option 3: Place a 301 Permanent Redirection from http://www.abc.com/ to http://www.xyz.com.

Checkpoint 4: Duplicate Pages
Presence of internal duplicate pages/URLs within the website. Search engines do not like duplicate pages and penalize the website when found to do so.

Google has already tagged many such duplicate page URLs as "supplementary results".

For Example:
http://www.xyz.com/index.html & http://www.xyz.com/Index.html
In the above example both pages have similar content and design with different filenames/ URLs thus creating a duplicate URL issue.

Solution: We recommend removing such duplicate pages from the website and placing a 301 Permanent redirection from the duplicate page (http://www.xyz.com/Index.html) to its actual page (http://www.xyz.com/index.html).

3. Search Engine Un-friendly URL's
Checkpoint 1(Scenario 1): Dynamic URLs (IIS)
Search engines do not like dynamic URLs mainly because of the presence of variables such as "?, +,=" which creates a continuous loop. Search engines avoid crawling through dynamic URLs for the fear of getting trapped in this loop.

Solution: URL Re-writing solution to re-write dynamic URLs into static URLs
installing 3rd party softwares, LinkFreeze OR ISAPI_Rewrite re-writing tools

Checkpoint 1(Scenario 2): Dynamic URLs (Apache)
Solution: Apache Mod-Rewrite re-writing module

Checkpoint 2: PHP Session ID
Solution: disabling the PHP Session IDs

Checkpoint 3: OsCommerce Session ID
Solution: OsCommerce Admin tools

4. Redirections:
Checkpoint 1: Domain Level Redirection
Domain level redirection is bad from search engine ranking perspective. This is the reason why your website is not even indexed in Google.
Solution: In order to solve this issue, we recommend removing the redirection ASAP.

Checkpoint 2: Cloaking
Cloaking, also known as stealth technique used to deliver one page to a search engine for indexing while serving an entirely different page to everyone else.
Solution: stop cloaking

5. Page Level Issues:
Checkpoint 1: Dead Pages
"supplemental results"
Solution: "301 Permanent redirection"

Checkpoint 2: Orphan Pages
If you have pages that aren't linked to from anywhere else on the website (called "orphan" pages) they won't get spidered by search engines or by anyone else for that matter. Such pages are tagged as "supplemental pages" by Google.
Solution: We recommend that either you completely delete these pages from the server or place a link to these pages from the sitemap page.

Checkpoint 3: Retrieval of Content
Retrieved from another website.
Solution: placing the content/ pages under the same domain/ server.

6. On Body Factors:
Checkpoint 1: Excessive use of JavaScript
makes the pages heavy and difficult to load
Solution: placing all JavaScript code on a file and calling it externally

Checkpoint 2: Heavy Use of CSS
makes the pages heavy and difficult to load
Solution: placing the CSS (Style) code on a file and calling it externally

Checkpoint 3: JavaScript Drop Down Menu
Search engines like plain HTML href tag
prevent spiders from crawling through the website pages.
Solution: including text links at the bottom of the entire page and also placing the pages on the sitemap page.

Checkpoint 4: JavaScript Pop-up
JavaScript popup function
Search engines like plain HTML href tag
disallow search engine robots from crawling and indexing website pages
Solution: directing a plain a href link for all such pages from sitemap page.

Checkpoint 5: JavaScript Mouse over Effects
prevents search engine spiders from crawling and indexing the website pages
Solution: placing the pages on the sitemap page

Checkpoint 6: Frameset
contains no visible content
search engines cannot index framed sites
Solution: placing simple text link at bottom navigation to all site pages.

Checkpoint 7: Use of Class in Href
hyperlinks, class="menu" is placed before the "A href" tag
difficult to link the pages in website
making it difficult for search engine spiders to crawl and index.
Solution: placing the 'a href' code on first and then the class="menu"

Checkpoint 8: W3C Coding Standards
W3C (World Wide Consortium/Internal Standards Organization) coding standards.
Solution: validate your HTML Code

7. Site Maps:
Checkpoint 1: Sitemap
Solution: creating Sitemap page and link it from bottom navigation on all website pages

Checkpoint 2: Google Sitemap
Google sitemap is a tool to allow Googlebot to spider and index all your website pages. It also allows learning about specific problems being faced in accessing the website and analyzing the website's performance.
Solution: creating a Google (XML) sitemap and submit the same to major search engines

8. Links Strategies:
Checkpoint 1: Excessive Outbound Links

Checkpoint 2: Bad Linking Strategy
Avoid artificial links, identical links, link farming. The more sites that link to your websites, the higher your ranking in the search engine results will be because the more links indicate a higher level of popularity among users of the Internet.
Solution: We recommend filing a reinclusion request to Google.

Checkpoint 3: Link Popularity
back links to a website, most important criteria for top rankings. Consider the current link popularity status on search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, AlltheWeb.

SEO or PPC - What To Do?

Its always been a topic of discussion that what is better between SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay per click advertising). Most of the webmasters remain unsure during initial website promotion whether they should prmomot their website with SEO or PPC.

According to various studies and surveys the commercial websites work best if we use both SEO and PPC simultaneously and the exact mix depends on our objectives.

Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)

Advantages of PPC:

• You get instant results. If you advertise your website on pay per click search engines, then you will get traffic now and not several months later.
• PPC ads are perfect for time limited offers such as holiday sales.
• You can stop PPC ads at any time.
• PPC ads make it easy to test different keywords and landing pages.
• PPC ads also work with websites that are not very well designed and wouldn't get good search engine rankings.
• PPC ads allow you to bid on a large amount of keywords, including misspellings and other keyword variations that you cannot put on your web pages.
  

Disadvantages of PPC:

• PPC advertising can become very expensive if you bid on the wrong keywords or if you don't calculate the maximum bid price correctly.
• Click fraud can be a problem. Not all clickers are potential customers.
  If you advertise your website with PPC ads then you should use a ROI tracking tool to make sure that you don't waste your money.
  

Search engine optimization (SEO):

Advantages of SEO:

• Traffic through organic search engine results is almost free if the up-front work has been done.
• After optimizing your website you can use your money for different things and the optimized site will still run.
• A larger number of visitors and search result clickers is not a problem.
• Search engine optimization delivers long term results that don't require permanent financial input.

Disadvantages of SEO:

• SEO can be relatively time-consuming up-front.
• SEO can require a redesign of your web pages to make your website search engine friendly. However, this usually also results in a better user experience.

Search engine optimization delivers lasting results and it costs considerably less in the long term. However, you must make sure that you optimize your website correctly, if your want to get high search engine rankings.

Pay per click advertising and search engine optimization both contribute to the success of your website. If you use both wisely, you can get many new visitors and customers without spending a fortune. See the recommended resources below for PPC and SEO software tips.

Thanks for reading...

Regards,

Akash Dwivedi

Importance of Search Engine Optimization

Why is Search Engine Optimization Important?

Internet has provided useful and innovative ways to revolutionize our daily life by crawling into different dimensions of lives - business, communication, information dissemination, personal relationships. People have made a paradigm shift towards using the Internet to aid them in their daily activities.

People are continuously struggling to get noticed in the world of the Internet. Websites are growing like mushrooms everywhere, every time. How can one's website get past the millions of other websites and eventually be noticed by its target audience?

Search engine optimization aims to achieve the goal of getting more visitors to a website by helping it get higher rankings in the search engines. This simply means that search engine optimization's goal is to make a website appear on the first pages, if not the first page of a search done through the search engine.

There are two ways to be able to get noticed by search engines. One is through pay-per-click-advertisements. A good example of a pay-per-click system that is employed by search engines is the Google Adwords system. It has created a hype and has given Google around 5 billion dollars in terms of revenue per year. Webmasters can place their bids to be shown when a keyword is searched by a surfer. The highest bidders will get their sites to appear first when the search is being done.

The second way of GETTING high rankings from search engines is through organic searches. Search engines evaluate websites by using what they call "spiders." These programs scan the websites and collects information about them. They then collate the information and pass it on to the search engine. This area is primarily the main arena of search engine optimization. It utilizes a set of methods to be able to get search engines to list the website on high ranks.

Traffic
The main purpose of search engine optimization is to increase the traffic generated by a website. Websites are built to be seen by Internet surfers and search engines can help it achieve this goal. The power of the search engine should not be underestimated. It is one of the building blocks of the foundation of the Internet. A survey showed that 90% of all Internet users employ search engines to aid them in their Internet-related activities. Google, the dominant player in the search engine industry, generates 70% of all search-related Internet activity.

People and Search Engines are alike
Search engines behave like people. They like websites which contain substantive information about a certain topic. The best sites usually appear first in search engines because people like them as well as the search engines.

Search engine optimization does not only generate traffic, it helps maintain the traffic. The behavior of the search engine is indicative to the behavior of the people who visit the website. Search engine optimization leads to the optimization of a webpage or a website. It will lead to a website which is more organized and a website which contains substantive information.

The use of the Search Engine to be able to target one's target audience is one of the most effective Internet marketing strategies. It is not like other on-line marketing techniques (such as email marketing) which can lead to a lot of leakages in terms of targeting the right audience.

Search engines segment the market and connect the right people together. People search for topics which they are interested in and this is the main strength of search engines in connecting markets together.

Cost Effectiveness
One can do search engine optimization under the ASSUMPTION that he knows what he is doing. Search engine optimization is a full-time job and has a very long learning curve. This is why most people would resort to out-sourcing the job to experts who are good at what they do. One should be cautious, however, in hiring a search engine optimization company or consultant. Factors such as pricing and service should carefully be assessed before signing a deal. If done properly, search engine optimization is a very cost effective way of getting more people to know about one's products or to know about a certain issue or event that a website is disseminating.

SEO is very important for websites since it determines the position of the website in comparison with its competitors. It does not only generate traffic from the targeted audience but is also a cost-effective way of optimizing the website.

Social Bookmarking and its Advantages

Social bookmarking is the best way for users to search, store, classify and share their Internet bookmarks. Interent savvy users generally store lists or urls of their useful internet resources on a social bookmarking system or network which can be accessible to all the users of that social network or website. It is the best way for users with similar interests can find the useful links by topic, category or tags. The social bookmarking network or system is the fastest and safest way of storing information from your web browser. Some other services specialized to a specific subject or format - xml or rss feeds, images, books, videos, shopping items, map locations, etc.

The social bookmarking system has some advantages over traditional automated resource location and classification software, i.e. search engine spiders or bots. All tag-based classification of Internet resources mainly done by human, who can only understand the content of the resource, whereas the automated software algorithmically attempts to determine the meaning of a resource which provides semantically classified tags, which are hard to find with contemporary search engines. As people bookmark resources which they find useful, resources that are of more use are bookmarked by more users. A system will 'rank' a resource based on its perceived utility. This is arguably a more useful metric for end users than other systems which rank resources based on the number of external links pointing to it.

The classification and ranking of the web resources is a continuous process, many social bookmarking services allow users to subscribe to web feeds based on tags, collection of tag terms which allows subscribers to become aware of new resources for a given topic, as they are noted, tagged, and classified by other users.

List of some renowned social bookmarking sites:
Bloglines
Blue Dot
Chipmark
del.icio.us
Digg
Diigo
Furl
GiveALink.org
Ma.gnolia
My Web
Netvouz
Netscape
Newsvine
Reddit
Simpy
SiteBar
StumbleUpon

Guidelines, Tips and Templates for Writing Effective Press Release

• Press Release Content Tips
• Tips for Press Release Formatting
• Press Release Template
• Common Press Release Errors
  

The following information will assist you when writing a news release for distribution through the PRWeb press release network. A well crafted press release captures the attention of journalists and is optimized for distribution over the Internet, through e-mail and over PRWeb's specialized network feeds.

Note: Some of the information contained in this tip sheet are specific to the PRWeb press release network.

Pay Attention to the Content of Your Press Release

When we talk about content, we refer to the news story you are telling. Keep the following points in mind when writing your press release.

Is your news "newsworthy?" The purpose of a press release is to inform the world of your news item. Do not use your press release to try and make a sale. A good press release answers all of the "W" questions (who, what, where, when and why), providing the media with useful information about your organization, product, service or event. If your press release reads like an advertisement, rewrite it.

Start strong. Your headline and first paragraph should tell the story. The rest of your press release should provide the detail. You have a matter of seconds to grab your readers' attention. Do not blow it with a weak opening.

Write for the Media. On occasion, media outlets, especially online media, will pick up your press release and run it in their publications with little or no modification. More commonly, journalists will use your press release as a springboard for a larger feature story. In either case, try to develop a story as you would like to have it told. Even if your news is not reprinted verbatim, it may provide an acceptable amount of exposure.

Not everything is news. Your excitement about something does not necessarily mean that you have a newsworthy story. Think about your audience. Will someone else find your story interesting? Let's assume that you have just spent a lot of effort to launch a new online store. Announcing your company's opening is always an exciting time for any business, but the last thing the media wants to write about is another online store. This is old news and uninteresting. Instead, focus on the features of your online shopping experience, unique products and services. Answer the question, "Why should anyone care?" and make sure your announcement has some news values such as timeliness, uniqueness or something truly unusual. Avoid clichés such as "customers save money" or "great customer service." Focus on the aspects of your news item that truly set you apart from everyone else.

Does your press release illustrate? Use real life examples about how your company or organization solved a problem. Identify the problem and identify why your solution is the right solution. Give examples of how your service or product fulfills needs or satisfies desires. What benefits can be expected? Use real life examples to powerfully communicate the benefits of using your product or service.

If you are reporting on a corporate milestone, make sure that you attribute your success or failures to one or more events. If your company has experienced significant growth, tell the world what you did right. Show the cause and effect.

Stick to the facts. Tell the truth. Avoid fluff, embellishments and exaggerations. If you feel that your press release contains embellishments, perhaps it would be a good idea to set your press release aside until you have more exciting news to share. Journalists are naturally skeptical. If your story sounds too good to be true, you are probably hurting your own credibility. Even if it is true, you may want to tone it down a bit.

Pick an angle. Try to make your press release timely. Tie your news to current events or social issues if possible. Make sure that your story has a good news hook.

Use active, not passive, voice. Verbs in the active voice bring your press release to life. Rather than writing "entered into a partnership" use "partnered" instead. Do not be afraid to use strong verbs as well. For example, "The committee exhibited severe hostility over the incident." reads better if changed to "The committee was enraged over the incident." Writing in this manner, helps guarantee that your press release will be read.

Economics of words. Use only enough words to tell your story. Avoid using unnecessary adjectives, flowery language, or redundant expressions such as "added bonus" or "first time ever". If you can tell your story with fewer words, do it. Wordiness distracts from your story. Keep it concise. Make each word count.

Beware of jargon. While a limited amount of jargon will be required if your goal is to optimize your news release for online search engines, the best way to communicate your news is to speak plainly, using ordinary language. Jargon is language specific to certain professions or groups and is not appropriate for general readership. Avoid such terms as "capacity planning techniques" "extrapolate" and "prioritized evaluative procedures."

Avoid the hype. The exclamation point (!) is your enemy. There is no better way to destroy your credibility than to include a bunch of hype. If you must use an exclamation point, use one. Never do this!!!

Get Permission. Companies are very protective about their reputation. Be sure that you have written permission before including information or quotes from employees or affiliates of other companies or organizations. Any dispute resolution will favor the other company, meaning that your press release may get pulled.

About your company. Your press release should end with a short paragraph (company boilerplate) that describes your company, products, service and a short company history. If you are filing a joint press release, include a boilerplate for both companies.

Thanks for reading

Best Regards,

Akash

Useful Tips For Getting Top Rankings ...

Reference URL: http://searchengineland.com/070530-115447.php

How do you get what you want on page one for your brand phrases? When facing negative content at the top of the SERPs, it’s a challenge many companies want to conquer very quickly. The good news is that it is doable; it’s just that not many people talk about how to do it.

If you have unfavorable content ranking for your brand, the best approach is to just get the favorable sites on the Internet to outrank the unfavorable site, pushing the unfavorable down to page two.

How do you do this? You merely need to give the favorable sites a nudge, by increasing their link popularity.

The prep work:

Your first step is to identify the favorable web pages that you would like to be on page one. In our last Brand-Aid article, What are Search Engines Saying About Your Brand?, I wrote about how to evaluate the SERPs for brand protection and identify potential sites to boost for your brand phrases. I recommend you select about 20 pages to help boost in the SERPs.

The second step is to review each potential web page for all of the factors you would consider for determining the likelihood of your own site to rank—page copy, page title, links, etc. Create your short list by weeding out those that have little potential for reaching the top 10 positions. Remember, you cannot optimize the page copy, so evaluate the page copy during this assessment.

The third step is to take your short list of favorable web pages to the public relations department for review. Public relations departments are somewhat picky in selecting what to highlight. I once found an article where a company was runner up for a very prestigious award; since the company was a runner-up, not the winner, the article was removed from the short-list. While it may seem cumbersome and add to the timeline, my recommendation is to incorporate PR from the beginning, because having them on your side will be an asset later.

Time for action: 13 tips for boosting favorable web pages to page one

Once you have the PR department’s blessing, you’re ready to proceed with building links. Here 13 ways for boosting favorable content to page one:

1. Review the “About” section of your website for opportunities to incorporate links within your existing content.
   
2. Look at your site’s customer service pages for linking opportunities. By using the right copy and design treatments you can highlight customer service accomplishments and awards, while helping to boost rankings of favorable sites—making it a win-win solution.
   
3. If your company has won several awards, create an awards page and link to favorable articles highlighting the awards you have won.
   
4. Be proactive with upcoming news articles by teaming up with your PR department to see if they have the chance to influence keyword phrasing in quotes and/or links in write-ups about your company. If possible, incorporate keywords and/or get links to the favorable pages that you are trying to boost. Be forewarned, while opportunities to influence the media exist, they are quite limited, so don’t put a lot of eggs in this basket.
   
5. If you have a recent article released about your company, or know of an upcoming favorable article, arrange to get home page real estate and a clean link to the article, even if it's at the bottom of the homepage, below the fold. This is a highly powerful link and will have a nice impact for boosting the article’s rankings.
   
6. Look for industry wikis that have followable links. Incorporate useful contributions, and include a link to pages that you are trying to boost. Wikis with followable links are getting rare, but they are out there, so dig around and see what you find.
   
7. Find blogs with followable links that talk about topics related to the pages you are trying to push to page one. Offer a strong contribution about how your company has an interesting approach, include a brief explanation and a link to the page you want to boost.
   
8. If it’s an interesting article, submit it to Digg, StumbleUpon, Netscape, Reddit and Delicious.
   
9. Seek out bloggers in your industry and ask them to write about your company and link to the article. You may need to offer some form of compensation for this one, so keep that in mind as you pursue.
   
10. Find websites that talk about your company and request articles about your company to be added as additional resources.
    
11. Many companies issue press releases for featured articles and awards, often these press releases contain links to the correlating web page. Work with your PR department to strategically write the links to contain keywords and get the press releases submitted to news search engines via wires such as PRWeb.
    
12. Leverage your partnership network. Many companies have partners who offer a page highlighting their partnerships. Look for those that offer individual pages that talk about each company, and inquire about opportunities to expand your description and link to third party articles or web pages that talk more about your products or services. Expect that most of the partners will decline, but even one or two links would make a nice addition to your efforts.
    
13. Leverage your closest affiliate relationships. Each company reacts to this one differently, but it’s worth a shot if you’re facing negative content that you want to make disappear quickly. If you have great relationships with affiliates, consider partnering with them to get links to the favorable web pages from a page on the affiliate’s website. Bear in mind that the affiliate wants to rank for your brand so it could be a challenge to get them to link your targeted pages, which means you may need to pay for this content to be added. While it may sound odd to pay your affiliate for these links, it could be worth the price to boost favorable sites to page one.
    

As you build links to favorable sites, be sure to log everything. You see, your biggest challenge is that you have no control over the site you are trying to boost, putting you at their mercy. Speaking from experience, keep great notes. For one client we finally got a great article to page one, and a month later the publication changed the URL structure and the old URL took users to a 404 error page, leaving us back at square one. The lesson learned was to keep very good notes so that you can go back and contact the sites that were kind enough to add links to sites with favorable content.

With this information you can form a strong plan of action to start to influence what the SERPs are saying about your brand.

Have more ideas? Leave a comment.

Reference URL: http://searchengineland.com/070530-115447.php

Thanks & Regards,
Akash