Now, I know that many websites that have been around for awhile tend to have more backlinks than others. This is especially true if your site covers a very popular topic. But where most webmasters make the fatal mistake as far as rankings are concerned is in the arena of manging those backlinks. Managing backlinks isn’t as involved as many people think. In fact, often times, it can be done as fast as it takes to make a cup of coffee in the morning.

Let me explain in greater detail. In an earlier post, I mentioned that a backlink is considered a vote for you in the grand search engine poll. So, in the opinions of many people, the more backlinks that you have directed to your website, the better your rankings. And for most websites that is true. But there is a way that those backlinks can hurt your rankings. So, by our definition, managing your backlinks is, in fact, the act of monitoring the sites that link to you to make sure they don’t develop negative rankings.

There is a simple and easy way to do this. If you use a program called SEOElite (and you can download it at www.seoelite.com), you have the option of viewing the information for all the sites that link to you. Included in that information is the Google PageRank of those sites and SEOElite can get this information for you in an organized manner quickly. Although I believe that Google isn’t everything that you should look at when it comes to seo, they are one of the best. Google has a very powerful algorithm that is changed constantly and is updated to include new things. Google is also the standard by which most websites are measured. So the PageRank of a site is very important when it comes to monitoring those backlinks.

What you need to do is to compare the PageRank of your site to theirs. You most assuredly want the PageRank to be equal or for theirs to be slightly higher than yours. If yours is higher, it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is something to monitor. I say this because having a lot of backlinks where the site is significantly lower can hurt your rankings. So be very careful about sites that are of low PageRank (2 or lower).

Next, I suggest that you put this information into an Excel spreadsheet where you can continuously monitor the progress of those backlinks (especially if you have fewer backlinks). If a site has a trend of repeatedly low PageRank or is lowered over time, you might consider contacting that site to have your link removed.

Developing your backlinks is easy, managing your backlinks is more difficult, but with a little bit of work, you can be successful.

You know, most people have an outstanding website and wonderful products. But their website prevents them from having a good ranking in the search engines because of the items they use to present their site. This is a common problem when webmasters use ASP session IDs, java script menus and flash intros or whole flash websites. The problem is created in the fact that most search engines cannot browse through java and flash and most completely stay away from session ids due to the fact that they could end up on a completely different page every time. So, how do you remedy this situation?

Well if you have a sitemap on your site, it certainly helps. See what a sitemap does is to layout all of the pages of your site in an easy to understand html language format. Search engines love this because it’s like giving them a table of contents on your site without them having to search every single page separately to find them all (possibly missing something that can boost your rankings significantly). In fact, search engines love them so much that, often times, it’s the first thing they look for on your site. It simplifies their job and improves your visibility at the same time.

Now it isn’t always the case that the search engines can see every page. This is true when it comes to flash programming. If you have designed your site using Macromedia Flash or part of your site is even designed with it, you run the risk of not being visible to the search engines. They can’t read that stuff. So even if you create a sitemap with a site that is fully designed in Flash, you won’t have any luck.

When you design a sitemap, it doesn’t have to be fancy like all the other pages on your site. You can even just post a logo on the page and have an alphabetical list of pages or place them in the order that you please. It is a very good idea to post a link to the sitemap on every page of your site. I say this with certainty because if someone happens to link to a certain page on your site and the search engines pick that link up, you want them to immediately know all of the pages that are included in your site in case they can’t see some of them.

Now, there is a technology out there that can not only help you gain visibility at Google, but can also inform them of new pages added or changes made to your site. It’s called Google Sitemaps and you can find out much more than I can tell you by going to the Google Sitemaps page. In it’s most rudimentary form, a Google sitemap is an xml document. XML is a programming language that is being highly used in rss technology. There are tags that you can use in XML language to inform Google that a page has been updated. Many people find this useful because you can always keep Google in the know.

Following the Google guidelines, you would create a page by page map of your site (and there are programs that can help you do this) and upload it to your server. Then you would tell Google exactly where the sitemap is and they go out and check it for updates DAILY. Yes you heard me right. Google can know about changes and new pages added to your site within 24 hours. Now this is not to say that your new pages will be added to the index in 24 hours, and it doesn’t mean that your Ranking will improve, but it can help you to alert Google to new changes on your website.

This new technology is currently still in beta testing, but it has helped me to increase my rankings at several of my sites and no doubt will be embraced soon by thousands, if not, millions of webmasters.

So if you are’t currently using this technology, look into it soon because there are many websites that can help you put one of these together. I also know of a program that I currently use to create my sitemaps and while I can’t promote it here, if you are interested in using this program, send me an email to johnpwooton@gmail.com and I will give you all the details.

Good Luck

Starting today, I am going to be doing something new with this blog. In the sidebar, I will post my backlink count. This count is not from one search engine, but is total from these search engines:

Sympatico
Gigablast
Altavista
Google
Hotbot
Goo
All The Web
Fireball
Yahoo
MSN
Yandex

I have been tracking this figure for the past several months and have noticed the great improvement of this figure and want to share with all of you the success of performing the right search engine optimization. The reason I chose not to do just one search engine is because every search engine tends to vary, so by doing a total of all of the SE’s I can give myself a better balance of backlinks when one search engine changes and others stay the same.

The figure will be updated every couple of days as the indices change so visit often and see how you can be a success with the right tools.

You know, when your business grows, it can be a wonderful thing to celebrate your success by informing the world through a press release. It gives you a great feeling of satisfaction and pride that you have done what is right to ensure future success. But many don’t really know the power of a press release and it’s ability to help you rank better.

See, if you were to search for a particular news topic using the search engines, Yahoo and Google will post the most recent information first before going to their rankings. And they get that information from the press releases that we write. So in fact, it is possible to have the #1 spot in the search engines very quickly without a lot of effort. In many cases, this happens quickly and often benefits you with a lot of backlinks.

So what do you write about. Your business is unique. You have your own niche and you know the customers you are targeting. So write about how your business solves the problems of your target market. Describe the revolutionary way in which you are unique and how your process is different and highly targeted.

Most importantly, you want your press release to be intriguing. Why else do you pick up the newspaper to read an article? Because the author or reporter has written it in a way that makes you want to read it while presenting the information that you desire most at the right place. It’s not always about what you are writing, but how you present it. Your article could be about different ways that your restaurant can cook ramen noodles, and I might still read it and follow up on it because you, the author, write it in a way that makes me want to dine there.

Do a search on the best ways to write an present a press release. Many of the articles you will find have been written by reporters and companies that have had success in using press releases to their advantage. And make sure you keep an open mind. Creativity is difficult to grasp sometimes.

Once you have your press release, you want to submit it several different places. First and formost, you want to make sure you place it somewhere on your website. Outside of that you should submit it to article directories, and to press release websites. For a good example of article directories, read my previous post on article submissions. And for a few good examples of press release websites, check out these:

http://www.prfree.com
http://www.empirenewswire.com
http://www.prnewswire.com

These are very good examples of press release submission companies that give you options. The most important factors you should focus on are whether or not they submit to search engines and how wide their submission spread is. With that information, I believe you should be successful in submitting to the right company.

Keep in mind, that not every search engine optimization campaign will be successful. But with a little bit of determination and some guidance you can be successful.

Did you happen to see the most recent changes to your rankings on Google? Recently, Google announced an update to their index, code named, “Jagger”. This update included new sets of backlinks as well as an updated PageRank. The changes were made very quickly and should be by now complete. If you haven’t checked your numbers on Google, take a few minutes and check them. Also, if you haven’t downloaded the IE toolbar that will show you your Google PageRank, do that now so that you can be informed as to your PageRank. Many have seen that their PR’s have increased, while others, specifically spam sites have seen their rankings decrease.