SEO For The Common Webmaster

I have run across many webmasters who use the excuse that they do not have the time to do Search Engine Optimization for their websites. They create tons of great content and they set up a beautiful website with all the frills and wonder why they get no traffic. I want to shake them and tell them that SEO is not an option, it is a requirement.

Creating a great site is nothing if you do not do everything you can to help people find your website. This is done through quality SEO. I understand that people are crunched for time and they often do not have the time for everything. My answer is this, if you do not have time to prepare your taxes, do you just not do them? No, you hire a professional accountant or tax preparer. If you do not have time to fix your car, do you quit driving? No, you hire a mechanic to fix it. These are all things that are important and required in life.

Guess what? SEO is just as important if you plan to be successful as a webmaster. If you do not know how to optimize your site or you just do not have the time, it is time to get help. A SEO Company can do all the work for you. From optimizing your keywords to building back links, a quality company can make your site search engine friendly and easy to find.

No more excuses, as a webmaster you have two choices when it comes to SEO. Either make the time or do as many other webmasters do and hire a professional SEO Company to do the work for you. Either way, you can no longer afford to ignore the importance of SEO.

When looking to promote a website, it is important to advertise your site. One of the best ways to advertise is to get a Website Review on a blog. This will give exposure to your website from all the readers who visit that blog.

Reviews can cost anywhere from free up to $700 depending on the blog you choice to review your site. There are so many blogs on the Internet that it is important to look for a blog that offers good quality writing. If the blog is well written, chances are that readers will want to visit it. This means more possible visitors to your website.

Another criterion is looking at the page rank of the blog. This is very easy to check with many tools available on the Internet. A blog with PR will pass some juice to your site and offer a boost in your PR. However, do not overlook newer blogs that could be cheaper now but will have PR later. These blogs are just starting out but since Google updates PR once every 3-4 months, they will most likely have PR soon. A good way to see if they are building their PR is to check Google for links pointing to their blog.

When purchasing reviews, you should look for blogs that match the topic of your website. If you can not find the exact topic, find blog who appeal to the same audience as your readers. You would not buy a review on a blog about women’s issue if your blog is about video games. Use common sense and you will be able to find many blogs to meet your needs.

The final thing to decide is who writes the review. Some blog owners write the review for you and others require you to write it. Both ways is ok but make sure you know upfront who is writing before you pay. Remember, the review does not always have to be all positive; the important thing is to get your site advertised. However, if you are looking for only positive reviews, make sure you have that agreement up front.

Website reviews can be a great way to advertise but make sure you get what you paid for. The review should be professional and give value for the money you pay. This will ensure a long term advertisement of your website or blog.

I am asking my readers if they could benefit from a directory added to our site. This would be a free directory and the only fee would be for featured links. The directory itself would be a sub domain of this blog but I would promote it separate from this blog.

I know there are thousands of directories already on the Internet so I am wondering of there is any need for another one. Will it add value to this blog? Will it benefit the readers?

Please leave a comment in support of a directory or stating that you do not think you and the blog could benefit from a directory.

Also, what is a fair price that I should charge for featured links?

One of the best ways to increase back links for blog and website owners is by adding comments to related topic blogs. Of course, some are no follow links and some are do follow links. I explained in my post Checking for No Follow Links how to tell the difference.

The key to getting good back links from a blog comment is to offer something in return. People write blogs so that they are read and hopefully appreciated. With that in mind, when you leave a comment, read the post and comment something constructive about the post. Stuff like “thanks for the info”, “wow that is interesting”, and other small meaningless comments will most likely get your comment deleted or marked as spam.

Most blog owners do not mind giving a back link to you when you leave a quality comment. Speaking for myself, I own 7 blogs and I moderate all comments. If they are on topic with my post and not just trying to spam, I will approve them. When I leave comments, I always read the post carefully and I will comment with my opinion on the post either agreeing or disagreeing. This shows the blog owner that you are not just spamming his/her blog.

Another thing to keep in mind is that there is only one place to get a link in most blogs. That spot is where it asks for your website URL. Putting links in your comments will only result in no follow links and could result in having your comments removed.

Blog owners are not stupid and they know a majority of comments are done so the commenter can get a back link. However, they will not tolerate spam and will only approve comments that mean something and offer a value to the conversation. Leaving quality comments will not only benefit you with a good back link, it will also keep your reputation intact.

With all that said, get out there and leave some quality comments and build up your back links. It is a very important key in Search Engine Optimization.

I would like to apologize to any of my readers who have had problems accessing the blog. I became aware that there was a problem only yesterday when I was submitting to a directory. Apparently my hosting company’s server has been having problems and they failed to let us know.

I have had this problem before and I did not want to deal with it again. I have switched everything over to a new hosting. I have use the new host for my other blogs and I have had no problems so I signed up for a new account for this blog.

The old host Lime-designs.net was given to me for free because they wanted me to review it. I have been with them for a couple of weeks and I have had other problems with busy server and I also lost a post. I guess free is not always better.

Hopefully everything transferred correctly and we should not experience anymore problems. Thanks for sticking with me.