How to check your blog's MozRank

MozRank is a link popularity score given by MOZ. It signifies the importance of any page and is given out of 10. The higher the MozRank, the better it is. MozRank is a logarithmic scale, i.e. it is easier improve your MozRank from 2 to 3 than from 6 to7.

The only way to improve your MozRank is by getting lots of backlinks to your blog from popular and semi popular websites / blogs.

Lets say you have a MozRank 0. Now, getting a few links from blogs that have high MozRank (say 6-7-8) will improve your MozRank more as compared to getting the same amount of link from lower MozRank websites. So, in order to rank high, all you have to do is find high ranking blogs and create inbound links either link swapping, guest posting or commenting.

In this article, I am only describing a way to check your blog's MozRank. There are several third party sites that checks the MozRank of your blog and I am talking about one of them.

How to check your blog's MozRank. 

# Go to http://moonsy.com/mozrank/ to check your blog's MozRank.

# Enter your domain name.

I am checking the MozRank for my blog www.mbblogging.com.

# You will see the MozRank of your blog.

MozRank for my blog is 3.50. Its still on the lower side and I am hoping to improve it. Moz in its MozRank introduction says that an average MozRank of a normal page on the Internet is 3. That means I am a little ahead of Normat :)

Did you check your blog's MozRank? Share with us.

mb.

Read More»

PageRank update on 6th December 2013

Amidst all predictions and Matt Cutts saying - he will be surprised if there is any PageRank update in year 2013, Google finally rolled out its much awaited PageRank update on 6th December 2013. Some webmasters achieved more than what they expected while some of them were disappointed by the results.

What is PageRank? 

PageRank is a 10 point grading scale from Google to measure the importance of a page. It was initially an important factor in determining the search engine ranking of a page in Google Search Results. Google has gradually sidelined its importance as a ranking factor however Google still says PageRank is one of the more than two hundred ranking factors.

How to check PageRank? 

There are numerous websites that may tell you your PageRank. Google used to provide a PageRank toolbar which has been discontinued lately. So, these sites are the only options to check your PageRank.

You can check your PageRank pr checker.

How to Improve your PageRank? 

PageRank is a less important factor these days as a ranking factor, however it still is. The major concern for new bloggers is to improve their PageRank.

PageRank is all about Link building. The more inbound links you have from high PageRank websites/blog, the more you will get your PageRank.Writing high quality content will result in these high PageRank sites linking back to your content. The most natural way to improve your PageRank is to create genuine, quality and unique contents.

You can do it manually too. You may search for high PageRank blogs that accepts Guest Posts and submit your articles to them. Guest posting allows you to put your links in either the content itself or in the Author Bio section.

You can also do it by searching Do Follow commentLuv enabled blogs and commenting on them.

So, what's your rank? 

PageRank was updated on 6tht December 2013. How much you got out of 10?. Share along with your blog's address in the comments.
Since, I am using Blogger's default comment section chances are that putting links in comments may land your comment in spam folder. Don't worry about it. I will restore it as soon as I discover it :)

mb.

Read More»

Where to put keywords on your blog.

Keyword placement is an important part of On page Search Engine Optimization. In this article, I assume that you have the list of phrases for which you want to rank higher and you are searching the place to put these keywords in your posts.

For a blogger, its difficult to decide where to put keywords on your blog and keyword placement is an important aspect that affects your rankings in search engines.

When you build up a keyword list, the next question is to where to put these keywords on your blog. I am not going into the details in this post, rather only mentioning the places which you can use to put up these phrases.

Once in your article's Titles. Titles are the most important place to put your keywords. Always stick to using your best phrase in your titles and creating an interesting and compelling title.

In your article's URL. Try to build up the URL according to the title you have chosen for your post. Using hyphen in between words is a better idea than using underscores since Google treats hyphen equivalent to a space.

 

The title, part of the URL which has been searched, and the keyword phrase in the content has been in bold in search engine results - showing the importance. 

In meta-description. Although Google do not use meta-description for rankings any more, still its valuable in increasing your click through rate in search results. Include a combination of your keywords in meta descriptions.

In header tags <h1>, <h2>, <h3>. You can always include your keyword phrase in header and sub header tags in your post body.

2-3 times per 100 words you write. 2-3% is the ideal keyword density. Including your phrase once for every 50 words is always promoted.

Once in bold, italics and underlined (separately). <strong> and <b> tags are treated equivalent, so you can chose either one. Put your best keyword phrase once in bold, italics, and underlined.

In images alt tags. You can put your keywords in the image alternate texts which is used by the spiders to know about the image and even rank it in Google image results.

In anchor text. Including your article's URL with your keywords as anchor text. However, preacution mmust be taken to not to link the article within the same article. Linking an article "A" in the itself may have negative effect in seo. You still can link your article in another article "B".


Final Words: These are the 8 best places to put your keywords on your blog. Did I miss something? How many of these do you consider while your keyword research and placement?

mb.

Read More»

On-page SEO - Search Engine Optimization for Your Blog

Search Engine Optimization is a process of practicing steps that results in higher rankings. If you are a blogger, you perhaps know the difference between ranking on first page of Google and on the 10th page. First page ranking will bring a hell lot of traffic. There are two parts of Search Engine Optimization - On-page and off-page.


On page optimization for your blog includes keyword density, title and heading tags, meta descriptions, keyword placement, internal linking and URL of your page.  Lets discuss On-page optimization in details.

On page SEO is a process of optimization of factors on a page that affects your search engine rankings. On page optimization is whatever you can do on a page to get a higher search engine traffic. There are various factors that affects search engine ranking of your blog and optimizing these factors will eventually result in a higher traffic to your blog.

On-page Optimization Technique

On-page optimization can directly be controlled by the blog owners by proper placements of keywords, ensuring a better quality URL structure, title and heading tags and much more.

▌ On page optimization for your blog

♦ Content of your blog.

Content of your blog is what will dominate in your search engine optimization practice. Google wants to deliver high quality contents to the the searchers and by practicing some of these points you can ensure a higher listing in Google Search results.

Be original. Google has algorithms that will detect copied contents and will eventually show you the door in rankings.

Keep your keyword density to 2-3%. Keyword density can be broadly defined as the number of times you use your keywords in your articles. Placing your keywords 2-3 times every 100 words you write is the best practice.

Put your keywords at the best place in your blog, in your title, in heading tags <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, in bold and italics and in hyperlinks.

♦ URL of your blog. 

URL plays an important role in your on page optimization practice. Here's an example of my blog's listing in Google search results for the keyword "Increase traffic to Your Blog",

You can see that the keyword phrase of the search in bold letters in both title and URL and in post too. You have to put the your best keywords in your URL.

Do not put lame URLs for your blog like

www.mbblogging.com/1234567890.html

Instead give a proper understandable title like the one shown in the image. The one non SEO benefits is users have to tendency to see the URLs before clicking on a results and the results with best URLs gets a visitors. I hope you understand what I mean. 

♦ Titles and descriptions. 

The above descriptions is true for Titles also. The titles is the outlook of your blog. Most user will be clicking on your blog link in search results while searching for a query by just reading your title. So, put a descriptive title with keywords and avoid short titles.

Keywords are important.

Meta descriptions. Although, Google says meta tags are no more a ranking factor, it is an useful resource to tell the search engine what is your blog/ page all about. You should have a different meta descriptions for each article with your best keywords placed naturally. 

Note: Avoid keyword Stuffing. Limit the use of frequency in your posts, titles and URL to a reasonable rate. Moreover, your keywords should be placed in such a way that it should look as natural as possible. The best way can be, writing an article without thinking of keywords and their placements and after completion of your article, editing it by inserting your best phrase keywords accordingly. 

♦ Internal linking.

Internal linking

Internal Linking is also an important for on page optimization for your blog. In internal links, you suggest your readers about other posts of your blogs. Do not use direct links for internal linking, instead use anchor text to link your posts to each other.

Do not over do it. Placing too much link in a article will eventually result in penalization by Google's algorithm.



       There are several other factors that forms on page optimization technique for your blog. However, these three basic factors are the most important.

If you want to share some more factors for on page optimization technique or want to share your views, do comment.

mb.

Read More»

Tips to Increase Domain Authority.

I have already written an article about What is Domain Authority. Domain authority is an SEO metrics from Moz and is a calculation of how well a domain will rank in Search Engines.

Domain Authority is a logarithmic scale of 0 to 100 where climbing from 10 to 20 is comparatively easier than 50 to 60. It is based on Mozscape web index comprising of link counts, MozRank,  MozTrust scores and several other factors.

▌ How is Domain Authority calculated.

If you want to increase your Domain Authority, you must know how it is calculated. Unlike Alexa, where ranking is based on traffic to your blog, Domain authority is a combination of several factors.

♦ MozRank - It is link popularity score.

MozRank can be improved by getting lots of links from not-so-popular blogs or getting some links from highly popular blogs. It simply means that blogs with higher domain authority will increase your domain authority with a greater value than a link from lower DA blog.

♦ MozTrust - MozTrust is determined by calculating link distance between the source and the link.

MozTrust can be improved similarly as MozRank. Getting linked from web blogs with higher MozTrust is a great way of increasing your Domain Authority.

♦ Linking root domains - It is the number of unique linking domains to your blog. Each domain that is back linking to your blog is counted just once.

You can improve the number of linking root domains through several link building techniques like Commenting, Guest posting. You can even write great content and get yourself link back more naturally.

♦ All links. It is the number of links to your blog domain which includes do-follow, no-follow links.

It is also improved through creating great contents and let other people link you, or through commenting and Guest Posting.

♦ Writing unique and quality content.

You can assume roughly that Domain Authority is somewhat related to link building in a healthy way and it can only be achieved if you write quality contents which the blogosphere find useful for their particular audience and refer your blog to them.

♦ Domain Age. Your domain authority will increase as your domain gets older.

▌ How to check your Domain Authority. 

The best way to find your Domain Authority is Moz's Open Site Explorer tool.

▌ How its different from Alexa and PageRank.

PageRank is calculated solely from the back links and do not includes any matrix such as link diversification and trust score. If you are getting too much links from the same site with high PageRank, you are improving your PageRank.

Alexa is a traffic metrics and the rank is calculated by the amount of traffic your blog receives from the browsers where Alexa toolbar is installed. It do not count the traffic which do not have toolbars. This is biggest flaws in Alexa ranking.

Domain Authority is a combination of several factors and is much harder to be manipulated. It can only be improved by improving the overall Search Engine Optimization of your blog and by practicing natural link building techniques.

 mb.

Read More»

What is Domain Authority.

Domain Authority is the Moz's prediction of how well a web page will rank in search engines. Higher value of Domain Authority means better ranking of websites as compared to other blogs/ sites with same content and backlinks.

Domain authority is 0-100 scale. Higher the authority, better is the rankings in search engines. Domain Authority is a logarithmic metrics. Its more difficult to increase domain authority from 40 to 50 than from 10 to 20.

Google's domain authority is 100/100.

Domain Authority is based on several factors like link counts, MozRank, Moz Trust Score, linking root domains and a dozen other factors.

▌ Improve your Domain Authority

Build inbound links. One of the major factors that decide your domain authority is the number of links coming from high authority websites. You will got an inbound link from a higher authority site only if you have valuable content and useful information. The point to be kept in mind is that the links should come from "popular sites".

Increase content. The size of your blog will contribute to your improved domain authority. A blog with many articles, unique and relevant will surely rank higher in search engines.

Authority requires time. You must have seen different blogs ranking on first page for an article written 2-3 hours ago and you can guess, it is not going to happen for a new blog. An older blog is going to be much favorable brand than a new one. There is not much you can do about this point so just go on publishing great articles, both unique and relevant.

The best way to achieve a higher Domain Authority is to improve overall Search Engine Optimization. Particularly, you should focus on link building from blogs with better rankings and domain authority.


Building IN-bound links require:

♦ Linking not just your home URL but different contents and using proper anchor text to link them. Anchor texts are of most importance while backlinking. 

♦ Internal linking. Internal linking tells search engines crawlers about the pages which it cannot crawl or missed.

♦ Use diversified linking. Getting all your back links from the same blog is not going to benefit you much. Using different blogs, with higher domain authority is recommended. 

▌ Domain Authority Checker.

You can check your domain authority at open site explorer website: www.opensiteexplorer.org

 You can read review of Open Site Explorer here.

mb.

Read More»

This will Negatively Affect Your Blog's Ranking in Search Results.

Practicing Search Engine Optimization increases your chances in Ranking higher in Search Results. However, most people over do it. Links play an important role in deciding your ranking. Al though, PageRank has not been updated for a while, its still one of the 200+ factors that decide your rankings. Link building has been a favorite choice for the Bloggers to fool Google to rank higher in search results.

The best way of creating high quality genuine back links is by writing genuine and relevant content that can naturally gain popularity and is linked back. 

Image courtesy of adamr / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Black Hat Optimizers find it easier to create links and rank higher. Hence, Google has some guidelines for link building which must be kept in mind to not to violate terms and negatively affect your SEO process.

▌ Here's how you can negatively affect your blog's ranking in search results.

♦ Buying or selling links. This includes direct buying/selling and using services which guarantee links in exchange of money.

♦ Link exchange. Link exchange is a process in which you host link of other and in return, get a link back to your blog. Link exchange is fine until you over do it. Link exchange to same niche blogs is considered fine. Google webmaster says "excessive link exchange" is a violation. Keep in mind the term "excessive".

♦ Guest Posting. Guest posting is most widely used link building strategy. However, large scale article marketing or Guest posting campaigns with keyword rich anchor text links is a violation to the terms of Google and will negatively affect your link building process.

♦ Creating automated links. Using some automated program/javascripts for link building is a violation.

♦ Low quality bookmarking. Submitting links to low quality directories and bookmarking sites can also negatively affect your link building program.

♦ Too much internal linking. Internal linking is a best way of flow control to other articles in your blog. It reduces bounce rate and guide visitor from one article to another. However, too much linking has negative effects.

♦ Forums. If you are active in forums and creating backlinks in your signature, you need to be cautious. Too much will eventually lead to performance degradation in search results.

♦ Distributing links in some free stuffs. Some webmasters give free themes as a part of giveaway programs and link back their blog in footer or some part of it. Some even build apps or gadgets with a linking back to their blog. This is considered as a violation.

Link building is great way of improving your site's performance. The only thing to be kept in mind is that the backlinks you get should be authentic, genuine and as natural as possible. This can only be achieved if you write great contents so that people around the globe don't feel bad while linking back to you.

mb.

Read More»

Tips to Get On First Page of Google.

If you are a Blogger, you must be knowing the importance of Organic Traffic and the importance of ranking on first page of Google. 70% of the searchers do not even bother to see what's there on the second page of Google's search result. So, in order to get a decent traffic from search engine, Ranking in first page is of high importance.

There is no fixed and defined way of ranking higher in Google SERP. With Google updating its algorithm, the latest being Hummingbird update, there is always just guessing and hit and trials. However, there are certain parameters that has been and will always matter to rank higher in Google Search Results.

▌ How to Get on First Page of Google.

♦ Discover most popular phrases and words that are searched for, in your domain. There are different tools to find keywords and search phrases. You may use webmaster tool to discover the phrases for which your site is being discovered in Google Search.

♦ Put relevant information in Title and Meta tags. Title and Meta tags plays
an important role in your search engine rankings. Title is what is shown to a person who queries and putting your best keyword and phrase is very important. With meta-tags, always have different tags for each posts.

♦ Use a better URL structure. Use your keywords in URLs. Do not just put some numbers and random digits in your URL. Blogger gives you an option of customizing your URL.

Select custom Permalink in your right sidebar and enter your URL. Use hyphen (-) instead on under scores (_). Hyphen differentiate between words whereas underscores make it all a one word.

♦ Submit your website's sitemap to Google and other Search Engines. Al though, Google will crawl your website someday, why to wait. Submit manually your sitemap to search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing for faster indexing of your posts.

♦ Link building. PageRank is still an important factor among 200+ factors in determining your site's credibility. Make sure you have high quality backlinks from different high PageRanked websites and blogs. You can achieve this through Comments, Guest Post and by writing great content, so that people tag your articles genuinely.

♦ Write unique and good quality content. Content is the king. The basic aim of any search engine is to provide the best content according to a query. No matter what Google will do with its algorithm, it will always give importance to high quality contents.

♦ Social Media presence has been playing an important role in search engine ranking. Be active on Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and use them to create backlinks and generate traffic to your blog. The plus and likes and shares does improve your Search Engine Optimization processes.

mb.

Read More»

Moz's Open site explorer review.

Moz has a large number of Search Engine Optimization tools, some of which are freely available and some require PRO access, means you will have to pay up for using them.

Moz's Open Site Explorer is a tool to check link popularity and to do backlinks analysis. it predicts your Page and Domain authority, Linking root domains and total number of inbound links to your blog.

It is updated once in every 45-days approximately. The last update was on July 11, 2013 and the next is going to be on August 26, 2013.

There are two parts of it- one for free user and the other for paid or PRO users. Free users can only see 25 inbound links and social metrics are not available for them. You can always upgrade for PRO user and use all the features of Moz's site explorer tool. However, if you are not willing to pay you still can benefit for them by measuring domain and page authority and getting your number of inbound links to your blog.

▌ How does Open site explorer works?

Go to www.opensiteexplorer.org and enter your domain name which you want to analyze.

Open site explorer results for you domain.

You will see different measurements of the domain you have entered.

Domain Authority. Predicts the domain's ranking potential in search engine based on over 40 different metrics.

Page Authority. Predicts the page's ranking potential based on different metrics.

Linking root domains. Predicts the number of unique root domains containing atleast one linkning page to the URL you have entered.

Total Links. It counts the total number of inbound links to your blog without considering any other factor.

For a free user, there are 25 incoming links shown to you as shown below.

linking to your blog.

The first column tells you the Title and URL of the linking page. 

Link Anchor Text shows the anchor text used for the link. For example, my blog has anchor text "my blog" but the link is actually http://www.mbblogging.com.

Page and Domain Authority are for the website's that have your link. 

As you can see, the open site explorer is pointing out whether the link you have on other blog/site are nofollow or dofollow. That means if you find a blog that has higher Page authority and Domain authority and allows dofollow links in comments or guest post, then you can boost your link building in a great way. 

The social media metrics are available only for PRO user. 

Moz gives you a free 30days trial with complete features and you can signup for it here. http://moz.com/cart/freetrial. After a month, you will need to pay 99$/month to continue using PRO features. 

There are 3 different levels at which you can register with them - PRO, PRO Plus, PRO Elite. The pricing is different and so is the features that are provided to you. 

Open site explorer's different plans.

Open Site Explorer is surely a great way in organizing your link building and its analysis. I will discuss more about it in coming articles. If you want to add something more, do share with us in comment section. It may include other features which they provide or any other alternatives of it. 

mb.

Read More»

How to Improve your Google PageRank.

Before suggesting the steps to Improve your Google PageRank, you must know the fact that no matter what you do you won't see any changes in your PageRank until Google decides to update it.

Last time, PageRank was updated in February 1st week. Going by the last year trend, it would have already been updated in June, but there is no update till now. This simply means, You have some more time on working to Improve your Google PageRank.

One more thing, there is no 'defined ways' of improving your PageRank. Google always keep things secret. However, people have learned from some common practices that really help in boosting your PageRank.

Here are some ways of Improving your PageRank.

▌ Content is the king. 

No matter which aspect you discuss about blogging, Content is the king.

Content should be unique.

♦ Post quality content.
♦ Post regularly.
♦ Submit your sitemap to Google so that your articles are indexed.
♦ Keep your content Unique.
♦ If you write an awesome article, certainly people will link to your content.

▌ Get back links from Higher PR. 

The best way to increase you PageRank is by getting back links from reputed websites/blogs that have higher page rank than yours. However, keep in mind the following point before getting a back link from any other websites.

Courtesy : Wikipedia.

♦ Always go for a blog with better traffic than yours.
♦ Websites with higher PageRank will help more.
♦ Avoid crappy websites. They might lead to down gradation of your PageRank.

▌ Submit your links to social sites. 

Drop your articles links on social media. This will help in Increasing your PageRank. You can use social media like

Social Media marketing

♦ Facebook.
♦ Google+.
♦ LinkedIn.
♦ Twitter.

Submit to Other social bookmarking websites like Delicious, Digg, reddit also.

▌ Directory submission. 

Submit your blog to directories. Get listed on Technorati blog media. Work in forums and leave backlinks to your articles. Submit your blog to Yahoo directories.

Advice.

Check the PR of a website on which you leave a comment or get a back link. Always go for a blog/site with higher PR than yours.

mb.

Read More»