SEO Hosting Blog

Google suggests that it might be worth your effort to request to have links removed that are pointing from low grade sites to yours. The easiest way this can be done is by searching the site for a “Contact Us” page, email address, or a phone number. If none can not be found then a Whois search can be performed. A Whois search will typically return the contact information of the site owner. Sometimes site owners block their contact information with a private registration. If that’s the case, then it may be possible to pass a message to the owner through the hosting company.

Of course if it’s not easy to contact the owners of the sites linking to yours, then it might not be worth the time invested. On the Google Webmaster Central blog, they suggests that efforts be made towards having links removed; however, if there are sites less than desirable linking to yours, Google does offer some reassurance by stating that they have 200 factors when it comes to determining relevancy in the search results. I don’t recommend investing time towards contacting site owners requesting the removal of links. Instead, I suggest investing time towards increasing the number of higher quality links pointing to your site.

Controllable things are another thing that should be taken into consideration. Once again, Google points focus on their design, content, technical, and quality guidelines. Google implies that they understand that certain things fall outside your control. With that, explain that emphasis is given things that webmasters can control such as having a well maintained site with high quality and original content with an excellent linking structure. And I agree. I can’t think of a single popular site that I would consider to be a terrible site. I am sure they exist, and I am sure you can leave a comment pointing me to a few; but all in all, in my opinion, all popular sites I have seen, fall within these guidelines.

My advice to site owners is to maintain a clean, high quality, and organized site that genuinely interests people. Don’t invest time into removing low quality backlinks and only invest some time into high quality backlink molding. I think it’s more important to spread awareness about your site, instead. If people like what they see, then they’ll come back many times over, and also they’ll link to it as well. Additionally, encouraging people to share information is very helpful too.

So what do you think? Do you think that it’s worth your time to remove low quality backlinks? What about spending time towards backlink molding? And what about time spent marketing and promoting your site? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Feedage.com is a site owned by Mark Savoca that I have known about for almost two years. I first discovered the site after glancing at a web site traffic report and noticing some incoming traffic. From that time to now, I haven’t really paid much attention to the site. Feedage.com has my attention because I believe that it’s a decent resource that helps increase traffic and SEO value.

Feedage.com is a categorized and searchable RSS feed directory. It’s further explained that their goal is to categorize and organize large numbers of RSS data feeds to make viewing them more easier for end users. The directory was created and grown by adding RSS feeds into queue. Machine readable pages are then created off the partial item syndication of each RSS feed queued. In other words, when a new RSS feed is added into their directory, a new webpage is created that syndicates the partial feed of each entry.

The problem that I have with Feedage.com is that syndicated content is being used to display contextual based ads. This is nothing new, and in fact, many site do this. However, many blog authors and site owners take offense to other people using their content to earn revenue.

And then there are some sites such as Digg.com, don’t necessarily syndicate content, but instead monetize the user submitted content that is geared towards introducing a full story. That then creates a deterrence towards allowing people to actually click and view the story. This method is more accepted and tolerated, especially when sites such as Digg.com deliver traffic to the source site.

In the case with sites such as Feedage.com, majority are considered spam, splog, or sponge sites. That is of course is until the site in question is proven to generate incoming traffic to the source site. And that is where I am at with Feedage.com. This site syndicates the RSS feeds from blogs and uses the content to overly saturate pages with contextual based ads. Also, and in many cases with newer blogs, Feedage.com can rob source sites from their position in search engines. Since Feedage.com is more established than many of the source blogs its content is originating, many of the cases, the Feedage.com page will rank better than the source page.

Having that said, you might then question whether it’s worth submitting your RSS feed into their directory. Many people obviously would feel like it’s not. However, before a decision is made, there are a two benefits towards using Feedage.com which are the potential to increase traffic and potential to increase SEO value of your source site.

If you decide to submit your RSS feed into the Feedage.com directory, my past records have shown that I have received traffic from their site. It isn’t a lot, but it’s traffic I received without applying any tweaks or optimizations to. Here is what I recommend doing to make the best of your listing.

If you’re using WordPress, I recommend installing the Feedage.com Plugin and allowing a percentage visitors subscribe to your Feedage.com RSS Feed rather than your source feed, or FeedBurner feed. If you don’t have a WordPress blog, or you do and simply don’t want to install the plugin, I recommend redirecting your source feed to the Feedage.com RSS feed.

In either case, the purpose of directing traffic to your Feedage.com RSS feed is to gain subscribers. The reason why you want to increase the number of subscribers assigned to your Feedage.com feed is because the more you have subscribed, the higher you rank in the Feedage.com directory.

You don’t have to convert your entire RSS reader base to Feedage.com. Simply observe the number of subscribers it will take to rank #1 in their directory. Once you reach that number, then you can pull the plug and point your blogs RSS feed back to the source URL or FeedBurner.

The next element that might interest you is backlinks. When you submit your RSS feed into the Feedage.com directory, your content is syndicated on a webpage. Links to your homepage, and individual post page are made. These are all dofollow intext links. By default, many people might discount the value in these Feedage.com pages; however, I have seen a quite a few, and many have established PageRank as high as 5. The trick is to point links to your Feedage.com page.

If you take your Feedage.com page seriously, you’re going to generate a natural flow of traffic and links pointing to it. Over time, and a shorter period than many believe, your Feedage.com page will establish PageRank. Also, one thing to consider is the more popular your Feedage.com page gets, the more internal exposure it receives within Feedage.com itself. Ultimately, your Feedage.com page could become the featured blog on the homepage.

In summary, I think sites like Feedage.com tend to be very spammy, and low in quality. Typically, search engines feel the same. However, and for whatever reason, both people and search engines approve of Feedage.com. I think they should reduce the number contextual ads and also re-position them slightly.

If your blog is somewhat new and doesn’t rank well in the search engines already, you may find Feedage.com stealing your position. Which I guess is fine if you’re site isn’t ranking anyway. Keep in mind, only a small percentage of Feedage.com traffic will reach your site. The majority will click on the ads or click back after being subjected to viewing the ads.

What are your thoughts about Feedage.com, and similar sites? Do you think there is more harm than good allowing your content to be syndicated on a site that could potentially outrank your own blog posts? Do you think that it’s acceptable for other people to syndicate your content for the purpose of displaying contextual based ads and earning revenue?

Blogging seems to be the ideal solution for many things, one of which being SEO. Many people know this, and even more learn this, but I wonder if people often understand why having a blog is important for SEO. Basic and very practical SEO Tips tell us that we should avoid bad coding, use relevant keywords, be conscious of where we place them in text, and get inbound links. Considering these tips, then a blog is an ideal solution for SEO.

Let’s consider coding. Both WordPress and Blogger maintain excellent coding standards. Each platform comes with a standard (approved) template that meets the W3C standards. Actually, Blogger comes with around 25 and WordPress only has one. In both platforms, however, there are hundreds of open sourced templates available that also meet the coding standards. These templates can be downloaded and installed at no charge. (more…)

Increasing PageRank can be a huge challenge and can take a lot of hard work, but what if there was an easier way to increase PageRank quickly?

There is actually! And, it’s a darn good way too. For a long time I have know about this, but couldn’t figure out a good way to do this. I searched for software and never found anything, and the only thing I found that could do this for me was a half functional website.

But, before I get too far ahead here, I need to explain to you how you can increase your PageRank. As you may know, backlinks are needed in order to get more PageRank. More so, backlinks with high PageRank are even more important.

So, who the heck is going to give you free links from pages with high PageRank? Well, the answer is simple… you are! You might not realize this, but many of your own pages within your site have established their own level of PageRank. (more…)

In this article, I am going to show you a method that I use daily towards getting absolutely free and powerful backlinks to my blog. The other day I wrote a post titled, A Simple Yet Effective Link Building Techique. For the sake of simplicity, we’re going to call that post, Part I. I want to continue that into a second segment that I will from now call call, How To Get Free BackLinks.

Today, we are going to discuss Part II. When I wrote the first post, I decided to break things down into sections. If I didn’t I would have just created an eBook for you to download. So with that said, let me show you another method towards getting free backlinks to your web site or blog.

Now, many of you guys and gals know about companies such as Text-Link-Ads.com and ReviewMe.com. Make no mistake, these type of businesses work and work very well. For those who don’t know what these services offer, they provide people with a way to purchase backlinks. Text-Link-Ads.com is more blunt about it and ReviewMe.com attempts to sugar coat the process by making publishers write a crafty review about the site needing the backlink. (more…)