Your blog should be like a
spider's web, with each article
linking to other articles in
your blog.
This technique can deliver some
nice traffic benefits. Here's how
to do it...
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Hi There,
Last issue of this newsletter I covered trackbacks
and how to use them as a blog traffic building
tool. This newsletter we're going to start with
the trackback's distant cousin, the pingback and
then move to an interesting technique for building
traffic - interlinking.
WHAT IS A PINGBACK?
In some circles I've read there is no difference
between a trackback and a pingback. Many people
will use the term interchangeably and in fact I've
been known to confuse the two myself.
Generally there is one main difference - a
trackback is forced by a human blogger while a
pingback occurs automatically by the blogging
software.
I read a description online which I think is a
good way to discern the difference however I don't
agree 100% with the distinction presented. It does
offer a simple way to get your head around the
semantics of using the two techniques -
Where trackback is "Here's what I think of that" a
pingback is more simply "I'm using that".
Trackbacks are intentional attention grabbers that
give an opinion of another blogger's work. A
pingback merely informs another blog that you are
referencing their writing.
INTERNAL PINGBACKS
I experience pingbacks when I reference to my own
blog posts within my blog. I use the blogging
system WordPress which automatically sends
pingbacks if I link to one of my previous
articles, creating a link between the two blog
entries.
Linking between your own articles is a good thing,
and certainly pingbacking your own entries helps
make the process efficient because it's automatic,
but there is a lot more you can do proactively to
create links between your own blog posts. As with
most things in blogging, there is a "smarter way".
WHAT IS INTERLINKING?
Interlinking means when you link one of your own
pages to another internally within a website.
Since you control your site you can control your
blog's entire internal linking structure. This is
important for traffic because of how search
engines work.
If you want the search engines to rank every
single page of your blog you need to make sure
they can find every page.
Search engines use little software programs called
"spiders" or "bots" that trawl around the web
following links and "indexing" all the content
of web pages.
If your site is internally linked well together
then you make it easy for the little spiders to
index every page of your blog.
SITEMAPS
I will briefly mention sitemaps because they are a
convenient way to tell the search engines where
all your pages are. Most search engines do a
pretty good job of finding pages but sometimes
they have trouble indexing your entire site,
especially if your site is new.
I'm not going to cover sitemaps in-depth because
it is a whole topic on its own, however I do
recommend you have one as the first step to create
a good internal linking structure for your blog.
Here are some resources for building and learning
more about sitemaps:
- If you are a WordPress user like me, install the
Google Sitemap generator plugin (Link:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/).
- Take Brad Callen's free SEO email course -
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/yaro-recommends/seo-elite/
Wait for the sign-up form to drop down and then fill
out your details.
GOOGLE LOOKS AT WEB PAGES, NOT WEB SITES
Google ranks pages based on how many other pages
link to it. That's PAGES, not SITES, which means
when you link one blog entry to another you are
helping each blog article earn better search
engine rankings so it will bring in more search
traffic.
Simply linking to all your blog posts in every new
blog post you make is not going to do much for your
traffic and will turn away your readers (not a good
strategy!), however a few well placed internal linking
patterns can be very helpful over the long term.
During the first few months I blogged I wrote
definition articles for many key terms in my
industry, including RSS, PageRank and other
Internet business and blogging topics.
I regularly link back to those articles when I
mention the terms in a new blog post so that
beginner readers can read my definition article to
get a grasp of the concepts. Not only is this
great for usability it helps my blog search
rankings too.
GET YOUR KEYWORDS AND PHRASES RIGHT
The most important thing when you link your blog
entries together is to choose the right keywords.
The keywords you use in the anchor text (the text
your readers see as underlined links) help to
define what search terms that article will rank
well for.
Lets say your blog topic is "share trading" and you
wrote a definition of the PE ratio (the
price-to-earnings ratio).
Every chance you get you should reference back to
it in new blog posts. Each time you do this you
would use anchor text along the lines of "what is
the PE ratio", but be certain to mix it up with
variations.
This helps that page rank higher for search
phrases like "what is the PE ratio".
INCREASE YOUR PAGEVIEWS
Even if I've totally confused you with all this
talk about search engine rankings there is one
very good plain and simple reason to interlink
your blog articles as often as you can - to
increase your pageviews.
Pageviews are how many individual pages each
visitor to your blog reads. Obviously you want to
increase the number of pageviews because that
means your readers stay longer at your blog and
read more of your content.
By interlinking your articles well, and that means
placing links between your own articles in a
logical manner, you create a nice pathway for a
reader to navigate through your blog.
COVER THE BASICS
Some of the topics I covered may be too technical
for beginner bloggers. If there is one piece of
advice you should take away from this newsletter
and implement on your blog it is to link back to
your previous blog posts regularly.
Use logical anchor text links and don't worry too
much about keywords. If you label your links well
for humans you generally label well for search
engines too. It's easy to get caught up with
keywords so don't spend too much energy worrying
about how you link to your articles, just do it.
Whenever you write a new article think whether it
would be appropriate to link to another article
that includes relevant content.
It takes two seconds and can provide fantastic
benefits in search engine rankings, pageview
numbers and increases the length of time each
visitor stays at your blog.
Here's to your blogging success,
Yaro Starak
Entrepreneurs-Journey.com
P.S. If you're looking for more advice regarding
how to increase the search engine performance of
your blog, consider taking my intensive blog
training program, Blog Mastermind.
I have several lessons devoted to helping you get
traffic to your blog organically from search
engines.
http://www.blogmastermind.com/coaching/
---------------------
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