The Webmasters Mind-Meld

I made a quick visit to the SEO Forum I participate in and , and stumbled upon an excellent Backlink Checking Tool someone had created. You can find it here, www.backlink-tool.com. Low and behold, I noticed all the backlinks I had from a Software Forum I participate in everyday. With my Domain URL in the signature, it had paid off big time. I believe that explains why some of the people from that forum got a big Page Rank bounce a few weeks ago from Google. And many of these people had poor ‘on page’ SEO. What are “backlinks”? Backlinks are links that are directed towards your website. Also knows as Inbound links (IBL’s). The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website. Backlinks are important for SEO because some search engines, especially Google, will give more credit to websites that have a good number of quality backlinks, and consider those websites more relevant than others in their results pages for a search query.

In summary, if you are busy or maybe lazy, but you want to get your website indexed by Google, join a relevant Forum, put your URL in the signature, and post a thread once a day, that can’t be that hard, right? One other thing, add some of your ‘key phrases’ to your signature also, for example, ‘Elgin Web Design’, that helps too.

‘Form follows function’ is a general rule of thumb when you decide on a layout. Try to stick to a standard layout, the 3 column is most prevalent. Also, it is important that all the pages are relatively consistent in regards to where much of the content is positioned from page to page, for example if content in the right hand column starts on line 100, then this should hold true throughout  the entire design. Using standard fonts is a safe bet,  Times New Roman, and Arial are the general standards. If you try different fonts, your site may look funky to people that use older browser versions, or not as popular browsers such as Opera. Flashing graphics should be used sparingly, or not at all because they can be very distracting. I have some on this site because I wanted to show people that I could create them. Static graphics, jpeg, gif, or png, should fit the content, and should have a small file size. This is important because you want your page to load quickly. 60% of the people using the internet in the US “never” have access to broadband including at work. Click here for an excellent web page analyzer, if your site loads longer then 60 seconds for a 56k connection, you may want to think about some adjustments. If you’re  thinking about a ‘Flash Website’, please read my ‘SEO Learning Tip’ because if  your web site loads slow, your visitors will leave. Good color combinations is also important, do a Google search on color schemes if you are not sure about the right combinations. Lastly, in regards to Navigation, you should be able to access every page from ‘every page’ on your site

I got very excited last night when I checked my website, and noticed Google had updated my PR (Page Rank) from 0 to 3. Also, my SEO Learning page got a PR 4 which was bonus. Later, I checked this Blog, and my 3 other websites, Bent Ridge Golf Club.com, 19Sixties60s.com, and GolfDiscounts4U.com, all got bumped up by Google. Although I feel that Page Rank is over rated, I will definitely consider this as a step in the right direction. After close to 7 months at a PR 0, this was a welcomed change. I had done allot of ‘on page’, and ‘off page’ SEO, finally it paid off. Some of the things I did was redo my page content, doing allot of research on keywords and phrases. My participation in a SEO Forum helped, there is a guy there that brags that he is a professional marketer, and although he is a jerk, flaming everyone, everyday, he did present some valid strategies. He challenged everyone at the forum that he could ‘out position’ anyone on content alone. He dispelled many of the SEO strategies such as ‘link trading’, ‘blogging’, or ‘directory submission’. His credo was ‘content’, lots of ‘content’; he said you need to tell the engines what your website is all about. Funny thing about this was that I did most of my SEO updates on Cheap Web Design In Elgin.com. The other sites, in my estimation had poor/avg SEO. Furthermore, I am helping someone from another forum with her SEO, and the PR at her website, www.mommysclub.com, jumped to a PR 3 also. This is unusual because her SEO is way below average, and has some backlinks, but they are weak. I posted this information on the SEO Forum, because I think this may be a fluke, but currently have gotten no responses.

In conclusion, this SEO stuff is a real roller coaster ride. That Google Algorithm is relatively unpredictable, and temperamental. I hope I can improve even more, and aim for the big prize, which is successful Conversion. Good Luck to all, and hey, anyone want to exchange links?