Just an update on Experimenting with SEO and Backlinks. I posted a few more articles and today I saw that Google had indexed the site.
I’ve been doing quite a lot of reading over at Make Money Online trying to learn from the years of experience Griz is sharing. Check out Griz’s other blog Make Money Online with Girzzly. Over there Griz has began a blog about making money online in a less SEO but more user friendly format. Check out his article on Google’s weak spot when it comes to duplicate content. Knowing how Google works is a key skill to learn, since they are the 800 lb gorilla when it comes to search engines.
I have installed the SEO tool “SearchStatus” for Firefox and am slowly learning how to use this SEO tool. As of today, Incraseurgasmileage has no page rank with Google and an Alexa rank of 12,441,151
SEO and Backlinks are key topics to master if a high Google SERP is the goal (let’s not mention all that filthy money that may come along with mastering these two topics).
I haven’t posted for a long time because I’ve been doing my reading. I started with the oldest post at makemoneyonlineforbeginners and worked my way to the newest. That took a looonnng time and I kept getting sidetracked by checking out the products and links in the posts. Basically I selected a post, copied it to Word and highlighted the key parts for future reference. It was a great course for the beginning blogger.
Taking my cue from Griz’s niche blog example over at make money online for beginners I have attempted to learn from Griz’ American Idol tutorial. Using his step by step instructions on setting up a niche site I have started the second phase in my blogging for money education.
I wanted to set up a niche site that would be quick, easy and something of interest to me. Now, I don’t know crap about American Idol or the contestants or Simon. But judging from highlights in commercials, I hate Simon too. So American Idol was out, along with several other ideas I had after doing some keyword searches on Google’s keyword tool. So I fell back on what interests me and a few hundred thousand other people at the moment - increased gas mileage.
Using the free blogspot.com blog as recommended by make money online for beginners, I set up a free blog in just minutes. Creating SEO friendly page titles and articles took about 2 hours (I tend to obsess about writing with keywords – not too many, not too few – 3 to 5 per 100 words). In case you were wondering, my keywords are: “increase gas mileage”.
I wrote 3 articles centered around increase gas mileage. Articles that weren’t too long and hopefully will peak the reader’s interest in products that will improve mpg. IF and WHEN the site is monetized, there will be links added for products and information.
Phase 2 will involve getting backlinks. This post contains the 1st one.
Now I have to reread my notes on lenses, hubs, squidoo, technorati and “zoom” something or other – thanks Griz 
I have been monitoring the site for 2 days now, but Google hasn’t indexed it yet. Hopefully putting up this article with a backlink to increasurgasmileage helps.
Thanks again to Griz University for the education. Now if I can practice what Griz preaches.
Randy
How to get Google to rank your blog page #1
In a great article by Griz, the key to a high Google rank is SEO – search engine optimization. Ranking #1 in Google boils down to 2 key SEO concepts.
“Ranking Number 1 in Google
SEO boils down to two things.
1) On Page Search Optimization
2) Off Page Search Optimization
That’s it – see simple.”
With SEO optimization broken down into these basic concepts, it is easy to get a handle on where to start. That’s key for a beginning blogger like myself. There are so many concepts about blogging, page rank, generating traffic, advertising that is seems like too much trouble to learn everything or even begin a new blog.
On page optimization can be broken down into a hierarchy.
Blog Layout
URL
Blog Title
Description
Sidebar Headers
Post Layout
Post Title
Post Header
Sub Headers
Post Content
Off Page Optimization
Backlinks
Backlinks from sites with high page rank
Backlinks from sites that have content related to your blog content
links with keywords relevant to your blog
Griz goes into great detail explaining these concepts in an easy to understand manner. Check out the rest of Griz’s great SEO article Search Engine Optimization Basics
Analyzing this blog post, it is easy to see that it is not completely SEO friendly.
1. The URL does not have SEO or SEO keywords in it.
2. My sidebars are not set up with SEO titles
On the positive side,
- rskiles.com has a SEO friendly theme from WordPress.
- rskiles.com doesn’t have images between the URL, blog title, blog description, and the post. There are menu links, but I’ll move them shortly.
- The Title of this post does have SEO related keywords in it.
- The Post Title also has SEO friendly keywords.
- The post does contain plenty of long tail keywords (keywords related to the Post Title).
- The post is summarized in the 1st paragraph.
- The post has my keywords in the last sentence of the post.
- rskiles.com does have plenty of keywords in the SEO post. According to Griz, 4 or 5 keywords per 100 words is effective and doesn’t get flagged by Google.
- I have bolded some of the keywords I want Google to notice when it spiders the rskiles.com blog.
- rskiles.com is not monetized yet, so that may give it an advantage in Google ranking.
- The Post Title links back to my homepage.
“When the bot visits my page it reads in order; my URL, Blog Title, Blog Description and then the post title, Content header, content sub headers, the content using LSI which means it can tell if your main keyword is backed up with lots of relevant content (long tail keywords) in the actual post, links, comments, and then the rest of the crap on my page.” – Griz
How easy was it to get this blog started? Pretty easy. I spent more time researching webhosts than actual time setting this blog up. I chose Host Monster because they offered the best value for the money. It took about 30 minutes to register my domain and set up my blog with WordPress. I spent another 2 hours browsing WordPress for a theme I liked. After uploading the theme to my web folders, all that was left was to start writing. The rest of it – advertising, SEO, and building traffic of it will come one step at at time.
Well, here is the beginning of this little experiment. I have been researching blogs for about 3 weeks now and realized that the more I learned the more there was to learn and I’d never start this blog if I waited until I new everything about optimizing, monetizing, SEO, programming, advertising, RSS, and whatever else I have read and forgotten. So I am taking the advice of the gurus of achievement and Nike, “Just Do It.”
I figure there are lots of people out there that want to be a blog expert before jumping in feet first. Well the bad news is, it is not possible to know it all. This applies to everything in life. I see these guys (rock stars, motivational speakers, stand-up comics) on TV that began with no education, no opportunities, and no money that have become successful. How did they become successful? They just started. They tried, failed and just kept on going. Many didn’t have a choice of doing anything else, so they had to make it.
I have read, listened and watched the stories of dozens of successful people. And that’s all I did, read, listened and watched. Sound familiar?
So here I am.