The Rank Magic Blog

8 SEO Techniques You Need to Know

April 25, 2008 ::: Here's a list of items you need to be aware of if you intend to get your web site better rankings in the search engines. This is a pretty good, though basic, overview of some things that can help you rank better and some things that will help you understand your  competitive environment. The full article is here. But these are the bullet points:

Getting Found in Local Searches

April 21, 2008 ::: Local search is a critical part of marketing a small business, especially so-called "brick and mortar" that rely on people physically stopping in at the businesses location. In Google, local search is found at www.local.google.com or www.maps.google.com. In Yahoo, it's at www.local.yahoo.com. And on MSN/Live, it's at www.local.live.com or www.maps.live.com.

Small Business Newz has a brief article on how to make sure you can be found in local search. As valuable as the article itself are the reader comments you'll find right below the article.

Quickly Building an Audience with Social Media

April 15, 2008 ::: Social media may be new to lots of people, but it's not something to ignore. Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube are powerful forces that get tons of traffic. My personal favorite is Faves. Site Pro News has an introductory article featuring 5 steps to becoming a social media maven. Check out the article for the details.

Backlink Anchor Text

April 18, 2008 ::: Backlinks – links to your web site from other web sites -- are an important factor in search engine rankings, and especially so in Google. The quality of those backlinks is very important – whether  they come from reputable web sites,  whether the page the come from is relevant to your site, how many links are on the same page as yours, and what the anchor text says. Anchor text is the clickable text in the link - often blue and underlined.

Anchor text may be helpful to your rankings or not. Anchor text that says www.YourDomain.com is not very helpful. But even that is better than Click Here. The best anchor text contains keywords for the page it links to. For example: Residential Elevators in NJ.

There's a handy (free) tool to check and see what the anchor text says in links to your site called Backlink Checker – have fun!

What's the Story on PageRank?

April 12, 2008 ::: Site Pro News has a good article one could call PageRank 101 - a clear explanation of Google's PageRank score. Many web site owners perseverate on their PageRank and worry if it goes down or fails to go up. This article puts it into perspective for you.  It also has a handy little description of what different PageRank scores might mean.

Strange "Google #6 Smackdown"

April 7, 2008 ::: Webmasters have been reporting an odd phenomenon whereby sites that normally enjoy top (#1) rankings in Google have suddenly dropped to #6. Not that 6th place is bad, of course, but it's not as god as #1. And they're dropping not to n#5 or #7, but quite specifically to #6. Wonder what's going on? Search Engine Watch discusses it.

Rank Magic Featured in Local Newspaper

April 2, 2008 ::: The Morristown Daily Record recently ran a story on Rank Magic based on an interview. They may have chosen the least flattering photo to use, but at least they spelled my name right.

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