Understanding Domain Authority & Page Rank

Let us begin with the origins of Page Rank which began as a research project in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. Both students on successful completion of project, went on to create Google Inc and Google Search Engine.

Page Rank of your blog is calculated by the number of links and quality of links which point to your blog. So if you are a travel blogger and your article has featured in National Geographic with a mention of your name and a link to your blog, Google will pick it up and raise your reputation by a small bit. Page Rank is a mathematical formula. Google crawlers also known as spiders or crawlers move from website to website searching and hunting for links and them feed the data to Google Servers who process the mathematical formula to decide Page Ranks.

Domain Authority is relatively recent introduction by Moz. It takes into account a large number of factors to rank your blog on a scale of 0 to 100 to determine the probability of your blog featuring in Google Search Results. Nature of content is also taken into account which means, your blog may not have a high Page Rank but can still come up in search results due to high quality and unique content. New blogs will start with DA = 1.

Abuse of Page Rank and unleashing of Panda updates

Since Page Rank is an algorithm, it is easy to fool it. SEO experts realized this and started manipulating search results by inserting artificial links in exchange of money. This way the page rank of a website increased in no time without relevant content. Authors and Webmasters started cheating on their audience by posting crappy content and yet figuring high on the Page Rank. Spammers went a step ahead and created high ranking websites with absolutely unreadable content. Once these websites achieved a high page rank, their links were sold to new websites to gain overnight popularity. Blogers too started boosting their articles to make them “sellable” to sponsors. It soon dawned upon Google that it has to do something drastic just to stay relevant as a search engine.

Though Google is the king of search engines, it Google had to work hard to strike a blow to these SEO experts. By 2009 Google began developing more advanced version of Page Rank and began rolling it out in 2011. Within days, large number of websites lost their ranking and relevance on Google. In a single swoop, the Google Panda updates cleansed the internet and the search world of the most horrific of manipulations. At the same time, Google urged webmasters not to focus too much on Page Rank. It went on to add that, many site owners seem to think that Page Rank is the most important metric for them to track which is simply not true. As a final death blow, Page Rank was last updated in 2013 and Google turned off display of Page Rank from 2016 on wards.

Till date Google keeps telling everyone the importance of high quality content and has not put up any technology in place of Page Rank.

Panda update has put many SEO experts out of business. There were Schools of Digital Marketing which taught the entire course focused on just how to improve DA and PR by manipulating back links.

Plan for Bloggers

0 – 1 years – Fine tune blog design, post regular content. Research well. Put your social media plan in place and stick to it.

1-3 years – Connect with fellow bloggers and expand your reader base. Increase your social circle. Master your keyword strategy.

4 years on wards – Your blog has enough authority now. Contact popular websites and magazines to offer your services as blogger. Reputation will ease the process.

Problem is that there are too many SEO experts out there with crappy ideas and plans to boost your blog. As a blogger do your own research and devise a plan. As a human remember the age old saying, “There is no substitute for hard work and patience”

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What is a link party

A website who is hosting a link party will announce the theme of the week. Visitors can submit a link of their article post through a form. Visitors posts links appear below the post. Websites hosting a link party have a few recommendations. There has to be a linkback or mention in the post about the link party. You have to visit the other links and leave comments.

Advantages of joining a linkup

• Among the articles which you write on your blog consisting of 300 words or more, a picture post is refreshing change.
• Lots of bloggers at one place. That is a treasure trove of connections.
• Do post a comment on other links along with the link to your blog article. Bloggers usually reciprocate.
• Plan for a link up in advance and bring out the photographer in you.
• A blog can be of any theme or niche, but can always post a picture.

How to host a link party

There are two ways to host a link party on your website. First is by placing a custom code and custom design. Other easy way is using tools. Two of the most popular tools are Inlinkz and Linky Tools 2020. You can also have a look at Mister Linky. First create your account and then your first linkup by creating a code and then inserting the code in your blog post. Here is an example of a link party. Tools are simple to use and straight forward instructions.

Popular Linkup pages

Wordless Wednesday
A nice catchy theme, simple design. They give a theme for the week and the link appear below the post. Themes are generic in nature and quite broad based. Wordless has been around for 5 years plus.

Skywatch Friday
This is another popular linkup where the common theme every week is sky. Pictures have to contain a sky or portion of it. Since theme is the same and known in advance, bloggers can plan their posts well in advance. Skywatch is here since 2008. This is much before Instagram was conceived.

Our World Tuesday
Similar to Wordless Wednesday, this one also has a weekly theme. It is better than Wordless because it shows a thumbnail along with the link. So if you have an eye catching picture, it will value add.

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What is link building from Google perspective

You have a brand new website and you are going to seek professional help in announcing your presence to the world. There are just two possible ways to do it.

• Create unique and quality content for your readers
• Let people appreciate your work by dropping links back to your website aka back links

What is a back link

Pooja runs a food blog where she posts an article about the seasonal winter dish called Daulat ki Chat available in Chandni Chowk area of New Delhi. A lifestyle journalist from a reputed newspaper comes across the article and decides to write about it in the newspaper. She makes a reference to the article by Pooja and places a link to the article on the website of the newspaper.

This provides a back link to Pooja’s blog. This helps Google to understand that Pooja has created a quality content which a reputed newspaper has featured. Similarly readers of that newspaper have shared the article on social media and number of other places. All this linking has been picked up by Google crawlers and indexed.

Back link is unfortunately the only way for Google to know how popular is your website and content and how well are you promoting it.

How SEO experts have misused back links

When owner of any website takes the help of SEO expert, chances are that non existent and fake back links will be used to push up the rankings. An SEO expert manages to convince the website owner the shortcut to glory. This is how the modus operandi works.

SEO experts have tie ups with each other and some shady tie up with high ranking and high domain authority. This also includes a compromised website, who is not aware that links are now inserted artificially. SEO forums and groups are replete with webmasters boasting that they can provide high quality links or website are available for insertion of links. This is the point of worry for Google. Since link builders almost convince the website owners to skip creating quality content and pay for back links and link building. People also start dropping links to social media accounts, groups and comments. These are low quality link building techniques. Google wants something else.

How Google wants link building to happen

Link building is as good as promoting your website. As an owner, admin or webmaster you need to reach out to websites of similar categories or connecting businesses and announce to them that you have arrived! If your website is good and has enriching and quality content for people to read, it will get popular, no matter what. Of-course as promoter of the website, you will have to ask people to put in a good word, just like you would do in a real life store.

What Google is actually fighting

SEO experts have brought a bad name to the whole link business. Scores of SEO training academies just teach their students inorganic and unnatural link building. In turn when they reach out to clients, they sell this concept because they believe there is no other way. No SEO expert actually tells their client to create engaging content for their readers. The situation for Google reached such a extreme that in order to be relevant, they had to hit back. And they hit back hard rolling out the Panda updates since Feb 2011. Overnight in one massive sweep, all those websites with thin content, low quality and advertisement saturated and content farms, all lost their rankings. This also put scores of SEO experts out of business because Panda updates are still rolling out and Google is learning and closely watching.

To conclude, the answer is pretty simple and obvious. Always focus on high quality and original content and at the same time reaching out to the world to promote the same. Link building the natural way!

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WHOIS DNS search

There are plenty of websites offering DNS and WHOIS search. Hosting providers too have their tools. One among them stands out by the amount of information it provides in a search.

http://whois.domaintools.com/

Domain Tools gives a detailed and through report. It covers details like

• Registrar details
• Dates history
• Name servers
• Tech Contact
• IP Address and location
• IP and Registrar history

This tool ranks high on the google search for such categories. But the only problem is that the website is still running on http.

Meta Tags Analyzer

HTML5 gave the internet the ability to interact, WEB 2.0. It also gave the capability to web designers to insert bits and pieces of information specifically aimed at visitors. Search Engines will also be able to pick up this data and show it in results. Similarly web services also use this data.

Meta Tags are tags which Google understands. Page level tags are picked up by Google search engine and information is used. This is also sometimes referred to as meta data. Examples of Meta Tags are Title and Meta Description.

Most SEO tools show a detailed analysis of website meta tags. One such example is Meta Tags Analyzer by Small SEO Tools.

https://smallseotools.com/meta-tags-analyzer/

Results are accurate and neatly laid out.

The post Two tools for bloggers – Whois search and Meta Tags Analyzer appeared first on Start Blog Writing.

Sizes are confusing

Yes, that’s the bitter truth. So among the confusing mazes, let choose three basic sizes which are common. Square, Widescreen and 3:2 portrait.

Widescreen

Let us at the onset rule out this picture ratio. This is how it looks on a smartphone.

A lot of screen space is wasted and there is no reason why you should use this image size. Yes, it does fill up the mobile phone screen when viewed in landscape mode. But on social media, people seldom rotate their screen. Its portrait every time.

Square Size

This is the safest screen size. You can never go wrong with this size.

A photo is square size when the width and length is the same. This size is specially good for social media posts with content so that both the picture and text can be seen and read at the same time.

3:2 Portrait

Today social media is surfed on large screen smart phones. These phones typically have screen size of 6 inch plus. But they are also designed for single handed use. So they are more of elongated size. This brings us to our final size for that impactful post when you want a picture to dominate the screen.

This picture size fills up the mobile screens of all sizes today. This is also the camera option for most of the mobiles in portrait mode.

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How is a website made

The pages of a website can be made in different ways. It can be designed using a note pad and writing a series of codes in HTML. By a slight upgrade to IDE (Integrated Development Environment) things get easier, faster and convenient.

But the real fun lies where a site can be made online by anyone. Three main categories of such tools exists, Blogger by Google and WordPress.com by Automattic, Wix, Weebly and others like Shopify and lastly a self hosted website with content management system like WordPress. Lets discuss each one in detail.

Blogger.com and WordPress.com

2003 was a watershed year in the history of internet and publishing. Both Blogger.com and WordPress.com came into being in this year. And they redefined the way a website is made. Suddenly everyone could make a site without HTML coding and without any knowledge of how internet works. Both are free platform and both provide a free sub-domain.

Blogger.com comes with powerful integration of Google Adsense, so this platform has the edge. But the design of Blogger is still very very primitive and it is still a blog. While WordPress.com has beautiful themes which transform the look and feel of your blog to make it look like a website. Hundreds and thousands of bloggers use these two free platforms to host their blog. WordPress also has paid plans.

Amazing world of site builders

Online site builders provide a huge relief to those who want to create something easy on their own. This service is provided by sites like Wix, Weebly, Shopify and so on. They provide ready made templates and blocks. These blocks can be placed on any page, they can be resized or deleted. Blocks and Apps give the necessary tools to improve performance of your site. You get a free subdomain with your account. All website functions are available. Online store can also be created in a few steps.

Self Hosted WordPress website

Finally the most sought after where you can get maximum flexibility is a self hosted website. You need to choose a content management system or CMS. CMS allows you to install and customise your website. It also provides a set of tools to perform various roles right from admin to subscriber. WordPress is the most popular content management system and there is no close second. All hosting providers provide specialized WordPress hosting. Themes change the look and feel of your website depending on its role. Plugins are like apps or software which provide additional functionality to the website. With WordPress, customization is simply a breeze.

https://wordpress.org/

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Two types of promotion events by restaurants

Restaurants need the social media for greater coverage. An SEO powered blog with sizeable number of followers is like a gold mine. It is easy publicity and direct access to potential customers. Two basic techniques used by restaurants for publicity with  food bloggers.

Bloggers Event or Bloggers Table

This type is basically an event organized by a restaurant where many bloggers are invited. This event is mostly managed by another firm who specializes in organizing such events. There is a lot of emailing and calling up to be done to get the bloggers together. And many of the restaurants might not have the expertise or the resources to do so. Such events are costly in nature. Hence restaurants have to check the benefits accrued. Also when such events are held, the restaurant needs extra space so as not to disturb the other customers. A few other restaurants organize such events during off hours. This way the kitchen and staff can only focus on the bloggers.

Direct Invitation to reviewers

Restaurant owners or agency working on their behalf will directly contact bloggers or reviewers and invite the blogger for a meal. Bloggers or reviewers who are interested in accepting invitations prominently display their contact options on their blog. In rare cases the terms and conditions of the reviewers are also penned down on the Contact Us page. Here are a couple of examples.

How do bloggers or reviewers approach restaurants

A full time blogger invests lot of time in writing an article. The event has to be attended. Covered in minute detail. Nothing can be missed. It is a kind of responsibility towards the readers. Covering the social media or social network is a task in itself. Finishing an article can sometimes take days. So what does a blogger get in return for all that time invested. Primary method is blog monetization. The other way of compensation is by the goodies or freebies offered by the hosts. Gift hampers, take aways, coupons or vouchers and so on. Also if a reviewer informs the restaurant in advance, there is an opportunity for the restaurant to present more info about the restaurant which the blogger can cover in the article.

But looking at the other end of the spectrum, many bloggers or reviewers simply do not accept these options. Here is one such example.

As I began my blogging journey, I was impressed by what was written on the About page of this website. Similar site policy has been followed by The Time Lock. We actually go one step ahead and have no contact details on the website. 100 plus reviews and two years later, we can proudly say that not a single review is sponsored. We still visit a restaurant without intimating them in advanced. And even after paying the bill, we do not tell anyone that this visit is going to be followed up with a review.

Another reason for this approach is that maybe the restaurant owner does not want to sponsor out meal wholeheartedly, but just because of the review, he or she might do it reluctantly. And all this while the owner will be extremely friendly, but in actuality we are meeting for the first time. (and probably the last!)

A blogger getting all the attention will eventually be the center of attraction. Not a good proposition when the nearby tables are occupied by other customers.

The Time Lock has reached to top of leader board in Delhi NCR.

Restaurant review invitations are pouring in. But The Time Lock has maintained a strict site policy all this while. And I find no reason for it to change now.

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What is the issue of site title with spaces

A domain name for the Website called ‘The Verge’ reads http://www.theverge.com

The site title for this website is ‘The Verge’ but the domain name is without spaces.

The problem is not there for single word websites like our sister website http://soonev.com, again single word. So that single word becomes the site title and the SEO title too.

The problem cropped up when we had domain which was not figuring in the search results. The website in question is

https://thetimelock.photos

If Google search was keyed as ‘thetimelock’ without spaces, then the website used to be visible on the top of google search results. The meta tags of the website were as follows.

So if you note in the above picture, the site title is being reflected as ‘thetimelock’ without spaces. Same was picked up by Google Crawlers.

This was done because of the following settings for the General Settings in WordPress and the General Settings in Yoast SEO plugin.

But because the site name was without spaces, Google was only picking up the single word as ‘thetimelock’.

If Google Search was being made for terms like ‘timelock’ or ‘ the time lock’ or even ‘the time lock’ this website was not featuring in search results.

The solution for site name with and without spaces

Whatever site name is given in the General Settings is picked up an honored by Google Crawlers. So within no time there was a change in Google search results. Here is what settings were changed.

Step One : Changing General Settings in WordPress

The site title has been changed to ‘The Time Lock’

Step 2 : Changing General Setting in Yoast

Yoast setting are flexible that there can be an alternate name which Google will consider. There is alternate name we have fixed is ‘thetimelock’ without spaces. Here you can even tinker with the Website Name to confuse Google. But in turn you can even cover spelling mistakes inadvertently keyed in by users. Behavior of such setting however is not known and is not predictable too.

Once these two settings are changed, here is what we meta tags search yields.

Here is what is shown in Google Search Results for various combos.

For ‘The Time Lock’ Google is very clear. It will take time for Google, but eventually it has honored the change and the confirmation that there is another well known product in the market earlier.

For Google Search results for the word ‘thetimelock’ again Google is very accurate and the website result is right on the top of the page.

Even the image results are right at the top.

Lastly for various terms like ‘time lock’ or ‘timelock’, google is coming quite close. Results will improve after some time.

With regards to spelling mistakes inadvertently keyed by visitors to Google. That point has to be studied separately.

Which type of blog name do you have. It is with or without spaces. Does it figure in Google results properly. What about the other blogging platform, Blogger by Google.

Do put in your experience in comments.

Also note the website used for the settings is as shown below.

https://thetimelock.photos/

Save

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Here is a link to the article in question

http://phototravelings.blogspot.com/2016/11/places-to-skip-when-travelling-to.html

Analysis of the action from utility point of view

Let us look at the article from a traveler point of view who is looking for some advice. The traveler in question is looking forward to his/her trip to Dalhousie. Traveler searches the internet to plan a trip. But there is no filter among the tons and tons of info available on Dalhousie. All places are listed as good and must visit. Hotels are as it is asking their guests to stay a little longer to discover unseen Dalhousie. So what options are available with the traveler, except to rediscover the wheel again.

The article in question lists of places with specific reasons as to why they can be skipped. Take for example Kalatop Wildlife Sanctuary. This is one example of taking a detour of two hours minimum to reach a place where there are no wild animals in a sanctuary. There are two forest guest houses available to stay. Maybe the perfect place to stay in solitude, but again no wildlife. Not even birds.

So from a travelers interest point of view, full marks to the article.

Analysis of the action from bloggers point of view

Places to skip might not be a common search term on Google. But this is a new concept. From bloggers point of view this is a new idea. It might not get viral immediately, but the concept is fresh. It might actually spawn a new category of articles, where there is a filter in place.

Since blogging is all about interaction, it might actually start an analytical chain of action on a particular concept or product or idea. From bloggers point of view, such fresh thinking is always welcome.

Comments by readers on places to skip

Readers support is overwhelming for such a move. Also there is atleast one reader who has pointed out the fact that one cannot dictate a traveler what cannot be visited as it is a purely personal choice. Overall though some readers have pointed out the utility of the same and the freshness of the idea.

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