After a long weekend of reading post after post about Page Rank Improvements and of course lack there of, I decided that it was time for post about how to create a successful blog PB style keeping in mind the top 5 ways bloggers screw up their page rank. So why all of a sudden am I oh so willing to write all of this out? Well… to be honest… some of you guys have been pissing me off with some of these and rather than just put up an “Ugly Stick Beat Down” I decided offering a friendly, informative, “Authority Article” would be more beneficial.

You’re not using a “.htaccess redirect”.

Nothing is more aggravating to people like me who take time to write a thoughtful anchor… then it’s discovered the your domain name is spattered across the web in both “www” and “http://” formats! See, not only does that piss us off… but it weakens the “G-Juice Trickle”. To Google, not using a redirect can appear as if you are referring to two different websites. That said, you not only weaken your own rank, but you weaken the value of the outbound link of the author who wrote a little something about you.

You’ve not Updated Your Ping List Dummy

Yeh, I know someone is going to tell me that they’ve got “ping-o-mattic” and that covers it… ha! Okay… you put all your eggs in one basket why don’t ya! Look people, if you don’t have the notifier list updated in your admin panel, then it could take DAYS for your latest post to be listed in the serps. There is nothing worse than finding links through your referral stats rather than you’re serps feed readers! If the serps aren’t showing the backlink, you’re not getting credit Einstein! Oh, did I forget to mention that I’ve already written a post about the importance of the ping list? Yeh, it includes the latest and greatest services to! NOTE: Being listed in the serps is not the same as being indexed… there is a major difference!

Your 404’s are not Re-Directing Either

Nothing pisses off an author more than discovering that their well thought out anchor text to YOUR blog leads to a big fat 404 error. Do you want to lose some Page Rank? How about some love juice from the big “G”? Or how about that oh so valuable anchor text that you worked so hard to earn? I mean c’mon people, I don’t think that there is an easier way to screw yourself and the people who write about you! LOL… What’s ironic is that people often go back and rename their posts for better SEO… the result is a fatty-fo-fatty 404!

Wanna see it work? http://thepissbiscuit.com/best-blogger-on-planet/ (That page does not exist, but you don’t see no stinking 404 now do ya!) As for the Plugin that can help make it happen? Try the 404 redirect for better SEO!

Comment Chatting Needs to STOP!

Okay number three was the fastest way you can lose rank… but this my friends is the fastest way to lose readers and more importantly… commentators so listen up. If you’ve got the “Subscribe to Comments” plugin installed… I AM TALKING TO YOU! Over the past three days alone, I’ve been notified of about three hundred comments being added to the blogs I post on and subscribe to. Of those three hundred or so comments, 25 or 30 of them were actually something I wanted to be notified about. What I don’t want to read… is comment chatting… useless banter sent within minutes and sometimes seconds of each other.

Tonight on one of the newer blogs that I read, notified me of 19 comments in under 10 minutes which consisted of nothing more that silly fruitless banter like:

“great post”…”Thanks”…”No problem, glad you liked it”…”yeh man your post was great”… “Thanks man, I appreciate it”….”No seriously, it was really great”…” No dude, if only you were a girl”…

I hope that you get my point. Sure, I could go and cancel my subscription… but that requires work, and I’m to busy for that right? What’s easier for me is to either stop subscribing… or stop commenting. Neither option is good for the blog’s author. So what’s the solution? Try holding back your responses a while. When you as the owner, can respond to five or six comments at once… you can reduce the number of “flaky” comments sent out via e-mail by 60% or 70% and give the spiders time to find your fricken post! After your post is crawled… get stupid with comment chatter on occasion. Just remember that your readers should be respected.

You’re not listed in DMOZ

Okay this one is harder than it sounds. DMOZ is the open source directory… the biggie in fact. More so than Google in fact… and while we’re talking about facts… if you’re listed in DMOZ, you’ll likely be auto indexed by Google within days… not listed… indexed! Ya see the DMOZ directory is run by real people. You submit, they review, and if you’re cool enough, you’ll get listed. It’s a cake walk! (Fat joke at myself).

So when should you apply for a DMOZ listing? When you’re blog starts seeing some traffic, comments, and decent posts… it’s probably a good time to submit. Remember that REAL live people edit each submission… you’ve got to impress someone, not just meet some mathematical criterion. Now keep in mind, that this can take a week or it can take 6 months… but because people are involved, you never can tell.

• Don’t want to get “Sandboxed”? DMOZ it.
• Don’t want to lose your PR? DMOZ it.
• Don’t want to be de-indexed? DMOZ it.

Wrapping up my Page Rank Hints

As I mentioned earlier on… I wrote this to not only help you guys and gals… but to point out that good blogging can lead to more than just high PR and Traffic counts. It can lead to a great community, awesome friends, respectful relationships, a useful resource, and a profitable online business. So if all that isn’t reason enough to become a better blogger… go eat a cupcake!Don’t forget to go read my post on “The Best SEO Trick for Bloggers“.

If you like this post, and think it would be a good AUTHORITY article… scratch it… sniff it… lick it… but whatever you do, please Stumble it!

Like any business person would do, I spent a few hours last night researching my competition’s SEO techniques to see who I felt would get and keep the viable lead. I got a few great ones, and a few poor ones, but all of them could be improved (myself especially). Now today, I read a comment from Forest on SiteFlipU.com and decided that in the spirit of helping everyone learn a little more, I’d post my results here for you guys and gals to read. Question? Ask away!

Act High Brow

http://acthighbrow.com

Title Tag: acthighbrow.com = Lacks Common search terminology. Try something like “High Society News“.

Description: 993 characters = This is too many characters for what would be considered a ‘robot friendly’ web page. Reduce the number of characters by 50%.

Keyword Accuracy: 36% = Try reducing the number of keywords to bring your average up higher. Remove “fluff” words or “stop” words like: your, and, of, is, to, the, in, how, i, why‘ as they are stop words and ignored by the most search engines while diluting actual relevancy.

Robots Meta: No Robots tag found. = Consider adding them to help entice “crawl” frequency. For example, adding a “revisit” tag, would help control the speed in which your content will be indexed… in this case quicker.

Content Rank: The top ranking term is “2008″ = Consider adjusting your blogs output of date and time stamps.

Anchor Text Rank: The top ranking term is “read the rest” = Consider editing your theme files to output search relevant text. For example: “More news from high society…”

Travel Tips Digest

http://traveltipsdigest.com

Title Tag: frugal zeitgeist = 100% relevant to your content so well done!. If you’re looking to improve, I’d Consider “adding” long tail search terms for example: “location”, “type of travel” “summer travel tips” or “seasons”

Description: 498 characters = Great job! No changes needed.

Keyword Accuracy: Good = Try removing “fluff” words or “stop” words like: your, and, of, is, to, the, in, how, i, why‘ as they are ignored by the most search engines while diluting actual relevancy.

Robots Meta: No Robots tag found. = Consider adding them to help entice “crawl” frequency. For example, adding a “revisit” tag, would help control the speed in which your content will be indexed… in this case deeper.

Content Rank: The top ranking term is “luggage” = Consider adjusting your content to contain more of your “Long Tail” search terms.

Anchor Text Rank: The top ranking term is “WordPress” = By adjusting your own link’s anchor text, this can be quickly and easily fixed.

Frugal Zeitgeist

http://frugalzeitgeist.com

Title Tag: frugal zeitgeist = Lacks Common search terminology. Try something like “Your Resource for Coupons, Discounts, and Freebies!“.

Description: None found. = Almost every search engine uses description tags. Add a description tag immediately!

Keyword Accuracy: 2101 characters found and are 56% content relevant = Try removing “fluff” words or “stop” words like: your, and, of, is, to, the, in, how, i, why‘ as they are ignored by the most search engines while diluting actual relevancy as well as removing all but about 20 terms.

Poisonous Words: “Forum” = Remove this word from your keyword tag.

Death Words: “Free”, “Best”, and “Great”. = Remove these words from your keyword tag

Robots Meta: No Robots tag found. = Consider adding them to help entice “crawl” frequency. For example, adding a “revisit” tag, would help control the speed in which your content will be indexed… in this case quicker.

Content Rank: The top ranking term is “frugal” = Consider adjusting your content to contain more of your “Long Tail” search terms.

Anchor Text Rank: The top ranking term is “General Articles” = By adjusting your own link’s anchor text, as well as changing your theme’s output text, this issue can be quickly and easily fixed.

So what about the rest of the contestants?

Well the top three optimized blogs are listed below. They are ranked in order of accuracy and completion. The hands down best was by a mile! So good going Blogger Search! However, what would a top contender list be without the worst contender as well. It wouldn’t… so the hands down worst, is my own “Blog Fluff“. Blog Fluff has had a really rough start, and now that I’, weeks behind, I’m not sure that I have a shot in hell. That said, when it launches, Blog Fluff will be a totally awesome resource for bloggers of every niche with almost any goal. Just stay tuned… it’s gonna be good!

• http://bloggerssearch.com
• http://reggae-artists.com
• http://gogreenlifestyle.net

I hope that you all learned a little something about your blogs. I’m trying once again to share a little knowledge with you all to see every one of you succeed. No body can ever say I’m not a team player! I appreciate comments, even if they are in a question form, so please feed the need and show me a little comment love… things have been a little bleak in that department over the past few days. This goes for Non-Contestants as well.

As of late, blogs all over the sphere have been focusing a lot on SEO, traffic and of course… marketing. Of course, every one of us wants to become the next online mastermind that makes a killing online, so I figured I’d share a resource that  not only use, but highly recommend.

Why do I like this guy?

Before I go divulging who it is I’m talking about, I want to give you a few reasons why I so highly recommend this blog. As you all know by now, I love organic blogging. In fact I’m a freak for it. So much so, that I don’t even begin to try and put the Piss Biscuit into a niche like some folks say I should do.That said, this recommendation has been earned and let me tell you why.

1. He’s not selling me, you, or anyone else a damn thing. It’s organic. He writes for the love of his skill.
2. It’s honest and not to a fault. “White Hat”, “Black Hat”, “Purple Hat” shade matters none. You get it all.
3. Accounts his first hand experience with different techniques. Tried and tested… it can’t get better.
4. Real. Serious. He’s really serious. Both his Rambles and his articles keep me interested.
5. He’s not trying to be another MMO blog. Gotta love that.

So what’s the damn address already?

Well without further delay, let me introduce you all to… ExposedSEO.com. He writes this about himself:

Hey! My name is Ilia and welcome to my blog! I am 22 years of age, 7 of which I’ve spent working for myself. I’ve had a lot of success with seo and Internet marketing. I’ve achieved a number of highly competitive rankings, driven millions of organic visitors every month and generated thousands of dollars in revenue. Now I’m here to share some of my experience with you.

Right from the start Ilia is well spoken, informed me of why I should listen and tells me what to expect while reading his blog. I like it already!

So what can you expect?

Although NO blogger today ever goes to these lengths to write a “review”, I am a firm believer that you should not just recommend someone for a fee… or because they offer great affiliate payouts… I recommend something because I find it valuable. But to help you all determine for yourselves if this might be a valuable resource, here are a few recent posts from Iliam’s blog.

• His way of generating revenue with BANS.
• Why he runs more than one website at a time.
• Why affiliate marketing is better than AdSense.

I’ve got tons more I’d like to list, but I don’t want to put all the stuff I find interesting on here. I want you to head over there and take a look around yourself.

Why resources like this are important.

The fact of the matter is that in a little over two months, I’ve taken this blog from nothing, to around 350 uniques a day. I suck at Stumble. I can’t figure out how to make Technorati work in my favor. I don’t advertise and with work being so hectic these days, I don’t comment as much on other blogs anymore.

I don’t have a specific niche outside of blogging and of course… I’m constantly bombarded with the “bloggers blues”… So why go into all of this? To show you the value of organic, real life blogging. I think Piss Biscuit has really become a staple visit for some people and I’m proud of that. Visits will one day be in the thousands here, but for now, I’m quite happy with my current community.

This “plug” of sorts, is my way of showing thanks to totally awesome bloggers who do what they do just because. Oh, did I mention this was NOT a paid… or even requested plug… In fact, Iliam, has no clue this was even coming.  Enjoy it and let me know what you all think!

Well people… I’m about to let a dirty little secret out of the bag and it’s got to do with optimizing your blog’s “Header Tags” to improve search engine rankings within a week. Whoa, say what? Yep, you read it right. Unlike the hundreds of articles out there that explain the value of properly labeling your “<Header>” tags… I’m going to show you something that has literally made my company thousands of dollars in SEO optimization services.

The Value of your <H1> – <H6> tags

As most of you savvy bloggers already know heading tags (H1 through to H6) are given more weight by search engines than regular body copy. You also already should know that they should be used wisely to reinforce the page’s overall targeted keywords. That said there are a few basics that you should be aware of before starting to go bonkers with modifying your blog’s CSS Style Sheets.

Learn the “Header” tag’s true value

Today it’s pretty common practice to have theme designers incorporate the header tags within their style sheets. In fact, more often than not, their ideas are on the mark, but with a few simple tweaks, you can out rank and out index your competition. But first, you’ve got to know the value that search engines assign these little bad boys.

• <H1> = Most valuable Tag in the toolbox. Usually used for the title of a blog.
• <H2> = Second most valuable tag. This is usually found in the “Title” of each post.
• <H3> = My H3 tags can be found in the sidebar. They are bold with a little star next to it.
• <H4> = Generally unused but quite valuable and should be used.
• <H5> = Generally unused but still valuable to most search engines
• <H6> = Generally unused and least valuable, but not to be wasted.

Using the tags within your posts.

I run across COUNTLESS blogs everyday where authors don’t ever utilize the Header tag in their posts and it’s mind boggling to me. With the release of WordPress 2.5, the simple drop down menu at the top left o your editing screen makes this once aggravating task, beyond simple. Use them.

Helpful in more than one way

Look at my bright pink title above. That my friends is all it take to ass a little style and SEO love juice to your posts! It really couldn’t be more simple. I’m going to try and keep it simple so combining good design, great copyrighting practices and a little SEO fuel, here i my list of why you should use tags within a post.

Heading Tags can be aesthetically pleasing to read.

Header tags break up the monotony of a long winded posts.

“H” TagsHelp direct your readers to focus on your content.

Subliminally gives anxious readers small achievable goals.

Allows you to re-enforce staple points of your post

Add content space to what my be a short post.

Allows you to insert relevant keywords & phrases

Cuts out the trashy “self spamming” routine

… and those are just to name a few. I kept the list short, because that’s not really what this post is all about. So without further ado, here’s my little secret that can change the way spiders look at your site forever!

Re-Styling your <H> tags!

The look and style of your “Header” tags are controlled within you blog’s main style sheet. Usually, named style.css. Now I’ won’t go into lessons of coding CSS because every design is different, but I will tell you that with a few simple tweaks, you can add even more punching power to your posts. How? Ha ha…. just restyle them to match your body text.

Choosing the right tags to alter

Since the <H4>, <H5> and <H6> tags are almost ALWAYS under utilized, we are going to start with those. The idea is a simple one. Edit your last three available head tags to mimic the style of your body text. Huh? It’s easy I promise! Here is an example of body text I’ve got:

body{
color:#333;
font-family: Georgia, “Times New Roman”, Times, serif;
font-size: 11px;

As you can see the color of the font is not quite black, the font is Georgia, and the size is 11pts. Now we want to locate the <H> tags within our style sheet and modify them to match. For this example… here is an existing <H6> tag that we are going to re-style:

h6{
margin:5px 0;
padding:0;
font-size:12px;
color:#333

As you can see there are quite a few differences. But your job is to make the <H6> identical to the <body> tags and don’t worry It’s as easy as a little cut and paste… here is the final code!

h6{
color:#333
font-family: Georgia, “Times New Roman”, Times, serif;
font-size: 11px;

Now you’re locked an loaded! Save the file, upload it back to your server and start blogging using this little trick in every one of you posts. Choose your three main keywords and key phrases and order them according to what you find their value to be. The most important words and phrases for you blog should be assigned <H4> and the least important should use <H6> tags. But be consistent! Use the same tags, for the same words and phrases!!!

Some good advice to follow

Now that you’re done writing your awesome post, go back through it, highlight your target copy and simply choose the appropriate tag from the drop down that WordPress oh so graciously provides us (2.5 and higher)…. that’s it! Oh and one thing to remember… using tags is like steroids… DON’T over due it. A handful of tags is worth more than a post loaded with keyword spam (A good example of self spamming) Keyword spam might make you feel good now, but within weeks, you can quietly disappear off the grid and never be found again. So get out there and tweak that CSS!

If you thought this was informative… Stumble it for me, it only takes a sec… and if you’re really feeling randy… comment on it for me!

Click here to make your Google rankings last a LIFETIME…