A few highly ranked pages on Google with PR 10, in recent times have moved to page rank 9. Many .gov sites are constantly seen in the Page Rank 10 list. But, the fact is .gov or .edu domains do not get any preferential treatment from Google’s algorithms.

Page rank changes of one or two are normal with new updates from Google. Sometimes page rank changes one sees could be temporary and one should not panic. While looking at page rank as an indicator of the value of a site is healthy, undue obsession about Google’s page rank is not necessary.

Facebook - Social Networking site
135,000 backlinks to this site
Facebook is the first social networking site to grab the famed Google Page Rank 10, considered the holy grail of search. For those new to SEO, it just means that the site is a lot more SEO compliant and has been pointed to by a lot of relevant and highly ranked sites, has fresh content every minute, has a huge traffic driven of course by 400+ million users, is bookmarked heavily by users, and has a ton of online PR that talks about the usefulness of Facebook.

Zimbra - Open source email collaborator
1,890 backlinks to this site

IFLA - The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
3,330

Addthis - The popular bookmarking and sharing services site
159, 000 backlinks to this site

G08 – Group of eight site
1,180 backlinks to this site

Sciencedirect - Showcases 9.5 million articles/chapters from scientific journals, 2,500 peer-reviewed journals and more than 11,000 books
8210 backlinks to this site

CNN - (same as http://www.bozkurtihsan.co.uk/ ) The news site
47,800 backlinks to this site

University of California - University of California
4,140 backlinks to this site

Adobe Reader - The trusted Adobe reader download
458,000 backlinks to this site

W3 - The World Wide Web Consortium
33,600 backlinks to this site

USA Govt Site - Official portal of the United States Government
30,100 backlinks to this site

EUA – The European University Association
3,210 backlinks to this site

Google - The world’s popular search engine
149,000 backlinks to this site

Indian Govt - The official site of the Govt of India
2,360 backlinks to this site

Europeana - showcases Europe’s cultural heritage with links to 6 million pieces of unique information.
5,160 backlinks to this site

Miibeian - Ministry of Information Industry Records in China
54,800 backlinks to this site.

HHS (same as www.dhhs.gov) - The United States Department of Health and Human Sciences
36,200 backlinks to this site.

Universitas21 - Network for Higher Education
1,140 backlinks to this site

The domain name is a first point of contact for search engines to know what the domain is all about. And so it’s very important for you to choose a name that has words that people use often to search for information on the subject.

So if you’re going to run a blog or site on self improvement, then selfimprovement.com would be a wonderful name to choose. Or if you were planning to trade in second hand cars, then usedcars.com is a good name. Because approximately 68,000,000 searches were made on Google using the keywords “used cars”. In the last month alone.

Astrology.com and shopping.com are great names for their domains because that’s the top keyword people use while looking for the respective services.

Small wonder then that a Big Fight is on to gain the domain name sex.com, which is reportedly up for sale and is valued at $18 million. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and a California meat company BullWhip are at war over this domain name. PETA has publicly requested the owner of this domain name to donate it to them so that they could put up a lot of “sexy” veggie ads and promote their cause. Read the stories here: Fight for domain name and PETA’s request for the sex.com name

Although sex.com doesn’t have a single page of original content, you can discover that 559,000,000 number of pages are indexed in Google for the word “sex”. And sex.com is on the first page.

That name can draw a ton of traffic every minute. There are a million searches happening across the world using this word. And, the traffic for this keyword is not seasonal. It’s evergreen.

Reasons why it’s valued so high.

The domain name has the advantage of age, since it was booked in 1995 and has been renewed till 2019.

Lesson to learn here, a domain name has to be keyword rich, with words people are most likely to use to search for information on your website.

I’m not talking about frequent content updations to your page or site. I’m talking about frequent changes in titles, keywords, descriptions, changing of copy, changing of other links on page, html changes, addition or deletion of copy, frequent optimizing of copy or on-page factors.

How can we avoid being penalized, in case we need to do a lot of changes on a page?

The wisest way is to do all the changes at the backend and then take it online in one shot. Many keep publishing the changes online after every change and it spells serious trouble.

Seo4google.org’s Tip: Imagine if a store were to keep changing its products/ services every second day. Customers would turn a little wary and wonder what the store is up to. Traffic is most likely to fall when a store does many changes in a short period of time.

Whether you are changing the title, keywords, description, adding more content, adding links or introducing new services, please do all of them at the back end and then make it online. I find many bloggers keep changing their tags, titles and keywords as often as once a week. Often it has resulted in a fall in traffic for those pages and at times loss of page rank.

And to regain the page rank and traffic takes up a lot of time and effort. Because search engines tend to place you under a scanner and understand what you’re trying to do. Whether you are doing something unethical or trying to play with their algorithm.

Seo4google.org’s Tip: Why search engines look suspiciously at large scale or frequent changes to a web page? Would you not suspect your neighbour of something unethical if you found scores of cars driving in and out from his home Monday to Friday? Most certainly you would.

Search engines look at unusual and frequent changes to a web page or site much the same way. So, you must always plan what you’d like to do, weigh its implications, and execute changes in one phase. Unless your website has hundreds of pages and you may want to do the changes in two or three phases, studying the effect of each change on your rankings and traffic.

Whenever you write keep your audience in mind. What does the user want and what are the questions on his mind? Answer them and you’ll get your visitors trooping to your site. When you write, remember there are different types of readers – people who have the time, people who scan, people who listen and people who love to watch videos.

Example of Comprehensive Content: When I mean publish comprehensive content, I mean deal exhaustively with the chosen topic. Let’s say Cancer Treatment is your theme for a blog post. Then you should talk about recommended treatments, side effects, alternate treatments, cancer diet, exercise and yoga for cancer patients etc. Use videos, audio files, slides, graphics, podcasts and everything in between.

Comprehensiveness, in this case, is also writing about allied subjects. Cancer survivor stories, cancer support groups, cancer forums, links to quality cancer content.

A reader may not spend a day sinking in all of these, but he’ll choose his preferred content and benefit from it.

Writing comprehensively reveals your expertise on the subject. Comprehensive content also shows you care for users who want the information. Comprehensive content also shows says that you’re not a fly-by-night blogger or site owner looking to make a quick buck and move on.

Comprehensive content is a great Search Engine Optimization secret to use for rich traffic benefits.

And of course

Very often you have heard of “optimizing anchor text” in SEO articles. Anchor text is the text that is hyperlinked and by clicking which one can go the page which has been described in the hyperlinked text. The hyperlinked anchor text is usually in a different color, to make it stand out and attract the user’s eye.

Example: Blog to Make Money Online

Anchor text is a way of leading the reader to a page of content by telling him exactly what he’ll find on the content page. It’s a way to lead people to interesting content on the same subject.

It should never be approximated.
It should never be written just for search engines.
It should never mislead the reader.
It should never say one thing and mean something else.
It should never be hyperlinked with words like “read more”, “more” or “continue reading”. Since these are opportunities wasted to explain to the reader what you have on the next page.

It should always provide the reader with a clue to the core of the content.
It should always be accurate in description of the content.
It should always be written for users.
It should never be written for manipulating page rank.

You can use anchor text at the end of an article leading them to more content on the same topic. Something like continue reading “how to optimize anchor text.” But hyperlink only “how to optimize anchor text.”

It can also be used within an article. You can hyperlink certain words or phrases to another appropriate article or section on your site.

Research before You Write Anchor Text
Don’t ever rush to write anchor text. Do keyword research to find out what people are searching for on the subject. Find a good keyword phrase that fits the content to a tee and then use it. Always use keywords that real users would use to search for that particular content. And it’s wiser to use the words inn the same order as users may type into a google search bar.

Highly recommended. This is the Official Google Search Engine Optimization guide. Basic SEO tips. Fundamental for beginners.

Details the basics of domain name, keywords, analysis and linking. .

SEO expert tips to bring SEO in-house

Broad level Search strategies by Aaron Wall

Easy to implement search tips for starters with an exhaustive SEO glossary at the end.

Brad Callen’s guide to SEO , with examples and screenshots.

How to find Quality and Relevant link partners for your site or blog?
The smartest way is to go to human edited directories like DMOZ, Yahoo Directory
, and Business.com. Only dmoz.org does not accept payments for including sites and blog, the other two do. Although not every site or blog that pays a fee gets listed.

Why should you find link partners on sources like Dmoz.org?
They are edited by humans who abide by certain quality guidelines and choose only those that are worthy to be recommended as a resource. The editors also sort them according to relevancy.

Browse any of these directories and look for relevant sites and blogs to seek partnership with. Identify related sites too as that is also a good link partnership. If you are a recruiting firm, then you should also look at related resources for linking – hr software, job sites, job search engines, hr trainers, hr blogs, hr directories, resume writers etc. Since they are relevant to your audience.

Hit each of their sites and find out the quality of stuff or service the site offers. If you are satisfied that it’s good to link with, them get a mail id or use the contact form to send them a mail seeking link exchange. Tell them why you think it’d be beneficial for them. The link exchange mail should be no more than 6 to 8 lines.

Will blogs link faster than sites?
Yes, bloggers as a group believe in linking to good stuff. Search good blog directories, aggregators and blog catalogs. Technorati, Blogcatalog could be a good starting point.

Where else to find link partners?
Google to find link partners. This could be a very time consuming activity as you have to verify every site that comes up on the results page and them reach out for links.

How can I find other linking resources?
Each of the quality sites that you identify will have a links or related resources page. That should be a good starting point to continue searching for more linking partners.

Where should I start to build links?
Put up a Related Resources link on your site. And select the best of the sites in your domain and publish them, under different categories. This will give users a goo place to look at other resources. When this page gets a page rank, you’ll find it easier to fetch links from other sites.

What do I recommend?
If you want to build a quality site with authoritative resources, then be very careful while choosing link partners. Research and find out good resources before you recommend them to your visitors. Do not choose any site even if it is recommended by an expert. Read through the site and satisfy yourself that your users will find it useful and only then should you link to it.

When should you look for sites to link with?
Build a good site with nice quality content. Do atleast 50 quality postings before attempting to find link partners.

Teething troubles
When you have no page rank and little traffic, you’d find it difficult to get someone to link to you. But, let me assure you that good quality sites will attract links, come what may.

But don’t worry, keep publishing good quality links and you’ll be able to attract good links.

Hey, if you found this article interesting, start your “link karma” by linking to this post or blog.

Build great content.
Build links naturally.
Link only to relevant content.
Exchange links with high page ranked sites.
Link to useful content for visitors.

Linking Strategies Resources:

Eric Ward Linking Articles

Chris Sherman’s Articles in Search Engine Watch

Linking Matters

Link Building Basics by Eric Enge

Link Building Tips by Aaron Wall and Andy Hagans

Ethical Link Building Tips

Creating Compelling Links by Brian Clark on Copyblogger

Link Building Popularity on Google Webmaster Central

He targets rich content sites, library sites and sites that instruct beginners on a subject. More importantly, he targets niche, fairly unknown sites and creatively works to get links.

Erc Ward suggests building creative content, strategies to get social media and influencers in a domain to review and link to your site. Not from the point of view of search engines, but human users who want good content and very good related content. And from a trustworthy source.

He believes that each of us trying to build links must act as if we worked for Google. Check out Eric Ward’s Link Building Site. http://www.ericward.com/

Best of Eric Ward’s Link Building Interviews

Linking interview
Wordtracket Interview

Audio Link Building Interviews

Traffic Pulling Link Tips

The Search Engine Guide’s Interview

Social Media Linking Discussion

Link Building Challenges

Link Building Myths

Gaining Link Popularityinterview on Marketing Sherpa

Linking Strategy Podcasts