I came across an SEO blog this week that I hadn’t seen before. I read blogs like this from time to time when I’m looking to make tweaks to my blogs…I find angles and strategies I usually haven’t even thought of, and this SEO advice is no exception. I wanted to share this article on how to increase StumbleUpon traffic with you - if you’re not using StumbleUpon to drive traffic to your site, you’re missing out. This article does a great job of explaining the basics behind using StumbleUpon to get traffic to your blog, or specific landing pages / articles, and the author is getting 50-100 visitors a day from the service. StumbleUpon is one of the highest referrers on each of my blogs, and I’ve received as many as 250+ visitors per day using it. Read the comments generated as well, because several readers shared their own StumbleUpon experiences.

Despite some of my sites having a PR update a few weeks ago, I don’t think the PR update is complete, which means there is still some time to boost your link popularity and search engine rankings before pagerank updates take place for this quarter. You should also take a look at how search engines see your blog or website. A website optimization service will show you how your website is perceived by search engines and visitors - do your pages load quickly? Is your navigation easy to use? If your content easy to follow, and easy to spider? In addition, a website optimization company will give you suggestions on things to change so that your website can receive higher search engine rankings and more traffic. You need to be on the FIRST page of terms when people search for your site, because in general, people won’t go to the 4th, 7th, or 19th page or results looking for you, regardless of how great your website or product is.

When you’re looking for directories to submit your blog and website too, you should start with the highest ranked directories. My directory has a main page which is PR5, which is good, but the main URL for this blog directory is a PR6, which is even better! The sub folder is unranked for now, but with it’s parent page being a PR 6, it should earn a nice pagerank of it’s own in a matter of time. The directory offers deep link submission options, which most blog directories don’t, and a lot of blog categories. Both standard and featured listings are available, for a yearly or permanent fee.

One of the easiest things you can do to boost your PR is to submit your site to web directories, like the one I run here at GeekySpeaky. Most of these directories have very simple standards for submission, and with just a few clicks, you’re done. Submitting to ANY directory is good, but the very best kind of directories to submit to offer one way links. That means that the directory links to YOU, but you’re not required to link back. Some directories do this for free, others, like mine, charge a small free for a permanent one way link. Finding out who offers free one way links can be a little tricky, but I found a great list of web directories offering both free and paid one way links.

But Colleen, who really uses web directories to FIND websites? Don’t people use Google?

True - most people won’t browse through a web directory looking for sites. The whole point of most web directories isn’t to send traffic to your site, it’s to give your link popularity added wait. When Google does a pagerank update, the more ONE way links you’ve got pointing to your site, the higher the chances are that your PR will improve! Adding your site to web directories is a great way to give your one way links some “oomph”, and with this site showing you a ton of free web directories you can submit to, it’s easy! If you want to make your directory submissions even easier, check out this free directory submission tool I found - it will keep track of what directories you’ve already submitted your site to, and which directories remain. (Trust me - it’s irritating to input all of your information into a submission form only to be told your site already exists in the directory!) If you’ve got multiple websites or blogs, no sweat - the tool will keep track of those too, and tell you what link title you used as well.

This is a sponsored review.

At least, I think so.

Yes folks, the pagerank update for Q3 2007 has been a long time in the making, but I think the Google dance is finally beginning. I’m not seeing big changes in the data centers right now, but what I am seeing is disappearing backlinks! Previously, when I checked my PR on http://livepr.ezer.com/url/ I’d see several hundred backlinks for each of my sites. I’m seeing a big fat ZERO for backlinks on my PR 5 blog, and no archive data either showing the results of the backlink update. Very mysterious…

Only time will tell. But I wanted to point out that when I checked my PR on http://livepr.ezer.com/url/ tonight, another data center was showing a zero for me. Previously, DC 14 and DC 18 returned a 0 when I checked, and now DC 16 has joined them. I’m going to be watching it over the next few days to see if anything else changes. I’m ready for this PR update to be over and done with.

Mr. Gary Lee seems quite confident that the PR update will start next week. He’s also hooking up readers with a PR boost, hopefully just in time for the update. It’s nice to see to see people giving the link love around so freely, as freely as if they were passing out online coupon codes.

If you’d like to be sure of when the PR update begins, you can check your PR here in real time. When you see action amongst the data centers, it’s a good sign that things have started. FYI, DC 14 and DC 18 don’t seem to be responding, and haven’t been for weeks.

Google’s giving me a birthday present, and it’s coming 2 weeks early!

Yes, the PR update is happening. Now. Or so it seems, given that this live PR checker is showing fluctuations in pagerank. Typically, when you see those things, it means an update is in the works. When I put in the URL for my main blog, I come up with 18 datacenters showing a 5/10, and 2 showing a big fat zero. Same thing for this blog, except the 18 datacenters are showing a 4/10.

How long will it take? No clue, so don’t rejoice til it’s all said and done.

You heard it here first. Fifty-seventh. Google’s pagerank update is happening today - yay! So far, I’m only seeing fluctuations for one of my sites. Don’t rejoice or get upset yet - while the datacenters are pulling different info, anything could happen. Wait til the dust has settled before you do anything.

I just discovered that there’s a SEO company here in the Tampa Bay area! I didn’t even realize that eTrafficJams.com was local to me - they’re the search engine optimization company that pioneered pay for performance SEO services. The company was founded by Michael Pedone, after he had success with some SEO work he did for his wife. Since then, Michael has worked with companies like the duPontregistry and Learn Key to propel their sites into the top 10 results for Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Visit the website and you’ll find testimonials from satisfied clients who saw the results they wanted in just a matter of days.

What I like best about this site is that they’re willing to “put your money where your mouth is”. If you don’t get the results you want in Google, Yahoo, or MSN, you don’t pay that month. That means for companies on a small budget, you’ve got nothing to lose by working with eTrafficJams.com. You pay your initial set up fee for services and your monthly performance-based charge, which is refunded if the results are in the top 10.

I wonder if Michael and the rest of the company would be willing to tell me why one of my domains can’t get indexed by Google? That would be worth a few bucks to me.

Everyone interested in SEO is wondering about one thing right now. When is the next pagerank update?

If I knew, well, I’d tell you guys! I’ve heard rumors of April 10, but those are just that - rumors. But there’s still time to work on your SEO. One SEO company website I read said that if you’ve seen your rankings fall lately, it could be because of the tightening of the relevance filters used by search engines. We all know that Google and the other search engines are finicky. I get traffic from the oddest things, and things I try to promote…well, that doesn’t always go as planned. Using a professional SEO company may just help you achieve the results you want.

I’m always interested to hear what others have to say about SEO and promoting your site - especially when that advice is related to blogs, and free. The King Nomar blog on web development and SEO fits the bill on both counts. I was drawn in with the very first post I saw, on the value of submitting your site to directories. The author makes an excellent point - people may not use directories, but spiders are, and a link is a link is a link as far as the search engines are concerned. I didn’t start the directory on this site expecting people to use it to find new sites - I started it to provide people with an extra link, and to get this site more traffic, as well as a small source of income. Unfortunately, one of the best directories as far as increasing your PR, DMOZ, seems to be moving like a herd or turtles.

The rest of the blog also contains useful info - from getting on the front page of Digg and how it felt (isn’t that every geeks dream?) to everything you ever wanted to know about keywords. The whole thing is wrapped up in a nice geeky package for you to devour. Or savor. All I know is, I’m going back for seconds.

I’ve talked about SEO here in the past - things you can do to promote your site on your own, and companies you can hire to do the work for you. How about a new twist on that - a company that will make an evaluation for you and then let you do the work? Watch this short video I created that explains what Search Engine Optimization can do for you:

Neat concept, huh? I’m all about saving money and putting in a bit of sweat equity.

A hot topic on the message boards I frequent has been the next Google pagerank update - WHEN IS IT? The answer? Only Google knows. We can track past updates and plot and map out dates all we want, but I firmly believe that Google wakes up one morning and says to himself, “Today is the day”. Or something like that.

That’s why I’m busting my hump now on SEO and promoting the heck out of my blogs, so that when Google decides to make updates, I’ll be (hopefully) ready. This Toronto SEO company offers keyword analysis & recommendations, and boy, is that something I need help with. I just can’t focus long enough to delve that deep into SEO. I know another good thing is increasing backlinks…I’ve been submitting to a lot of directories that don’t require a link back, but I heard using the same site description for every directory could be a bad thing. This SEO company has a free tool to check backlinks which would be a good tool to make sure I’m headed in the right direction each month. Their blog also has some basic SEO tips that remind me that you can do a lot to promote your site on the web for free. One such tip is branching out - don’t rely on search engines along. There’s also word of mouth, newsgroups, message boards, or even print advertising.

I read online recently that the Alexa toolbar has had a decline in users. Is it any wonder? Most people are too search engine savvy to trust Alexa’s results. I’ve posted in the past about the things you can do to increase your Alexa rankings. Additionally, I’ve been told by IE users that after installing the Alexa toolbar, their systems went kablooey. A system that can be gamed to skew results isn’t going to attract most people interested in SEO, because they know it’s not a good ranking system to use.

I’ve been poking my nose around webmaster forums all day, in hopes of learning something about SEO that I don’t already know. A lot of people seem to have differing opinions on what will really boost your search engine rankings, and I suppose that’s because Google doesn’t let us know everything they’re up to. As for me, I simply don’t have the energy or time to become a complete SEO expert - I’ve got other irons in the fire to deal with. If I had a bigger budget, I’d definitely turn to an SEO company, like this San Diego SEO expert. They’ve studied the trends, and they have the experience. This SEO expert offers a book on his site that covers the basics of writing for search engines - sounds like something I need to read. Included are tips on strategic linking and word usage. I really love that they give blogs the credit we’re due. In fact, their site states that blogs are a powerful marketing vehicle. They advise businesses to create blogs in order to communicate with customers. I agree - I think blogs give a face to a corporation or business. For bigger budget sites, hiring SEO may seem like a waste of money, but if it can boost your sales, it’s money well spent.

I’ve been so focused on pagerank the past week, that I’m starting to dream about it. Scary, huh? My main blog is a PR 4, and I want it to increase on the next Google update. I’ve been investigating a lot of ways to make this happen, from free, to big bucks. One such service that I’ve looked at is Dclickads. They connect advertisers and webmasters, so that one can buy ads and increase pagerank or search results, and the other can make some money. Typically, I’m on the webmaster side of things, so this is a new world for me.

What makes the text link ads, graphic banner ads, and embedded inline ads being sold by Dclickads different? Well, for one thing, you can get a classic banner ad, embedded links, or a text link ad - most of the other guys only focus on one or the other. And ads placed are directly linked, which is better for SEO, which is the whole reason I’m looking into this.