dimondites

Improve Google search results ranking.

There are a few simple tricks you can do to improve your site’s Google search ranking. One of google’s criteria is the number of times your site has been linked to by other sites… This is one way to determine relevancy and popularity.

You may hear about Google’s recent hoopla about stopping self-syndication, but do not worry, they are referring to people who do this as a business, where for a fee, they will link your site to hundreds of fake sites in order to manipulate search results. It is completely legit for you to have multiple blogs and link your blog posts accordingly.  

Syndicating yourself is quite easy, but it does require a good chunk of your time. If you are interested, read on.

Self networking. Take advantage of all the free social networks available. The only requirement is either website link feature or web link capability. The infamous MySpace is an example of a social network that qualifies.

All you have to do is republish your own article/post and reference it back to your site. This can be achieved with multiple posts and in multiple social networks, such as Vox (my favorite social/blog network for ease of use), LiveJournal, Friendster,  Facebook, etc. The same applies to social shopping sites, such as ThisNext, Kaboodle or Stylehive, and also service networks, such as LinkedIn and Flickr.

Example of how I linked Dimondites using my Vox blog.
Example of how I linked Dimondites using my ThisNext product blog.
Example of how both my blogs are linked to my profile on ThisNext.
My LinkedIn profile. (Displays as “my blog” twice, which is not very good UI on LinkedIn’s part.)

Let us not leave out the almighty Wikipedia… Yes, it is possible, but it is a bit trickier because we need to honor Wikipedia’s content integrity. One can’t (shouldn’t) post random irrelevant topics on this site, especially if it’s for shameless self promotion. You’ll not be well-liked if you try, and besides, the volunteer watchers will zap you from the site anyway. However, if you do have relevant articles or information that will enhance the content of Wikipedia, you can (and should) link it.

Since Dimondites does not exist, I can easily add this name to Wikipedia and write a definition of what it is. I would define it as a blog about a community in Oakland called Dimond District (link Dimond District to an existing post of same name). I would probably include how the name came into existence, my ownership of the blog, and a brief description about the  type of content it generates. (I have yet to post Dimondites because I’m too insecure. The seriousness of it makes me very nervous.)

If you’re not into the easy way, then there is always the pure way, which is also the most difficult way. You can produce fabulous content in hopes it gets picked up by other sites or gets submitted to Digg or BoingBoing. These sites can drive a ton of traffic, if their community rank what you have to say as worthy.  A while back, ShortTakes, a humor section of Brandweek’s newsletter, picked up Short Shorts for Men from Grenade Fishing (my other blog), and surprisingly, the small mentiongenerated 3,000 unique visitors within a three day period. That’s not bad for free traffic. 

If you’re not THAT interested in improving Google ranking, but you like to increase brand awareness, the same tricks apply. Basically, it’s all free advertising. It’s just a matter of how much time you want (or can) put to this task.