Recently, SEO has been getting some bad rap. It may deserved or undeserved, but that really shouldn?t concern you if you stick within what is called ethical SEO. Experts would say that this is the best way to get search engines to notice you and give you lasting results.

So what is ethical SEO? The main point in ethical SEO is not to use any illegal means to advertise on your website. Neither does it cover the use of ?shady? methods to increase traffic. The major drawback to ethical SEO is that it does not give immediate results. It is a strategy that requires A LOT of patience and hard work. You have to develop and form your own strategy to suit specific needs and target your specific market. There is simply no shortcut to ethical SEO. On the other hand, with ethical SEO, you get lasting and real results. With impeccable content and excellent service, your hard work will pay off and you will gain the trust of your customers as you continue to rise in the page rankings. With ethical SEO, you get reliable results and permanent benefits. At the end of the day, that?s what really matters. You may get to your goal slowly but you?ll get there eventually, and when you do, you will be ready for the windfall.

1. Number of Technorati Links (0.74)
2. SEOmoz Page Strength (0.60)
3. Number of Links to the Blog URL via Yahoo! Site Explorer (0.56)
4. Number of Links to the Domain via Yahoo! Site Explorer (0.54)
5. Bloglines Subscriptions (0.49)
6. Technorati Rank (0.49)
7. Alexa Rank (0.49)
8. Netcraft Rank (0.43)
9. Newsgator Subscribers (0.39)
10. Compete.com Rank (0.38)
11. Ranking.com Rank (0.36)
12. Google PageRank (0.21)

Results are based on visitor tracking data and other external metrics used from 25 really popular blogs.

So what does this mean for you? Simple. If you want to increase your blog’s traffic work on your Technorati links more than your Google page rank! And oh…get people to subscribe to you blog too.

Alexa Internet started in 1996 with the “vision of Web navigation that is intelligent and constantly improving with the participation of its users.” Right now Alexa has plenty of services offered including the Web Search Platform, which is still in Beta, the Alexa Web Information Service, Alexa Toolbar, their website, and other services that the usual users are not always aware of including their Webmaster Services and Data Services.

Though Alexa has plenty to offer, an SEO conscious blogger is probably familiar mostly (and only) with the Alexa Rank. It is after all the seventh determining factors for your blog’s traffic. Alexa actually ranks ALL websites and not blogs, but of course the higher your Alexa Rank is the more traffic your blog can expect to have. Alexa ranks your blog by looking at the traffic details of each site that they crawl including the number of page views and number of users that Web sites receive. More on how the Alexa rank works on my next post.

As promised one of the most popular of the services that Alexa offers is the traffic details of each website. What the traffic details gives you is plenty of information by which you can base decisions on how to increase your site or blog’s traffic. The traffic details include a short overview of the site, average review of the site (star-based), the site’s Alexa Traffic Rank, graphical representation of the site’s daily reach, traffic rank, and page views, plus user information such as geographical location and their preferred pages on the site.

The Traffic Rank is very easy to understand with your rank going higher as the number gets smaller. At present Yahoo stands at number one. As a blog you shouldn’t be disappointed with a very large number since even the more popular blogs, like Matt Cutt’s blog, already has rank of 1611. What you can do is aim to get a higher rank. Be prepared for large fluctuations though since that is the norm.

As mentioned in the last post the SEOmoz Page Strength is a very wholistic way of determining your blog’s ability to attract traffic. This is because it takes several very important factors into consideration. As a matter of fact it actually takes into factor the top determinants of a blog’s traffic. So just what are the factors that contributes to your page strength?

The factors are:

1. The number of links pointing to your full URL.
2. The number of links pointing to your domain.
3. Your position at Google for the first four words of title tag on target URL.
4. The age of your domain. Older is better of course.
5. The number of links from domains with .edu TLDs.
6. The number of links from domains with .gov TLDs.
7. Your Alexa rank.
8. Your domain name visibility.
9. Your internal link percentage.
10. The number of your links according to Technorati.
11. The number of search results for URL search at del.icio.us.
12. Number of listings in DMOZ.
13. The number of links found in Wikipedia.
14. The Google page rank of your full URL and Domain.

One way you can significantly help your blog is by using technorati tags. Technorati tags of course not only links your blog to Technorati, the ultimate web community for bloggers, but also gives you an alternative way for labelling or categorizing your entries. We have previously discussed how labels and categories can help your users but categorizing your posts using Technorati tags takes it one step further.

Remember my previous post on the Best Predictors of Traffic? Well there we found out that the number of technorati links actually influences traffic volume even more than your Google Page Rank or Alexa Rank. Translated into action this simply means that you need to hop onto the technorati band wagon and use as much tags that are applicable to your posts. With more tags you get more technorati links so that people who search for good blogposts in technorati will have a better chance of stumbling upon one of your posts.

More tags. More traffic.

You might be thinking, what the heck does angelic things (halos?) have to do with search engine optimization techniques? Well, have you heard of the Halo Effect? It does not really pertain to celestial bodies but in fact has a very earthly application. According to the Wikipedia entry, the Halo Effect is ?cognitive bias in which the assessment of an individual quality serves to influence and bias the judgment of other qualities.? That helps, doesn’t it? Put simply, the Halo Effect describes how a person can be thought to be good (or bad) at one thing simply because he is good (or bad) at another thing, even when these two things are not related at all.

So how does this relate to SEO? Anyone remotely involved in trying to get the top ranking for a particular keyword in Google would know just how difficult that can be. It may take months of frenzied activity ? submitting to directories, writing articles, and maintaining blogs, to name a few. After a certain period, you can actually reach the top spot for your specific keyword or search phrase. This is where the Halo Effect comes in. Once you have reached the top spot for ONE key phrase, then you will find it much easier to get the top spot for other key phrases for your website.

This is indeed a relief for those of you who have been working at getting that keyword up the rankings. There is hope, just keep at it and once you get at least one keyword up the listings, you will find it easy going from there.

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