Taking your blog seriously is not just about posting content. It is making sure that it reaches a network of readers in order to gain a regular following. For this reason, more bloggers opt to register in web portals or search engines to boost their hits and gain more exposure.

BlogSearchEngine allows you to reach a wider audience and increase traffic in your site by adding you to their comprehensive and organized listing. They also provide a reviewed informational description of your blog and a promotional link to your site through several PR5 and PR6 directories.

The redesigned BlogSearchEngine site currently offers the following packages:

Standard Package     $14.99

Blog Search Engine Review Listing

Silver Package          $24.99

The Silver Membership Package includes the same offerings as the Standard Package plus a blog review which is written and published with permanent backlinks on Bloggy Award. You also get listed at Xfep.com –‘Uber Blogs’ for 3 months.

Gold Package          $59.99

For the Gold Package you can get everything in the silver package plus a 30 day link on EatonWeb –a portal with the same functions as BlogSearchEngine.

Platinum Package      $99.99

The Platinum Package is the ultimate member package because it is a combination of all three packages mentioned above. The best part is that you get a custom made banner that will be displayed in the top right ‘Featured Blogs’ section of BlogSearchEngine for 15 days.

Get featured now and become a member. For as low as $14.99, get a chance to win a Platinum Package worth $99.99!

Here’s how:

1. Simply send out a tweet about this contest and include a link back to the following URL: http://bit.ly/rqPTDL
2. Copy and paste the full tweet you sent into the comments section on this page.

The contest goes until end of day 11/11/11 and the winner will be announced no later than 11/14/2011.

Here’s something for you to think about: is it worth using Tumblr for SEO?

Recently, Tumblr has received a lot of attention because of their services being down for extended periods of time. (They have addressed this issue by taking on an additional data center service. They’re actually looking to open the new data center after the holidays.) Despite the down time, a lot of people are still using Tumblr, and yes, there is a huge potential for Tumblr to attract traffic.

There is the fact that Tumblr may not be the first choice for blogging. It does lack some features which are easily found on similar services, such as direct messaging between users. We also have to highlight the fact that Tumblr does not do well in organic search results. So why bother with it for SEO purposes?

There is also the fact that Tumblr is a platform that makes it easy to post different types of media. It is a good way to get the word out there, and it does have the potential to drive people to your site. We’re not throwing Tumblr aside as a useful tool – you just need to optimize it in order to get good results. If there is one thing you have to do, go to the Advanced Settings tab and enable “allow search engines to index your blog”. While you’re at it, choose “promote me on Tumblr” as well.

Other quick tips:

• Use alt tags, keywords, and the other usual SEO practices.
• Add Facebook “like” buttons to your posts.
• Utilize RSS.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all the rage with website owners and developers. However, more and more website owners are going overboard and forgetting what SEO is really supposed to be about. In the pre-search engine era people had to remember website URLs or use directories to go to the website containing the information they need. With the advent of search engines finding information became much easier and people found themselves automatically using search engines as the portal to getting whatever it is they need on the internet.

As search engines gained importance website owners and developers found themselves developing techniques, now called SEO techniques, to help get the search engine’s attention and rank higher. The sad thing is that many now employ SEO techniques simply to achieve higher page rankings and forget that search engines existed in the first place to provide substantial and accurate information to web users. Many websites use SEO in hopes of making it to the first page of SERPs but disregard the fact that websites should actually be built for users.

Nowadays many websites are designed not for visitors but for the search engine. This defeats the entire purpose of information sharing. Businesses and individuals get so wrapped up trying to make money in the net by using SEO techniques that they overlook the fact that a real website with substantial content along with good SEO methods will ensure more traffic and more revenue in the long run.

It is a really sad thing that many great websites that don’t employ that much SEO methods are being buried in the back of SERPs while crappy websites designed simply to make a profit sometimes get higher rankings.

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.

The OpenGraph Search Engine is in its infancy as of now, but it’s a very big deal. If Facebook manages to pull this off, we’re going to see a future where the Like has replaced the link as the web’s currency.

One study has revealed that people are spending thrice as much time on Facebook over search engines now, and Facebook is obviously taking advantage of the situation here. This is, at first glance, a good idea. now you don’t have to go to Google to do a web search!

Here’s the thing though – search results ranked by “likes” can’t possible compete with links, at least for now. Just as it’s easy to make a link farm for your search engine optimisation needs, “like farms” are going to be just as ridiculously easy to make. In fact, there are websites right now made to take advantage of the OpenGraph like button, and it’s not a pretty sight to see those links flood the news feed.

If you do want to use Facebook’s OpenGraph search, there’s interestingly, a way to rank in the search results, and you can use this technique in under 60 seconds. Just go to l1k3.com, and create an OpenGraph object there, and you’d instantly see your page as a top result. Basically, you just need to create a Facebook page and fill it up with fans and you’re going to outrank your competition. It’s basically a race to get more fans.

What do you think of the new Facebook Opengraph Search Engine?

We’ve been talking about RSS feeds and what it can do for your website. We know that incorporating RSS feeds into your site results in more frequent visits from search engine spiders and thus leads to faster indexing.

Have you realized however that by syndicating your RSS feeds successfully you can achieve the same results? How so?

If you have subscribers when a search engine spider crawls your subscriber’s site (assuming that your subscriber incorporated YOUR feed into his own website) the feeds will of course contain a link back to your website. Once the spider follows the link it will notice your website and so index your site as well. Now if you have a lot of subscribers the chances of being crawled through back links are much greater. In addition to this the spider will of course notice the plentiful back links, which will result not only in faster indexing but in a higher page rank.

To get noticed fast one thing you can do is to subscribe to your own feed using Google Reader, MyYahoo, and MyMsn accounts. Surely the three search engines will at least pay attention to their own services.

As you see at the top when I searched for the braves it showed the Atlanta Brave’s logo. It then gives links for the team’s page, news, scores and schedules, and photos. Right under that you’ll get a snapshot of how they’re doing because the stats for the last game is highlighted and then the schedule for the next game is also shown. The main body of the results page then shows a few images of the Braves then you get the various links. On the left sidebar you’ll find related sports information like “trending sports topic”, which showed that the last time I searched popular search strings were Cliff Lee, Fantasy Sports, Colorado Rockies, Rafael Nadal, Dwight Howard, and Lorena Ochoa. Directly below that would be the searches related to my search term, which then showed me Thrashers, ESPN, and MLB.

Now I know this isn’t revolutionary but it sure is useful and the layout easy on the eye. As for SEOs working on sports pages and blogs I would say that they should try to get a good ranking on this Yahoo’s Sport search because you can be sure that this will catch on to sports fanatics out there.

So what exactly is Google caffeine?

Google caffeine is Google’s biggest and baddest change in search algorithm. The key to this change is that it is an actual change in the formula and not just minor tweaks. Parts of the entire search infrastructure was, according to Google, completely rewritten. The results? A search engine that will “push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness, and other dimensions.”

Of course with the Bing hype people immediately asked whether Caffeine was Google’s answer to which Matt Cutts promptly said no. As Matt Cutt’s said, “I love competition in search and want lots of it, but this change has been in the works for month.”

For SEOs the even bigger question is how this will affect our SEO strategies. The best way to figure things out is through the same old fashioned method of experimenting and keeping track of how well the websites we maintain are doing in Google Caffeine’s SERPs. Of course it is also essential to keep tabs on how other’s SEO efforts are paying off so make sure you keep track of discussions going on in different forums and groups about Google Caffeine.

To try out Caffeine just go to this link: http://www2.sandbox.google.com/

Last time we talked about how you can find out your SEOmoz Page Strength. Today we’ll be talking about what the results really mean and how SEOmoz came up with it.

First of all according to the SEOmoz website what the tool really does for you are give you:
* The Relative Importance and Visibility of a Webpage
* The Potential Strength and Ability of a Page to Rank in the Search Engines
* Data on Popularity, Links & Mentions of the Page Across the Web

This simply means that they gauge your blog in relation to other blogs and look at the number of your inbound links (just like in Technorati) as well as you page rank in other search engines (like your Google page rank).

This is why we can say that even though SEOmoz came up with the article on traffic prediction the results aren’t biased since as you see their Page Strength Tool is really good in that it rates your blog in a very thorough manner.