Here's my tale and a journey from no-blog to PageRank (PR) 0 blog and on to PR4 blog in 37 days. If you take out the slow beginning and other breaks, you could say it all happened in one month.
PageRank 4 in One Month
On June 23rd 2009, Google updated their PageRank statuses and my PR jumped to 4!
What a glorious day. Yay me!
I am not an SEO expert or a professional blogger, but using all the free information out there and just a couple simple strategies all this was way easier than I thought. I probably wouldn't have even noticed, unless at DailyBlogTips.com's Daniel Scocco had made a post about the Google PageRank update yesterday.
Actually I still believe it's all a mistake, and I will be back at PageRank 0 when someone notices..
But now, let's backtrack to 19th of May 2009 and what I have done since.
The Initial Steps for the Blog Kick-Start
I had two blog in blogspot, PageRank 0, couple of incoming links, so not much for blog that was there since late 2005 and another just couple of months old. The blogs were random ramblings about the games I love and played (World of Warcraft, Eve Online and Poker).
The foundation I had from these old blogs could have affected the results I achieved during the last month, but I doubt that they had big impact in the end. For my traffic the impact was clear, as the some posts of the old blog were ranked high in Google, but the PageRank was still at zero with only a couple of incoming links, if any.
Anyway, I wanted to start a real blog, instead of the occasional and random posting to a Blogger blog which I couldn't do all the things I wanted. So it was time for own domain and WordPress!
- I registered my own domain name on 20th of May 2009
- I started a WordPress blog on the same day. The installation with the one-click install was super easy and I didn't read any guides about it.
- I installed and configured this WordPress blog to support great Search Engine Optimization using the optimal permalink structure and the best, essential plugins for WordPress. The settings and plugins I used at the start are described in these two articles:
On May 21st, I imported my two blogspot blogs to WordPress. Here's how you can do it too, if you have a blog in Blogger: Blogspot Blog Migration to WordPress and Blogger WordPress Import Anyone Can Do
- I re-directed all the traffic that the blogspot blogs to the new blog and created a guide for it.
- I planned the category structure for the new blog and I used couple of hours to re-categorize and re-tagging the imported blog posts.
New Blog, New Beginning
I decided to blog about things I do, so the blog topic evolved into blogging, WordPress, Internet marketing, affiliate marketing and related topics.
The blog's name was clear, it was Zemalf, my online nickname, which later evolved into @Zemalf, inspired my Twitter usage. Blog's tag line formed into "Technology Alchemist’s Trek in the Blogosphere". There's more about this "Technology Alchemy" and my background in my About -page.
On May 23rd, I started writing about what I had done in this, now shiny and new WordPress blog, with topics varying from Social Media, WordPress tips, Plugins, various How-To guides, Internet and Affiliate marketing and even one gaming FAQ I had forgotten to the "drawer".
Between May 23rd and June 23rd 2009, my PageRank has gone from zero (PR0) to four (PR4)
Did it come easy? Sort of. Did I work hard for it? You bet.
The Content is King in Blogosphere
In the last 30 days, I wrote 36 posts with average of 1303 words per post. In total I wrote 46892 words in all those posts. Plus there's 2-3 posts made on the one day not counted on that.
In total, the blog has 125 posts at the time I'm writing this (so this will be 126th) with 85410 words in them (blog stats are from Blog Metrics -plugin btw).
As you can see I've written more in the last 31 days than I wrote to my old blogspot blogs in 3 years :) And I write long posts, I'd prefer something in the 500-700 word range, but somehow I always end up doing these 1000+ monsters..
Here are some of the "highlights" from the last 31 days:
Blogging Guides and WordPress Tips
Internet and Affiliate Marketing 101
Twitter and Social Media
So I wrote a lot and I wrote some more. I don't go and judge if the posts and articles are any good, but I wrote each and every day during the last 31 days. I didn't publish every day, but I was planning or writing the posts on a daily basis.
Blog Commenting and Back-links to Build a Solid Foundation
Search engine rankings and PageRank and getting traffic rely on solid back-links. I don't have that many for my blog yet. Most of my back-links come from the blog comments I leave every day and from my own links from social network profiles.
Note that I didn't do all the commenting to build traffic or get back-links, I just did what I always do, interact with the wonderful blogging community via blog comments.
I love blog commenting and I don't like to leave comments with "Thanks, Great Post" type of contents. Instead I like to say what I think or add something to the post I'm commenting on - if I don't have anything meaningful to say, I usually don't say anything and go on to the next post on my RSS.
I read about 20-40 RSS Feeds - some I read daily, some I check once a week. The blogs and topics I follow are closely related to what I write about at any given time, as I want to read about things I'm interested in (of course), just like I want to write about things I'm into.
If I read a interesting post from the feed, I jump to the blog and leave a comment if I feel like I have something to say. If I don't, it's on to the next post.
During the last 31 days I made about 40-60 blog comments, I don't know the exact number as I wasn't tracking them apart from some which I subscribed to replies for. In case you are interested in what I've been saying, you can see my Comments by Zemalf in backtype.com and IntenseDebate - Zemalf (not much there as not too many blogs I read use it and I registered only recently when I tested in on my blog).
Social Networking and the Power of the Profiles
In addition to writing a lot and daily/frequent commenting, I added my new site to all my social bookmarking profiles (MyBlogLog, Twitter, Digg, Technorati and StumbleUpon to name the most important ones) and joined a couple more.
If you want to visit and follow/friend me, here are the links:
Does PageRank of 4 Gain a Lot of Traffic?
To be honest, I have no idea at this point.
But I can say that you can get to PageRank 4 without much traffic :)
At this point this blog of mine isn't that popular and I receive something between 40 to 130 daily visitors. But all that aside, I'm quite proud of the PageRank I got now and it provides a great foundation for me and this blog to push onwards and continue this trek in the blogosphere.
For the Love of Blogging and Everything In It
I hope this post has inspired you and showed you that you don't need magic tricks or by-the-book SEO or even "keyword planning" to get ranked in the search engines (or "PageRanked" at least). Search Engine Optimization and clear search engine strategy and all the help (especially the magic tricks), but average blogger can do all this without investing money into it.
Of course, getting professional help and SEO experts to assist you, you can have even bigger results, but as your average geek can do it in a month, just imagine what you can do in a year!
Here's to all of you and thanks for all who have supported me on this effort!
p.s. since the mid-2009 and PageRank 4, my PageRank has jumped up and down. Here you can see the current PageRank for Zemalf.com (Homepage)
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How I Pushed My Blog from PageRank 0 to PR4 in 37 Days
Here's my tale and a journey from no-blog to PageRank (PR) 0 blog and on to PR4 blog in 37 days. If you take out the slow beginning and other breaks, you could say it all happened in one month.
PageRank 4 in One Month
On June 23rd 2009, Google updated their PageRank statuses and my PR jumped to 4!
What a glorious day. Yay me!
I am not an SEO expert or a professional blogger, but using all the free information out there and just a couple simple strategies all this was way easier than I thought. I probably wouldn't have even noticed, unless at DailyBlogTips.com's Daniel Scocco had made a post about the Google PageRank update yesterday.
Actually I still believe it's all a mistake, and I will be back at PageRank 0 when someone notices..
But now, let's backtrack to 19th of May 2009 and what I have done since.
The Initial Steps for the Blog Kick-Start
I had two blog in blogspot, PageRank 0, couple of incoming links, so not much for blog that was there since late 2005 and another just couple of months old. The blogs were random ramblings about the games I love and played (World of Warcraft, Eve Online and Poker).
The foundation I had from these old blogs could have affected the results I achieved during the last month, but I doubt that they had big impact in the end. For my traffic the impact was clear, as the some posts of the old blog were ranked high in Google, but the PageRank was still at zero with only a couple of incoming links, if any.
Anyway, I wanted to start a real blog, instead of the occasional and random posting to a Blogger blog which I couldn't do all the things I wanted. So it was time for own domain and WordPress!
On May 21st, I imported my two blogspot blogs to WordPress. Here's how you can do it too, if you have a blog in Blogger: Blogspot Blog Migration to WordPress and Blogger WordPress Import Anyone Can Do
New Blog, New Beginning
I decided to blog about things I do, so the blog topic evolved into blogging, WordPress, Internet marketing, affiliate marketing and related topics.
The blog's name was clear, it was Zemalf, my online nickname, which later evolved into @Zemalf, inspired my Twitter usage. Blog's tag line formed into "Technology Alchemist’s Trek in the Blogosphere". There's more about this "Technology Alchemy" and my background in my About -page.
On May 23rd, I started writing about what I had done in this, now shiny and new WordPress blog, with topics varying from Social Media, WordPress tips, Plugins, various How-To guides, Internet and Affiliate marketing and even one gaming FAQ I had forgotten to the "drawer".
Between May 23rd and June 23rd 2009, my PageRank has gone from zero (PR0) to four (PR4)
Did it come easy? Sort of. Did I work hard for it? You bet.
The Content is King in Blogosphere
In the last 30 days, I wrote 36 posts with average of 1303 words per post. In total I wrote 46892 words in all those posts. Plus there's 2-3 posts made on the one day not counted on that.
In total, the blog has 125 posts at the time I'm writing this (so this will be 126th) with 85410 words in them (blog stats are from Blog Metrics -plugin btw).
As you can see I've written more in the last 31 days than I wrote to my old blogspot blogs in 3 years :) And I write long posts, I'd prefer something in the 500-700 word range, but somehow I always end up doing these 1000+ monsters..
Here are some of the "highlights" from the last 31 days:
Blogging Guides and WordPress Tips
Internet and Affiliate Marketing 101
Twitter and Social Media
So I wrote a lot and I wrote some more. I don't go and judge if the posts and articles are any good, but I wrote each and every day during the last 31 days. I didn't publish every day, but I was planning or writing the posts on a daily basis.
Blog Commenting and Back-links to Build a Solid Foundation
Search engine rankings and PageRank and getting traffic rely on solid back-links. I don't have that many for my blog yet. Most of my back-links come from the blog comments I leave every day and from my own links from social network profiles.
Note that I didn't do all the commenting to build traffic or get back-links, I just did what I always do, interact with the wonderful blogging community via blog comments.
I love blog commenting and I don't like to leave comments with "Thanks, Great Post" type of contents. Instead I like to say what I think or add something to the post I'm commenting on - if I don't have anything meaningful to say, I usually don't say anything and go on to the next post on my RSS.
I read about 20-40 RSS Feeds - some I read daily, some I check once a week. The blogs and topics I follow are closely related to what I write about at any given time, as I want to read about things I'm interested in (of course), just like I want to write about things I'm into.
If I read a interesting post from the feed, I jump to the blog and leave a comment if I feel like I have something to say. If I don't, it's on to the next post.
During the last 31 days I made about 40-60 blog comments, I don't know the exact number as I wasn't tracking them apart from some which I subscribed to replies for. In case you are interested in what I've been saying, you can see my Comments by Zemalf in backtype.com and IntenseDebate - Zemalf (not much there as not too many blogs I read use it and I registered only recently when I tested in on my blog).
Social Networking and the Power of the Profiles
In addition to writing a lot and daily/frequent commenting, I added my new site to all my social bookmarking profiles (MyBlogLog, Twitter, Digg, Technorati and StumbleUpon to name the most important ones) and joined a couple more.
If you want to visit and follow/friend me, here are the links:
Does PageRank of 4 Gain a Lot of Traffic?
To be honest, I have no idea at this point.
But I can say that you can get to PageRank 4 without much traffic :)
At this point this blog of mine isn't that popular and I receive something between 40 to 130 daily visitors. But all that aside, I'm quite proud of the PageRank I got now and it provides a great foundation for me and this blog to push onwards and continue this trek in the blogosphere.
For the Love of Blogging and Everything In It
I hope this post has inspired you and showed you that you don't need magic tricks or by-the-book SEO or even "keyword planning" to get ranked in the search engines (or "PageRanked" at least). Search Engine Optimization and clear search engine strategy and all the help (especially the magic tricks), but average blogger can do all this without investing money into it.
Of course, getting professional help and SEO experts to assist you, you can have even bigger results, but as your average geek can do it in a month, just imagine what you can do in a year!
Here's to all of you and thanks for all who have supported me on this effort!
p.s. since the mid-2009 and PageRank 4, my PageRank has jumped up and down. Here you can see the current PageRank for Zemalf.com (Homepage)
Topic: Blogging Tips
Tags: Blog Commenting, Blogging 101, Content Creation, Guide, Hints & Tips, How-To, PageRank, PR, SEO, WordPress