When we were all just getting started on the web, there was one almost universally accepted metric that measured your site’s search engine optimisation success – the Google PageRank. If you have absolutely no idea what PageRank is, it is a numerical grade assigned by Google to every website on the internet to measure the sites’ relative importance. The rule of thumb is that the higher the PageRank, the higher its search engine rankings.

That was a few years ago, though. When you’re on the web, a few years can be a long time, and what was true then might not be applicable today. We’re seeing the beginnings of the real-time web, where we can see instantaneous tweets, blog and posts come out as they happen. Does PageRank still matter?

A few search engine optimisation practitioners would go as far as to say that PageRank doesn’t matter anymore. It’s because no matter how many hours you work on a site’s PageRank; in the end, your website’s PageRank is subject to the whims of Google. Such a subjective system, for them, is not going to work. On the other hand, other SEO specialists are saying that PageRank’s importance has indeed diminished over the years, but you can’t just ignore it – it’s still a vital metric to measure your SEO success.

So how should we approach PageRank nowadays? Personally, I go with the second school of thought regarding PageRank – it’s not as important as before, but it still matters nonetheless. Even Google’s employees are telling people to stop focusing on PageRank so much, because it’s no longer the most important metric for them to track.

Personally, I focus on keyword optimization first and search engines second. I don’t even spend energy trying to raise my PageRank, because there’s no guarantee I’ll get PR4 on my sites anyway. I just focus on content and building quality backlinks.

We’ve come to the end of this series about the Four Ps of Effective Business Blogging, as Tom Pick has explained. To recap the first three, they are Personality, Persistence, and Passion. The last of the bunch is something more measurable and quite practical – Promotion.

With every business venture, promotion is one of the most important activities. To realize how important promotion is, it is necessary to go back to the core goal of the business activity. For blogging, why are you in the blogging business? Or rather, why are you maintaining a blog for your business?

The answer is simple – you want to reach out to the countless people out there who could be potential readers. For business blogs, you want to extend your business’s reach and let the whole world know that you exist and inform them of what you have to offer. The main role of a blog is to achieve this goal and the main way by which you can do this with your business blog is to promote the blog.

There are many ways by which you can promote your blog – SEO practices, making use of social networking sites, exchanging links with other blogs and sites, and so on. All these do not happen by themselves, you need to exert some effort in order to make your blog known to the world.

Promoting your blog is one of the most important aspects of business blogging. You want people to be able to find your blog amidst the plethora of other blogs in existence. Different people would have different takes on how one should go about promoting any blog. I ran across some really sensible tips in Business Blog Templates that you may want to consider as you look for ways to promote your own blog.

Have a clear objective for each post.
You always must ask yourself, what the aim of your post is and how it is going to help your site be promoted in search engines. And of course, you should understand that SEO isn’t a one-time occupation. It requires time and permanent attention. Search engines use to change their algorithms, which means you’ll constantly have to think of new ways to satisfy these requirements.

Consider seeking professional help.
If you believe that your business blog can do well without professional help, you’ll have to be in the know of the latest SEO trends and become one of the regular visitors of SEO authority resources. Otherwise trust control over your business blog to your SEO specialist. Always try to consult people, familiar with SEO – professional advice will never be out of place.

Focus on originality.
Create original content, interesting to your readers. Never write for search engines. Always remember, that the content of your business blog must contain 95% of useful and interesting information and only 5% of SEO. All SEO specialists agree that content is the most powerful optimization tool. With it’s help you can attract not only new readers, but new external links, which is another important SEO criteria.

Of these three tips that I found most interesting, I think the last one bears a lot of weight. Let us look into this point sometime in the future.

I recently read a blog post about blogs and how they can increase search engine visibility. I have to admit that the content was something that I have encountered before but the way it was presented by Dan Patterson was very simple and easy to understand. Though the entry was posted last year, the content is still relevant and I thought I’d share it with you.

He focuses on two main points – changing content and link building. Let’s look at changing content. This is a very important aspect when it comes to search engines. Remember that they use spiders to crawl web pages and these spiders want fresh content. That is the main reason they will come back to a web page even if they have already visited it before. So if your page has fresh content all the time, that means that spiders will keep coming back. Now common sense will tell you that your blog would be more likely to have new content than a static web page. Posting on a regular basis is a simple thing to do, with lots of benefits in terms of search engine visibility.

Link building, on the other hand, is also a huge part of blogging. If you have been blogging for quite some time, you probably are into the habit of linking out to other blogs and relevant sites. Though your business blog may have one overall topic, you can still relate to other sub topics, giving you more links. Of course, by doing so, you also encourage other sites to link to your blog. This, once again, is a good thing for search engine visibility (as long as the links are real and relevant).

So you’ve got a nice business blog all set up. You’ve thought about it a whole lot and everything is just perfect. From the concept to the actualization, you think you’ve got it down pat. Yet have you checked your blog stats lately? Do you have many readers other than yourself and the people in your circle? Or maybe you are not getting as many readers as you originally hoped for. Here are some tips that can help you make your blog more popular and attract more readers.

Don’t overlook looks
I cannot emphasize this enough – content is very very important, we all know that. Without good content, your blog is as good as dead. However, you cannot totally overlook the physical design of your business blog. You need to expend some effort on the layout and design of your blog. What do you need to consider? Think as if you were your readers. Declutter your blog and make it easy to navigate. Make it pleasing to the eyes and make it easy for them to find relevant content. More so, try to experiment a little bit and make your blog stand out in terms of physical design. Remember, there are countless blogs online, you have to do whatever you can to make yours stand out and attract more readers.

SEO is important
I am sure you have heard of SEO – we have several posts on this topic. Search engine optimization techniques are an important part of establishing your online presence. You need to be able to reach out to people who may not know about your blog. For more details, check out our relevant posts on SEO.

Search engine optimization – we hear that phrase quite a lot these days. Maybe too much, actually. I have encountered countless business bloggers who believe that the primary reason they set up their blog is to increase their ranking when it comes to search engines. Their rationale is that a business blog (in addition to their web site) will increase their search engine ranking.

This is true – there is not doubt about it. Yet if you focus solely on SEO as your purpose for your business blog, you are surely missing out on so much more!

A business blog is meant for more than increasing your own web site’s search engine rankings. Do not overlook this fact or you are merely wasting your resources.

I have written many posts on the benefits of blogging for your business – all of them apart from SEO. Let me see, we have communicating with your readers, who by the way, are probably your customers as well. Then we have the idea of thought leadership – establishing yourself and your company as an authority in your field. Being able to gain this status is definitely a plus for your company. What else? You can carry out market research through your blog, getting information from your customers – both existing and potential.

I can think of so much more that business blogging has to offer. The point is, do not let yourself be sidetracked by merely one aspect of business blogging. You have the tool, you have the means – make the most out of it!

A business blog can bring many advantages – that is the general consensus. Yet many times, this sweeping statement is not really backed up with concrete ideas and information. Here is one incentive for businessmen who are not yet fully convinced of a blog’s power to increase your presence online – a blog can position you as an expert in the field.

Before delving into how a blog can do this, let me answer another question: “So what if I can acquire expert status?” Isn’t it pretty obvious? Take any topic under the sun – say, English learning online. If the average person wants to know more about this topic, what does he normally do? Consult with someone he believes to be knowledgeable in the matter, right? In the absence of “real” people he can consult in “real time” what does he do? He goes to his computer and searches for reputable sources online.

Now if you have expert status – that is, if you gain that reputation of being knowledgeable in your field, you will have countless people knocking at your door.

So how can you acquire this status with a business blog? Simple, maintain an active blog with regular posts. Make sure that the content is updated and indeed accurate as befitting an authority in your field. Of course, you would also have to engage in some promotion so that your blog can be discovered by readers. If you are starting from scratch, your readership may be limited but with great content and proper marketing, you will be reaping the benefits before you know it.

After the celebrated resignation of former World Bank head Paul Wolfowitz who will be stepping down by June 30 due to his involvement in creating a compensation package for girlfriend Shaha Riza, US President Bush will be naming Robert Zoellick as his successor. His selection of Zoellick is expected to be approved by the World Bank’s 24 member board soon.

Zoellick is a logical choice, owing to the fact that has garnered the moniker of establishing contacts in most parts of the world as President Bush’ trade chief. Considering the situation that the World Bank is in right now, Zoellick has his work cut out for him.

But basing it on Zoellick’s credentials, he seems to be fit for the job. With his experience in building stronger ties and relations from all parts of the world, his designation is expected to be formalized soon so that the World Bank can get back on the right track.

[tags]world bank, president bush, robert zoellick, shaha riza, paul wolfowitz[/tags]

Iraq has been long in the headlines and to date, the Iraq war policy shall be put under close scrutiny soon and President Bush knows it all too well. Among the expected highlights would be that of placing the blame on Osama Bin Laden for defense of the said policy, something that is perhaps seen to come in automatically to justify the claims.

The Iraq-US war seems to be endless and despite such policies which mostly states offensive strategies and security measures among such, will definitely be storming the headlines in the politics section of most newspapers and publications in the next couple of weeks.

President Bush has solicited the tag of putting the entire issue on a personal level. While many can understand why, the issue of using the US troops as his pawns with nothing relevant to gain has been questioned time and again. At this stage, it will not be surprising if such an address would solicit the same reactions as well.

[tags]iraq, osama bin laden, president busy, iraq policy, us troops[/tags]

The surveillance and unorthodox manner of being able to monitor terrorist activities in the region of the United States has been overwhelming but the various practices and resort in being able to do so have its limits as well. Among the controversial means that has drawn the ire of most is that of the TALON program or Threat and Local Observation Notice database that was put into place in 2003.

Based on the assessment of undersecretary of defense James Clapper, there is no merit and has actually produced disappointing results as seen from the program. It has catered more in sparkling controversial information by invading privacies in terms of collecting information on peace activists and monitoring anti-war protests across the country.

The whole purpose of the TALON program has evidently failed and from the looks of it, it shall soon be rebuked. That is if defense secretary Robert Gates has nothing to say about this issue.

[tags]TALON program, defense, united states, pentagon, james clapper, robert gates[/tags]