In the never-ending quest to drive more traffic to my blog, I’ve recently been studying the effects that wikis (such as Wikipedia) can have in promoting blogs.

In a previous article, we have that wikis offer a great source of search engine promotion.

Unfortunately, main-stream adoption of wikis is yet to catch on. Sure Wikipedia is popular, but how many blogs do you come across putting the power of wikis to use?

Even after considerable amounts of searching, there are only so many wikis that I can submit my site to.

In an attempt to promote the BlogaPro cause, I’ve decided to publish my own wiki through blogapro.com. The wiki will feature those sites that teach individuals how to make money blogging.

Unlike others, the wiki will feature heavy moderation and stringent requirements for site submission.

It is hoped that I will be able to leverage the power of the wiki to increase BlogaPro’s presence.  Check back over the next couple days when I will officially announce the wiki’s release.

[Edit:] The wiki has been released.  Check it out.

Recently, I’ve been trying to build a collection of respected links to my blog.  Unfortunately, it is easier said than done.

My few attempts to initiate a few link exchanges have proven futile at best.  Sometimes I feel like I’m trying to force-feed a baby - it’s just not happening.  I shouldn’t feel too disheartened.  After all, the main page on BlogaPro only carries a PR of 2 - the blog is only around 3 months old.

Regardless, incoming links are the key to my blog’s success.

Most bloggers seem to travel down the ‘path most taken’ utilizing the obvious resources ranging from submitting “diggs” to committing sites to directories.

I will not deny the aforementioned marketing strategy can pay dividends, but sometimes it will only take you so far.  Ever considered how many other bloggers are committing their site(s) to digg?  And let’s not forget that as of a recent update, Internet directories are now almost worthless.

Recently, I’ve been looking into the power of wikis.  Yes, the most obvious wiki-run site is Wikipedia of course, but there are thousands of other wiki-run sites on the ‘net.  Some of these wikis are generalized while others pertain to specific niches.

Googling around for “blog wiki directory” and “Internet marketing wiki directory”, I’ve found numerous wikis that allow individuals to add their blogs.  Not only are these links free, but authors can devise their own description of their blog.

Although Google’s PR tool is not the ‘begin and end all’ measurement of a page’s value, some of these wikis carry some serious value.   For example, on a user-generated page of one wiki, Google was reporting that the page contained a PageRank of 6 out of 10.  Consider how much you would otherwise pay for a PR 6 link.

In an attempt to separate myself from the pack, I’ve searched the web and found 17 wikis that I have committed my blog to.  As stated, some of these are rather specific while others are more general.

Here are just a few of the pages containing links to BlogaPro:

1. Wikia
2. AboutUs
3. Wiki Blog Directory

Do you have any “gems” to share?  How have wikis worked for you?

As most of you are aware, Google has begun its much anticipated PageRank (PR) update, an update that occurs quarterly.

Considering that I have only been promoting the site actively for around 3 weeks, I haven’t exactly been too anxious over the PR update commencing.

It appears that the press release that I published a couple of weeks ago has worked absolute wonders.  On the other hand, my monthly payment to that Google insider could be demonstrating some success.

In a relatively short time, BlogaPro’s PR has increased from 0 to a value of 2.  As stated, I attribute the majority of this success to the recent press releases, but I reckon that my recent push of the RSS feed also deserves some recognition.

I’m not the type of person who is highly fixated about increasing my PR.  Instead, I use it merely as a guage to judge if my progress is positive in the eyes of the search engine.  With that said, I’ll be pushing myself to achieve a PR of at least 4 come the next round of PR updates.

How did your blog feature with the latest round of updates?  Too check your PR, I suggest that you visit Google PageRank Checker.

Share your results…

In a previous article, I mentioned that the most effective way of quickly getting listed/cached by Google’s bot was to publish a press release through a third party.

Last night, I took the time to write an official press release.  The short article was published last night (at midnight pacific-time) through prweb.com.

I decided to release the article for two main reasons:

1. To use the press release as a vehicle to promote BlogaPro
2. As an experiment in determining the effect the press release would have not only on my traffic but on my search engine rankings.

In about two weeks from now, I’ll discuss the effects that the PR had on BlogaPro.

If you would like to get in on the experiment, I suggest joining BlueHost (if you don’t already have a hosting account).  A new hosting account with BlueHost will entitle you to a free press release on prweb.com (a $40+ value).

Navigating through the search results of a search engine, you soon realize the importance of the title tag of an HTML document.

What is the title tag meant for?  Essentially, the title tag should identify the content of the document in a fairly wide context.

Why is the title tag so important?

Search engines, especially Google, emphasize the importance of the title tag.  This is extremely evident when you examine “relevant” search results.  Almost always, the top result of a search query has some form of the original query embedded in the title tag.  Ultimately, the title is used by the major search engines as the most important piece of information available to determine the ranking of your page.

In addition, the title of a page is displayed at the top of the browser window. The title acts as a guide to users allowing them to distinguish between different browser windows.

We’ve demonstrated the importance of the title tag, but does that mean we ought to stuff the title tag with as many keywords as we can think of?  No!  Don’t be tempted by falling into the trap of stuffing your title tag with keywords.

In fact, the majority of search engines will truncate the title of your page after x amount of characters.  Andy Beal of Search Engine Guide suggests that pages with long titles might even receive a penalty for stuffing the title tag unnecessarily.

How long should a title be?  An optimum title is less than 67 characters.

1. Google ignores any character(s) after the 66th character
2. Yahoo! ignores any character(s) after the 68th character
3. Live (MSN) ignores any character(s) after the 66th character

The statistics don’t go without saying that title tags should be filled with those keywords that are relevant to your site.  Don’t stuff the title tag for the sake of stuffing it.

So you’ve rolled out the red carpet and are trying to wrangle visitors to your site, but you’re not helped by the fact that your site is not listed in Google’s search engine.  What are you to do?

From experience, the key to getting your site cached is by organizing several one-way links to your newly created site.  You might initially believe that this is a trivial undertaking, but I’ll have you know otherwise. Sure, you can always adopt black-hat techniques, but you risk the chance of being permanently banned by Google’s web crawler.

Most sites will be unwilling to link to your new site.  Permanent links come about over time and usually due to reputation - a quality which new sites lack.

So what are you to do?

Firstly, I recommend that you submit your site to Google using their submission page.  Google adds and updates new sites to their index each time the web is crawled.  Nonetheless, even though your site has been submitted, there is no guarantee that Google will deem your site worthy of being indexed.

The quickest way of receiving links of admirable quality is to publish a press release through a third-party, a site that specializes in press releases.  Yes, press releases provide you with the opportunity to publish content that contains a link to your own site, fulfilling your goal.

The topic of your press release can range from something very simple such as the announcement of your new site to the addition of a new feature - it truly doesn’t matter.

Because third-party news wires provide RSS feeds, releases are replicated on multiple sites in turn providing you with multiple one-way links.  Not bad, hey?

Bluehost.com have a great offer on at the moment.  If you sign up for a web hosting account, you will be rewarded with a free press release through PRWeb.com - a $80 value.