SEO virgin seeks link development beginner tips please

Hi,

I'm an artist/user not a SEO expert.

I've built a wordpress.com website and now want to make it more visible. As a newbie, best I can tell, I need to build-up back links to my website [am I wrong?].

I currently have about thirty back links and my page rank is 1. [Out of interest - roughly how many back links do I need to make a difference?]

I'd like to ask forum users for beginner tips. Things that I can do to make a difference to my page rank.

Thanks in advance!

 

You seem to confuse page rank and SERP.

Page rank is a sytem by google to rate on a scale of 0 to 10 a page.

As for SEO/SERP, it as to do with gaining rank in search engine positions so you can drive traffic to your site. A site with Page rank of 2 can drive more traffic then a site with a page rank of 7 for example.

As far as building backlinks you are right. this help improve the serp of your keywords if your backlinks anchor text contains your desired keywords.

However, do not forget that you need a quality site ans content before building backlinks, as these will have more impact on properly optimised content.

 

@Camay123 - thanks for your feedback.

I'll need to go and find out more about SERP and keywords. I haven't really thought too much about keywords so far.

Thanks again.

 

This is the link given by other forum member to a newbie like me. It helps you check your meta keyword, title and description and i think it is a good free tool for your website analysis. Free suggestions are given too. http://www.creatingonline.com/site_promotion/website_checker.htm

 

My first advice to you is to invest the money and get yourself an actual domain name, a .com or .org preferably. These have much more weight than .wordpress or blogpost pages.

Camay is correct completely and I would go on to reiterate the importance of quality unique content. If your visitors don't like what they are seeing on your site they won't stick around, plain and simple. Once you get yourself an actual domain and developing quality content, do some link building. If your site is focused on your art you should have no problem getting links from relevant sites.

Best of luck

 

make your blog dofollow. You can install comment luv. In this case, you will get more traffic and your blog will be more visible.
Then do your best to find dofollow blogs and make comments.

 

First of all don't waste time on PR higher PR doesn\t mean higher traffic or rankings
Concentrate on getting rankings for your keyphrases

Build links with anchor text ... as keyphrase

Methods
Dir submissions
Social Bookmarking
Article Writing + distribution
Press Releasses
Blog commenting
Forum signs
Angela and Paul Link Profiles

Regards

 

Make sure you have the back end of your WP blog optimised - have you installed any SEO plugins yet - Sitemap, All In One, Robots Meta etc?

Its important to get those right before you start going after links.

An awesome thing to read is this - http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/

Best guide i've seen written on Wordpress SEO.

 

Wow... Thanks very much to all respondents so far.

@ljianyih - thank you I'll have a look at the link and hopefully this will help me better understand my website's current status/position ...and refine from there.

@SCLocal - thanks. I have a .com that re-directs to my wordpress.com site. In terms of the content, I'm trying to keep that high-quality, but obviously that means I have a small site at the moment.

@scheng1 - thank you. My site is DoFollow, but I'm only just realising that this is potentially quite an important aspect, and plan to make more of it. Will go explore 'comment luv' - you mentioned 'install' not sure I can do that with wordpress.com ...but I'll investigate.

@w3bmaster - I am going to take a closer look at your suggestion. Until I started this thread, I had thought that Page Rank was important, but I could easily be wrong ...and will spend some time looking at keyword / keyphrase ranking. Thank you very much.

@CommandTree1985 - thanks for your advice. I'm not sure that I can install plugins on wordpress.com ...although I do have a sitemap. I'll investigate, and I'll have a good read at the link you sent.

Thank you all very much!

 

In terms of some feedback for future readers of this thread:

@ljianyih - I visited the link you posted, and although this would no doubt be of use to most users, it wasn't particularly relevant as Wordpress.com doesn't facilitate metatags etc. Thanks any which way, it was certainly worth a look.

@CommandTree1985 - thanks once again for your link. That does look like a really good resource, however it seems to relate primarily to Wordpress.org, rather than Wordpress.com. I still got some value out of reading through it though.

 

There are some more links that can help you do better SEO for your WordPress blog.

WPArena has a great post at http://wparena.com/how-to/how-to-improve-your-wordpress-blogs-rank/ which gives you links which you should visit regularly to keep yourself updated. This link will help you being up to date once you have implemented SEO on your WordPress site.

If you are looking to use some more plugins then Mashable has a great post at http://mashable.com/2009/03/20/wordpress-seo-plugins/ which talks about the 20 plugins that you can use. Of course do not use all of them because the more the plugins you have installed the slower your website.

Cheers!

 

All of the advice applies to self-hosted Wordpress sites as well - I've implemented most of them on my own blogs

 

spam relevant sites and see if they will trade links or sell em..................hit up everybody you can on this forum in the link-x section too!

 

There are numerous ways to build links. You can comment on blogs or forums in your niche. These are the best way to get one way backlinks.

 

Also as an artist you might consider writing an article about your art or art generally or posting your works for commenting. Getting status among fellow we users gives you organic traffic and natural links. This is something that can´t be bought from a SEO company.

 

Thanks to everyone for your help and advice:

@palimadra - thank you ...I'll be checking out those links shortly.

@CommandTree1985 - thanks for your update ...I'll go back and read over that link again, to see if there's anything that I missed.

@heidi007 - I was unaware of the link-x section, but I'll check that out soon. Thank you for your suggestions.

@john nex - thanks John. I've just started commenting on blogs over the last couple of days, but it's reassuring to get advice that suggests that's a good way to go.

@Mainostoimisto - thank you for your suggestion. So far I haven't written any articles that are hosted elsewhere, but I'll investigate opportunities for this.

 

For Pete Sake, you have a domain, just get hosting, you certainly shouldn't be forwarding users to www.artistsite.com to artistsite.wordpress.com, that looks completely unprofessional and novice. If you are looking for hosting, there are many free/low cost hosts out there. Heck, I'd be happy to host your site for you for free, just to get you off the wordpress.com teat.

 

@SCLocal. Thanks for your kind offer of hosting.

I chose to go with Wordpress.com because I reckoned that it would be a good platform to give my website visibilty [given that I'm a SEO virgin].

"you certainly shouldn't be forwarding users to www.artistsite.com to artistsite.wordpress.com, that looks completely unprofessional and novice"

...I do forward users, but to the best of my knowledge they're typically unable to see the 'wordpress.com' part of the domain, and in this should prevent my site from looking unprofessional in that respect at least.

My aim is to be seen as an artist not a business, or a web guru. In this respect I really don't want to have the most slick website available. As a tool for building up content and interaction, Wordpress.com has a lot of benefits over building a bespoke website in the likes of Dreamweaver or Flash - and that's why I opted for it.

 

For link building tips check this link building strategies

 

@seowebsitetraffic - thanks for the link, I'll check it out soon.