Questions on getting on top search engine results and replying comments

I have two questions which I hope to reply in a post:

HOW TO GET ON TOP OF THE SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS?

Hi Lilian I am a newbie was wondering how a site be at the top search engine results. Your expert opinion is much appreciated. Thanks. (arlene)

Arlene has an interesting hobby of making bento. Bento is that cute and adorable Japanese lunch box and Arlene’s blog on making bento is available on her bento blog.

So, how does a blog gets on the top pages of the search results? Well, it is almost an impossible task because everyone wants to be on #1 page. But from my experiences here are some ways to help :

1) Name your blog with the topic, e.g. this blog has no fanciful names but Make Money.

2) When you make a post, try to make your blog title relevant. Like ‘How to make a bento’. And if that’s what you are targeting, keep repeating these few words in your blog posts as well.

3) Without making people bored, try to use those few words again. With some creativity, one can actually use the few keywords and add with some other words to make a different topic. Like, “how to make money with google adsense” and the next time, maybe “make money is so hard to do”. So, that make money keep popping up in your blog posts.

4) However, don’t mess with Google because their spiders can trace it when you repeated too many times. For example, for fun I posted a post with only, ‘i am bored’ and then, I repeated the sentence several times. Immediately, Google knows and give me no ads.

5) If you have a circle of friends, you can ask them to give you some mention using a certain keywords. Like for me, I have several blogs (hosted on different places) so when it is relevant, I link to my own blogs. Like best recipes will go to my food blog. Or when I talk about christian blog, it goes to my faith blog. Again, don’t do it too often or you can get penalised for gaming the results. Google is very, very smart in tracking these.

6) Use a stats meter like Sitemeter or Google Analytics or even Nuffnang analytics to see how people find you. Then, write a few more posts with that keywords. Recently, I got addicted to watch Hong Kong TVB drama The Gem of Life and I made some funny observations on it. Now, I am getting traffic for that 82 parts boring-can-die series. I just watched episode 56 of The Gem of Life online and almost fall asleep because it is that boring. In fact, I am writing this post while I was watching episode 56 of Gem of Life.

All the above are ‘live examples’, so open your eyes big big and learn the trick. I am not always so generous but looking at how passionate you are with your bento blog, I don’t mind giving you some tips.

There are other tricks but those are risky steps so I don’t share.

MUST WE REPLY COMMENTS?

“Do not get too puff up to reply your comments”

lilian, do you mean that it’s ok if we do not reply all our comments? (allie)

Meanwhile, allie asked if it is ok if we ignore some of our comments. Well, it depends on what kind of blog you own. I usually make it a point to answer those comments which I know are absolutely directed at me, from people I know.

But if these are my subsidiaries blogs, like my food blogs or make money blog, then, I only do so if I have time. I do not feel obligated to reply each and every comment simply because I do not have time to do so. Moreover, on this blog, I know majority of commentors are commenting just because they learn from some SEO guru-wannabe that one can get better ranking by commenting. Well, I won’t bother about those comments because they are leeching on my blog for their own interests. Some of these comments are actually from softwares, whereby the person purchase some programme and it automatically go to every relevant blog (using robots) and leave the comments. For example, the other day, I wrote a post about antidepressant for kids. After a while, I am getting so many comments from people who have antidepressant blogs. Since it is my faith blog, I deleted every single comment because I am not so generous to help people sell their antidepressants.

I also have eyes on the blogsphere and if a certain blogger is making an ass of herself/himself by commenting in almost all Malaysian blogs, then, I will pretend I never see them.

Our blog is our own territory. I never let my blog readers or commentors to dictate what I post and I will tell them to fly kite when they overstepped that boundary. Hehehe.

Post Author: lilian

10 thoughts on “Questions on getting on top search engine results and replying comments

    Arlene

    (January 8, 2009 - 2:59 pm)

    Lilian,THANK YOU very much for your reply and generous tips. I am very grateful indeed. By the way I do have big big eyes! LOL!

    pablopabla

    (January 8, 2009 - 3:05 pm)

    Talking about cross-linking with multiple blogs a person owns, it would be better if these blogs are running on different IPs. Then lagi power! Add-on domains are invariably parked on the same IPs as the main site. So, if a blogger owns 1 domain and 10 add-on sites and cross-links all over the place within these 11 sites, it won’t go far. Big G might even decide to give a slap!

    vkeong

    (January 8, 2009 - 11:49 pm)

    I know the ass you are talking about, lol

    lingzie

    (January 9, 2009 - 10:49 pm)

    thanks for sharing these tips lilian! especially about the ones on replying comments. :)

    email2me

    (January 12, 2009 - 12:42 am)

    Good tips on the commenting part XD

    Jackluo

    (March 15, 2009 - 11:52 pm)

    I like this post…
    It helps alot! :) Somehow you got it right most of the time.
    I used wordpress platform as I hosted my own blog. But mind you, the result is soooo terrible that I dare not share them here.
    I thought wordpress would help ‘promote’ our blog if we hosted on their platform and how wrong I was to find out that as soon as we get our ass out of wordpress server, we’re stand alone and getting traffic is a hell of a job out there.

    healthtreasures_usana

    (June 23, 2009 - 7:14 pm)

    thanks for sharing these tips lilian!I like this blog because the way you described all that things is easy to understand.Thanks for sharing..

    bloggers.11

    (July 12, 2009 - 6:13 pm)

    Thanks for sharing the useful tips,It’ll help people must.I like your writing style.That’s really impressive.I keep seeing articles like these.

    blogusana

    (July 13, 2009 - 12:28 pm)

    Thanks for sharing the useful tips with us.I found very good things from it.The way you describe all that things is really good and attractive.i am impressed with your writing style.Keep blogging.

    hsb.23

    (July 20, 2009 - 8:01 pm)

    I really enjoy reading your blog.The keyword sniping links are awesome.Keep it up.Thanks for sharing the useful tips with us.

Comments are closed.