One way to increase the page views and user participation on your wordpress blog is to introduce a discussion board. Of course, you should have a good reader base for the discussion board to function well. And there are theories that a discussion board will take the limelight from the blog and that it could harm your reader base.

I think it might be a good idea to add a forum/discussion board to your blog,

- if the topic of your blog is “discussion based” and

- if there are lot of people asking questions frequently on the comments section.

Of course, with the Threaded comments plugin it is easier to continue discussion on the blog itself but there are a few advantages to having an  exclusive forum.

• Unique content
  With every new thread, you open the opportunity to having exclusive and unique content, which is good food for the search engines.
• SEO
  With optimizing the forums (like PhpBB and Vanilla), you have a higher chance to target more terms on the search engines.
• Owner – User interaction
  What if Seth Godin and John Chow had forums? Or Matt Cutts ? There would be a lot of interaction with them and the readers right? Of course they might not have the time, but yes forums are necessary for discussions.

So how do you integrate a PhpBB forum with your wordpress blog?

1. Install a PhpBB forum at a convenient location. (Free installation available on most popular hosts)
2. Download and install this cool  Wordpress-PhpBB integration plugin.
3. Configure it and add the widgets.

Yea, no messy db integration and stuff. It’s a fairly simple process providing some very basic integration like when posting new content/article on the blog, it also creates a thread in the PhpBB installation. You can also add a widget featuring the latest posts on the wordpress blog.

I mean it. Really.

Vanessa Fox (ex-googler) explains why there are two Page Ranks, and why the real page rank is not what you see on the toolbar, and why the toolbar PR is irrelevant at least when calculating your SERPs positions.

The two pageranks are -
1 – The toolbar PR (what you and me are allowed to see) and
2 – The internal Google PR (which seems to be more a mystery)

Okay, I know that both you and me knew about this, but let’s discuss this now.
Because as we get more explanations from googlers and ex-googlers on this, things are only getting more intriguing.

Image courtesy - Hongkiat

Question – If there are two page ranks and the toolbar page rank is not the real page rank, why is it there out in public, in the first place?

Possible answer from Google – Because we have a algorithm in place which calculates the authority and link value of a website purely based on the number of inlinks it has.

My reply (possibly) - Fine – But why don’t you simply put the “real pagerank” on the toolbar ? Wouldn’t that help the webmasters and public both equally in “grading” websites? And since the real pagerank isn’t completely based on links, there is no question of SEO’s becoming successful in manipulating it, even if they try.

I’m inclined to believe that the “real pagerank” is non-existent. Of course, we all know that Google has it’s n-number of factors that helps it in “grading” a website, but that isn’t anything close to page rank, it’s an algo more complex.

Google pagerank, if I’m not mistaken is best described as below.

PageRank reflects Google’s view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that Google believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

So…..I don’t think there should be even be a case of internal/toolbar pagerank.

If there is at all a Page Rank, why can’t it be public ?

Note: I’m not implying that Google Page Rank is the sole reason for a websites SERPs rank, but trying to clear the ambiguity here between the different versions of Page Ranks and the reasons to why they exist.

High traffic keywords are always an addiction. Write a good, optimized copy targeting the high traffic keywords and sit back enjoy the traffic coming in.

But it’s also a fact that many of us don’t prefer to write content for the spiders, rather write for the users. I mean, how often can you write copies calculating the keyword density metrics (although they are irrelevant these days) ? It’s so boring.

But there is a work around to this. Write genuine articles for the users, but at the same time target the search engines and the high traffic keywords. Here’s how.

How to target high traffic keywords, without affecting the readers

Step 1 -  First off, using the Google Adwords keyword tool, find out the top traffic generating keywords related to your niche.

Step 2 – Go to your older posts, sorting them by the following criteria.
a) Page Rank – Find out the ones that have comparatively higher page rank, pick those first.
b) Text and Images – Select those articles that has lot of text and images used.

Step 3 – Go to the post and edit it either using “All in One SEO plugin” options OR the normal edit mode.(See screenshot)

Step 4 – Now replace all the image alt tags and title tags with relevant keywords related to that article and which are more inclined to the high traffic generating keywords.
Ex:- If “Tourist help” is the high traffic keyword related to tourism, you might want to select an article related to tourism and add the keywords in it.

Step 5 – Reformat the page title (Noted 1 in screenshot) and optimize it for the keyword.
Ex:- If your older title was “My traveling experiences”, you might want to change it to “Tourist help – tips and advice from a veteran traveler”

Step 6 – Additionally, you might want to change or add relevant keyword specific title tags to all the links in the article.

Step 7 – Also, it might be a good idea to add the relevant keywords and meta description. (Don’t spam, make it very relevant to the content you have)

I’ve found that if you do this to older posts that have gained some page rank and link juice already, they are likely to give you some search engine traffic.

And the advantages are that -

- Since your regular readers might have already read the article, the title change won’t really bother them.

- The older articles are probably getting traffic ONLY from referrals and search engines, so this is the best way to cash in on it.

While doing the editing just make sure that, you don’t edit the permalinks. Careful.

And it’s a guarantee. You have three months time (assumption), implement these and get ready to shed those green points.

(Caution: This is for the adventurous at heart, and the steps suggested are “implement-able” at your own risk.)

1. Copy paste content from other blogs and websites.
   Edit words like is, was and the, with suitable replacements and re publish the “refurbished” contents.
2. Buy links from text link brokers. Not many, a few will do.
3. Go to a public forum and advertise for “link spots” available on your blog.
4. Place a “links available for sale” note on your blog.
5. Buy a directory submission service from Digital Point
   Get 1000 link submissions for $10.
6. Add the text-link-ads widget on your blog.
7. Make all the outbound links on your blog “nofollow”
8. Sell the Russian guy a few ad spots on your blog.
9. Write reviews on Text link ads and TNX, if un successful, try again.

Any experienced guys out there, please share your thoughts and add in your valuable points. Please mask your identity while doing so.

Sitewide links, Deep links, Sponsored links, Carefully crafted anchor texts, Blogroll link lists - Well, they are not probably worth tying together, but I’m beginning to think that they have some similarity of sorts and are more junk than anything else these days, that Google might be discounting them no matter how valuable they might seem. And I have the reasons.

With the September Page Rank toolbar stats update, we’ve seen more “downgrades” than “upgrades” right ? Many popular blogs have dropped by one point, some of them even further down.

Reasons are diverse, but let’s see if we can find a pattern.

I think with the new changes being implemented, there is clearly an indication that Google is once again sealing the concept that links are not any more just links. But a lot more factors goes into deciding whether a link is actually a “vote” or not.

Age old concept I know, but I think this is becoming more prominent.

Here are some factors I can think of to help Google decide if a link is actually a “vote” or not.

1. Content and nature of the site linking you
   More than the page and the content on the page linking to you, it matters more about, what is the content on the website that’s linking to you. Ex:- It might be wiser to consider a news site which has more authority and “value” link to you than a fellow blogger on hisname.com
2. Does the link come from your social network?
   Just like Digg, I cannot think of a good reason why Google should not discount the incoming links from a “friend” of yours.  A friend might be a common commentator on your blog, or a guest blogger, if he is related to you in some way, I think it’s fair for Google to consider that it’s a “favor link”. Even worse, what if Google knows who your friends are (it has the friend feed data remember?) and discounts all those links from the network ?
3. Are you guys too similar ?
   If your links are originating from same domains, which are too similar, won’t they be “favor” links ? Ex:- If you are a part of any Feedburner networks (like the feedburner technology bloggers network), why shouldn’t Google stop from discounting the links from all the blogs in that network?

Well, these points my sound lame, but I think there is a possibility to this concept, getting stronger as we go ahead and Google acquiring more “networks”.

If we look from Google’s perspective, it all makes sense, it only would want to take into consideration the genuine links and recommendations and not the “scratch me, I scratch you” networks that might be gaming the system.

It is also a fact that the networks and the user interactions will grow stronger, and the “favor” links will keep coming in. I can only guess, that they might only carry less value than earlier.

Search Engine Land reports Google testing image banner ads on Google Image search. Aaron Wall has a confession to make and a question for you  - Is buying links stupid ? If you’ve been thinking if Google ever forgives a penalized site, you better read this. Bill Slawski has a list of suggestions for blogging beginners – good read !#

Stephan Spencer spoke at the Startonomics on SEO, and he has a good video for you. (It was not that all good quality for me, see if you get a good full session, but insightful talk there)

Brett Lane has a very interesting post on the five things to consider while hiring a Social Media Consultant, seriously interesting one that.
And here is my favorite. Eric writes about why and how he thinks that Google weighs the anchor text less and the content of the linking page more. I cannot disagree with him.

While selecting a domain name, what is your preference ? Would you go for a perfect keyword match or a brand name that has a better recall value?

Before jumping into a conclusion, let’s see what are the options we have.

Of course, there is no thumb rule that says one is better than the other but, there might be a few factors that you want to evaluate before deciding on a domain name.

1. Site content
   A lot depends on what your content type is. Do you have a content rich website, or a community website where pages just fly by? When the content itself is the USP of your webpage then, the domain name takes a backseat, and you can get away SEO’ing the pages. In such cases the domain name is pretty much irrelevant assuming that your pages are itself strong in SEO and helps you develop that authority you need.
2. Site volume
   How much content do you think will go in? Will you be having a few thousand content rich pages by next year? In that case, you don’t have to worry if you didn’t get a perfect keyword match.
3. Scalability
   Are you planning only for a 10 page website that will have static pages and nearly no content update ?  You might want to get a closer keyword match because the real estate you get to do SEO are limited, so cling on to every possible smaller details you can find, and that might include a domain with perfect keyword match.
4. Promotion
   If you have a long term strategy with strong promotions and advertising campaigns in mind, then the content pages would take care of relevancy patterns with Google and you have the luxury of going for a funky domain name. Because, you are going to build on the brand positioning and recall value with the promotions, and as the traffic builds up, you don’t have to completely rely on the search engines.
5. Website type
   That’s a very general term to use right ? But yes, what category does your site belong to, is it a one page marketing site, a forum based community, a CMS based site, a blog or a static page site – really matters while selecting a domain name. If it’s a one page marketing site, then there is no other go but to select awkwardly long keyword match domain names, if it’s larger community based sites, then you have more luxury of going for “web 2.0” type domain names,

There are probably more pointers out there to help you select a domain name, more complicated and finer details, but generally, I think that with the new algo changes on Google, keyword match domain names are certainly not favored as they had been favored earlier. So it isn’t something you should put on the top of the list while buying a domain name. No definitely not !

A complete customizable, slick twitter plugin that auto refreshes without page reload. If that’s what you’ve been looking for then head over to Kishore Asokan’s blog. He has released a Wordpress plugin that does just that.

Here are it’s features, and I’m sure you’ll love it.

1. Update twitter status from your blog
2. Update twitter status from your blog
3. View and display public updates on your blog
4. View and display your followers updates on your blog
5. Simple installation
6. Widget Ready, just need to enable to use
7. Can be displayed anywhere on your blog, if not widgets
8. Fully customizable, size, font, font size, colour, number of updates, number of followers, etc
9. Regular Updates

It looks pretty much interesting, at least for the Twitter enthusiasts out there. If you didn’t like those boring non-customizable twitter boxes, try this.

Google breaks one more age old concept - of rewriting dynamic URLs to “Search Engine Friendly” static URLs.

We’ve been taught that dynamic URLs are bad and passes less information to Google than static URLs which search engines love. Last day, Google gave us official, documented information that this is not the case anymore.

According to Google, the crawlers have become more clever now that it can handle pretty much all the dynamic URLs that has the extra parameters in it. It can even “decode” those ambersands and session ids to meaningful format.

Therefore, you don’t need to rewrite them to SEO friendly static formats.

However Google clarifies that, if there is dynamic content on your website (Dynamic content = Content pulled from the database on demand, on the fly), then it’s recommended that, you leaeve it as such, because Google can now understand what a session id and & sign means. When there is dynamic content, it is not fair to rewrite to static urls where we might avoid all the additional parameters.

However, if the content is not dynamic, you might want to avoid longer URLs with meaningless parameters.

Which means that webmasters should now allow and tell Google that it’s dynamic content or static content without fail, and not try to mask your content nature (dynamic or static) through URLs just for the sake of search engine friendliness.

The big picture is thus.

Dynamic Content = Dynamic (meaningful) URLs = Google - No rewrites please, we’ll separate wheat from chaff.

Static Content = Static URLs. = Google - We were smart, and will be.

So, what happens to all those who manipulated their URL’s to search engine friendly format?

Well, leave it as such if it’s complicated to go back. Just make sure, your have the URLs related to the content and not unnecessarily “SEO” optimized. Again, this depends on the site type, volume of pages, indexed content and the time you’ve got.

So you know that footer text is a good real estate option in SEO. And you’ve been placing your sitemeter button and credit texts there. Some of you are clever I know, you have that “natural” looking two lines to text there with links to totally un related websites! Guess what, I have some better alternatives for ya.

1. Place the “unreached” yet important categories at the footer
   All your categories are likely to be there somewhere on the sidebar or above the fold right? But not all of them gets the same focus and visibility. If there are cetegories that are not getting the right visibility as it should, try placing them in the footer. They are likely to get crawled more, and may be you can get some long tail keyword traffic from them.
2. Place your pages at the footer
   Sometimes, pages take a lot of space above the fold, and you don’t really need to place them there (no thumb rule here). In some cases, it might be a better idea to place your pages at the footer. Especially when you want only the search engines to absorb the data from them. Ex:- A technical blog which has an “about us” page that has information on what the blog is about.
3. Place your less-viewed posts at the footer
   It’s also possible that you have excellent articles that you thought will be the the “next viral article” when you wrote it, but unfortunately something went wrong and they didn’t get the focus you planned. Now it’s time to
4. Place an “About me” article
   “About me” articles are a great way to squeeze in those crucial keywords and make a natural text rich space. So utilize it. Write about what you are doing and what you are blogging about (food for thought!)
5. Place all your low page rank articles
   So you know that there are some articles that are low page rank compared to other articles. Of course that doesn’t ,mean that they are completely ignored, but if you think they have the potential to get some traffic from Google, why not pass some link juice to them by linking to them from the homepage?

Still don’t get the idea? Ah! Forget it.