You are unlikely to be the only blog in your particular niche, unless you have managed to corner such a narrow market that no one else writes in the space.  So assuming you have competitor blogs in your space wouldn’t it be nice to know who links to them ?

Why, you might ask would you want to know who was linking to your competitors blog? It’s important because if they are getting valuable inbound links that will positively impact their google page rank and of course drive traffic to them.

Once you know where their inbound links are coming from you can start to work on getting the same sites to link to you. So how do you get that information?

Use Yahoo as your search tool and the little known “linkdomain” command to reveal this information. It is used in the following format:

linkdomain:website address

For example if I want to see all the sites linking to this one I would type linkdomain:slyvisions.com

The drawback to that is it will show all referring links, including internal ones, to remove the internal links we simply add -slyvisions.com at the end, so we have linkdomain:slyvisions.com -slyvisions.com

How will you get more traffic from sites linking to your competitors?

Popularity: 3% [?]

One of the comments received to a post last week asked how to improve the google page rank for a blog, here is the comment:

I have a blog and its already have a page rank of 3, but I want to increase the popularity of it I don’t want to stuck in PR3. I want to know some techniques aside from creating links and directory submission…

I thought this was a great opportunity to go over the basics of how to achieve this as I know it’s something that a lot of people question.

Firstly, our commenter points out two of the most obvious ways, have inbound links, have internal links and make sure you website is listed in high profile directories and on other websites.

Those are good ideas but they are only part of the picture. The first and foremost way to improve your blog page ranking is to improve the content. High quality content will drive traffic and that will increase your page rank faster than anything else.

Quality content will also naturally lend itself to being repeated, quoted, and generally talked about, this will also increase your page rank.  Other methods that should not be over looked are:

Translate it - make your content available in other languages, this will spread the opportunity and increase the number of readers and potential sites linking to yours.

Use Social Media - create word of mouth campaigns centered around your really stand out posts so that they start conversations online, most of which will include a link back to your post.

Don’t over look the obvious - make sure your blog address is in your email signature, and everywhere else that you sign things that you send out, e.g. email newsletters, physical newsletters, ads etc.

What is your current page rank and what are you doing to improve it?

Popularity: 2% [?]

This is sage advice, people often associate reputation with the people you associate with. The same is as true online as it is offline. For users of Wordpress this can be especially true if you engage in affiliate marketing or link exchange activities.

Wordpress releases updates to its software on a regular basis, not bothering to update your version of Wordpress leaves you open to hackers and other malicious users. The same is true of your partners. Google Page Rank takes into account how secure your site is for users. If your site appears to be unsecure, appears to upload malware of any kind, you will at best, get buried in the results pages and at worse could find yourself banned from Google listings all together.

Having links to sites who are not upto date can equally have a negative impact on your Page Rank. So make sure when you are signing up for affiliates that they take security seriously and make sure that you update your version of WordPress as the new versions are issued.

Are you up to date? WordPress is now at 2.7.1 are you?

Popularity: 1% [?]

Checking my inbox today I got an email from a Rocky at Blogging Mix letting me know that my PageRank is back. After looking at a few PR checkers, my site really did get its PageRank of 3. After applying for a reconsideration request, Google finally gave back what Slyvisions originally had earned. After a few months, I’m proud to say, thank you Google! Some of you right now might be thinking why it even matters. Yes, there are those who think PR is dead. But on my part (and other webmasters), it’s something that I need if I want to make money online with this blog. You see before advertisers decide to advertise on any site, they look at a few things: traffic, the number of RSS readership, and the number of backlinks which is apparently reflected by PageRank. Already getting the traffic and the number of RSS subscribers the only thing Slyvisions really needed was a PR. Now I have it back. Oh, and the site is now ranked 67 instead of 98 in the 45n5 Top 100 Make Money Blogs. I’m still looking to rank better as the weeks go by.

So now that my RSS numbers are up after the RSS competition with 4 other bloggers (unfortunately, I didn’t win) and my PR is set at 3, I think it’s finally time to make some changes regarding my advertising rates. I have wanted to do this for a long time, so I think now is the perfect time. Here are the new rates below.

468×60 Premium Banner - $40 $45
125×125 Sidebar Banner - $25 $30
Site/Blog Review - $50 $60
Site/Blog Plug - $40 $50
RSS Feed Text Link - $10 $15

Combo Package - $95 $110

As you can see, these changes are not major changes at all! In fact, the combo package is only $15 more than what it used to be. If you add up all the new prices individually, you end up with $200. A $90 saving! Now that’s what I call a bargain.

But here’s the thing. These new prices are not effective until the end of this month. So if you want to advertise here for the older and cheaper price, make sure to let me know ASAP!

Popularity: 6% [?]

So it’s all over the blogosphere now that Google’s PR update has just already been underway. There have been a lot of sites and blogs with increased PR’s, and even some that had it demoted got it back. But I still don’t see any changes here on Slyvisions dot Com. So Google, what do you want me to do?

It seems like I will never get my PR 3 (or higher) back. I really do not want to waste my time talking about this since it’s useless, but the fact that Google hasn’t given me my PR is total BS. I have already stopped selling text links and removed all my “review Slyvisions for a backlink” posts, but what else am I missing? There are hundreds of other bloggers out there that are doing things that should get them penalized, but they’re not!

I hope Matt Cutts can tell me exactly what’s going on here. Emailing Google about a reconsideration from the Webmaster Tools did not seem to work. All I really want is an answer, and I hope to get one soon.

Popularity: 4% [?]