After several months, this blog still is listed as being “unranked”, meaning it has no page rank! I’ve decided today that my pet project will be to devise a strategy that will get my page rank climbing. I think now that I have a wordpress theme that I am happy with, I can take promoting my site a little more seriously.

From my research, I’ve realized that the ultimate goal is to get links to your site. But now just any links - the ones that come from “authority sites” or ones that have higher page rank and search engine rankings, are the most important. And, one-way links are better than reciprocal links. Yes I know, that’s a lot to keep track of.

Ultimately, getting links means that the site has to be more visible. So, I’ve spent some time researching the best strategies. Here’s a rundown of what I’ve found.

Create a Site People Want to Read

Page rank has been described by some as a sort of internet popularity contest. In other words, your site needs to be proven as something that people want to read. The very best way to do that is to write content that people enjoy reading.

Insert Keywords Tastefully

But just writing the content isn’t enough. Inserting keywords in a tasteful way is also important so that you can get some search engine traffic. I’ve found plenty of blogs in search engines and I keep returning to them! As a rule, I try to put the keyword into the title and if I think of it, I sprinkle it throughout the post. I feel the title to be the most important place.

Article Marketing

This is a powerful tool and one that I’ve under utilized. If you have 100 articles submitted to a site like Ezinearticles and you link the article to your site, that’s 100, one-way links coming in to your blog. You can also use article submission software which will allow you to submit one article to hundreds of directories at one time.

Create Lenses and Hubs

This is another great way to increase your page rank. You can get accounts at Squidoo and Hubpages and create mini-sites with excellent content. Both sites allow you to add the RSS feed to your site. For extra clout, optimize each mini-site with your niche’s important keywords.

Visit Forums

This is one of my favorite traffic building strategies because I enjoy participating in forums. Most forums allow you to post at least one link in your signature. You don’t even need to promote your site and tell people to click. In fact, doing that may get you banned from the forum. People will click on the link if they enjoy what you have to say.

Search Engine and Blog Directories

I am almost embarrassed to admit that this is something I have not done. There are hundreds of directories out there that you can submit your site to. What it does is helps you build links. I have a blog that doesn’t get nearly the amount of traffic that this one gets and the page rank is much higher. Looking back, the first thing I did was submit the URL to just about every directory I could find.

Make the Most of Your Ezine

If you decide to start an ezine, make the most of that by submitting your site URL to ezine directories to promote it. Not only is this a good way to get subscribers, but it will also give you even more links. Plus, the ezine itself will contain links back to your blog which will remind people that it exists.

Interlink Within Your Blog

It also helps to link to other articles in your blog on a regular schedule. The “related posts” widget is helpful. But you also may want to consider throwing a link or two write in your posts every now and then. For example, if you’re writing a follow up post about something you wrote, include the original URL in the post.

I know there are other things I haven’t thought of. If you can think of more, feel free to share!