My PR Experience - Part I

When I started this blog I didn´t know what was PR or SEO, as you can read in my older posts, I started to learn a few things reading other blogs, SEO websites and in Webmasters Forums, like Digital Point Forums. I never bought any SEO e-book, all the books I´ve read are free resources. Google webmaster guidelines and their blog has loads of free info too, so you don´t need to spend money to learn some SEO practices.
One day I was browsing SEO sites when I decided to check Night Clicks PR. By that time I didn´t have Google toolbar that shows a site PR when you browse it. I couldn´t belive what my eyes saw, so I doubled checked that info with other tools. It was true, I had PR 4 and I didn´t know what I had done to deserve it. When I realised what I had in hands I decided to learn more about SEO.
I never posted much about this topic, once I´m not an expert in this field I thought it wasn´t appropriated but now it´s time to share what I´ve learned over this last months, maybe it can help some bloggers who are starting.
From my experience, the basic guidelines to have PR are:

~ Optimize your blog: First, you´ll need to update frequently your blog (minimum of 2/3 times a week) with relevant (to your niche) and unique content. Posts should include the keywords you want to rank for and those words should be carefully distributed in the text, like normal writing. The idea is to repeat keywords no more than 3/4 times in a 250 words post, otherwise it won´t help you and it may look like keyword stuffing, which is spammy.
I think that unrelated and mixed topics won´t help your blog´s relevancy and won´t help you get the appropriated keyword density. For me, PR is all about content, keywords and links. PR is only a measure of a certain page relevancy but it´s an important criteria to value a website or blog.

~ You will need links from other blogs/websites/directories that have PR pointed to your blog, in theorie, the more the better. You´ll need to have more links coming in than links going out, and this is important. I´m not sure about quantities but I read that the ideal out going links maximum is around 120. If this is true we have to think carefully about our blogs linking strategie.
Some SEO experts say that links that are pointed to your blog should be from sites or blogs in your niche, others say that it doesn´t matter, since you have links with PR, you´ll have PR yourself. I got PR with links related and others that are not related.
I´ve read that links from .edu sites are good for PR but they´re very hard to get.
To get more links pointed to your blog, and some traffic, without giving any link you can: Comment (do not spam) on DoFollow blogs (check out the list in the bottom of this page), submit your blog to directories that have PR, submit your articles to Articles Directories that have PR (check out my older posts under Directories tag), use Forums with PR that allow links in signatures.
Run away from link factories and linking partners websites, you need links pointed to your blog, not link exchange or this type of schemes.

~ Big G Webmaster guidelines are clear: You can´t sell links, otherwise you´ll be penalized in PR. If you´re doing paid posts with Dofollow links, you´re selling links and the same applies to sites like textlinkads and others. It´s very simple, if you´re receiving compensation for a link from your blog to Google eyes you´re selling links.
When I started doing paid reviews I didn´t know what were dofollow and nofollow links, too much tech for me, but in the next Google update I was penalized with a PR 0, so I started to search for info on how to get my PR back. In my next post I will explain what I did to get some of my PR back and I will describe the rest of my experience. See you soon.

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