Making updates to your web site or blog has many advantages. Updates make visitors more likely to return on a regular basis, they can improve search rankings, and they increase the chance of gaining inbound links or being listed in directories. So, is there such a thing as too many updates?

There is, but only in some circumstances. Here are a few situations where too many updates could become a problem:

A. Low Traffic: If a web site has relatively few visitors, entering many updates could be a waste of time, because too few people will see each update. One approach is to update weekly or daily until the site starts to receive more traffic, then increase their frequency. This is more of a problem if each update permanently replaces the material which came before it, because it further decreases the chance of anyone seeing the previous content.

B. Massive Content: Some blogs have speculated that it can harm search engine rankings if a web site adds a large number of new pages at one time. This issue shouldn’t be a concern unless your updates sometimes involve adding several dozen or hundreds of individual pages on the same day.

If you pay someone to write a large quantity of articles for your website, consider adding them periodically instead of all at once. In addition to the possible SEO benefit, this may also encourage visitors to keep returning (because there will be new content each time they visit the site).

C. Limited Bandwidth: Updates will increase the amount of bandwidth consumed by a web site, especially if they cause users to visit more regularly. Using too much bandwidth is more likely to be a problem for sites located on free web hosting services. It is usually not very expensive to upgrade your bandwidth limit, unless there is an impressively large increase in traffic. If the updates do not replace old material, more storage space will also be used up; however, even the cheapest blog and web site hosting services typically provide enough space for hundreds of articles.

All of these problems apply to some web site operators, but most don’t really need to worry about them. Although there is such a thing as adding too many updates, far more web site and blog owners have difficulty finding the time and inspiration to post updates regularly enough.

Once seen as a flawless way to enhance search rankings and traffic, reciprocal linking now has the potential to affect a website in both good and bad ways. The following list of “pros and cons” will help determine whether reciprocal linking is right for your website, while providing some tips on how to trade links more effectively.

PROS

1. Reciprocal linking increases the direct traffic between both websites involved, especially if they are about related subjects. This decreases reliance upon search engines and/or paid advertising, which is good for saving money and maintaining a more stable flow of traffic. It is best to avoid trading links with sites on completely different topics.

2. It may still improve search result rankings, particularly when the two sites are relevant to each other, it isn’t obvious that the linking is reciprocal, and both sites have good PageRank levels. Sometimes one site will receive more benefit than the other, based upon these factors – such as when a popular PR5 site exchanges links with a new PR0 or PR1 site.

CONS

The potentially bad effect of reciprocal linking is largely associated with search engine rankings, and has become more problematic in recent years. Website operators may want to specifically agree beforehand about what sort of links (”nofollow”, link text, etc.) they will use.

1. Some search engines, especially Google, now disapprove of reciprocal linking and may penalize the search rankings of sites that are involved (if detected) – unless the “nofollow” attribute is used in the links, which eliminates any good or bad impact upon rankings. Any linking (reciprocal or not) to sites that have been “banned” by the engines will have a bad effect on search rankings.

2. Linking to other web pages can distract visitors from your site, possibly causing them to forget about it. Using links that open in new windows can help limit this bad aspect of reciprocal linking. A link also “endorses” the other site to some extent, so you will want to examine it for offensive content, viruses, or other material which may reflect badly upon anyone who links to it.

The ability to increase traffic among the linked websites remains an undoubtedly good aspect of reciprocal linking, but its benefits regarding the search engines are no longer as clear. Regardless of this, links should only be traded with high-quality relevant websites, and it is best not to exchange them excessively.

When you research keywords to use in your web site or blog, it’s important to find words that people really search for, while avoiding keywords that you cannot realistically compete for. Here are some suggestions on how to research keywords more effectively and efficiently.

1. Create a list of potential keywords and phrases related to the subject of your web site. Try using a thesaurus to obtain more related keywords you might find desirable. The keyword research tools referred to in the next step are also useful for finding related keywords. Some sites effectively obtain traffic by creating content centered around commonly misspelled words.

2. Research how many people are searching for these keywords. You can use Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, and various other keyword research tools to easily and effectively obtain this sort of data. Some of these tools are free, others require a subscription fee. If no one is looking for a particular word or phrase on the search engines and you don’t have any reason to believe that will change, it probably isn’t worth producing content on that subject.

3. Use a major search engine to query keywords you are interested in; if all of the first and second page results are supplied by major (high PageRank) web sites, your site will have difficulty surpassing them in this subject (unless the site is already very well known). It is a good sign if there are few results or most listings aren’t specific to the keyword of interest; you may be able to effectively serve this niche.

4. Keep in mind that your goal (probably) isn’t just to increase hits to the web site; you want to effectively attract interested visitors who will click advertisements, purchase products, or otherwise benefit the site. For example, if a laser printer dealer were to go to the effort of attaining high rankings for words like “printer” and “printing”, it would needlessly attract many users who are only interested in other types of printers (also wasting bandwidth).

Unfortunately, no matter how effectively you research keywords, not all of them will produce a lot of traffic. Search query data isn’t always accurate, the things people are interested in vary from time to time, and new competitors may appear. Generally, the best strategy is to target niche keyword phrases which specifically relate to your site’s content and aren’t overly competitive.

Social bookmarking, including systems like Reddit and Digg, notably affects SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in a few different ways. Social bookmarking links can help determine which SEO keywords a web page shows up under, increase its Google PageRank, and/or make it appear in search results more quickly.

As a link receives additional votes in its favor, it will appear on more prominent pages of the social bookmarking service. This affects SEO more significantly, while producing an increase in direct traffic. Many web site operators have added links or icons to social bookmarking services at the beginning or end of each web page, thus encouraging their visitors to bookmark the pages.

When search engine “spiders” detect a link, its wording (”anchor text”) affects their identification of the content on the page it links to. Then the linked page becomes more likely to show up in search results for those words or phrases. This is why an inbound link with a vague anchor text phrase like “Amazing New Product” affects SEO less favorably than more descriptive links do.

For example, a social bookmarking link titled “New Operating System Released” would make the page it is linked to more likely to show up in search results for each of these four words. Thus, the more relevant and searchable the words in the link, the more useful it is for SEO purposes.

Most social bookmarking services are classified into categories or “tags”. Links on web pages with related content usually provide more SEO benefits, so the same is likely true for social bookmarking links which are grouped with other links on similar topics. Thus it is probably best to choose “tags” which are relevant, but not obscure.

A difference between social bookmarking and using a search engine is that people generally use search engines to find specific things they are looking for, while a social bookmarking system is more often used to explore new information they might be interested in. It is somewhat like the difference between advertising in the yellow pages and posting an advertisement on a laundromat’s bulletin board.

Basically, social bookmarking affects SEO in the same way that inbound links on other web sites do, but is different in that anyone can post or vote on these links. Their position is also more subject to change than most other links, and new content is generally favored over older material.

As with any complex subject or issue, there are some big myths about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which should be dispelled. Read on to learn about five of these myths.

1. Some people claim that the purpose of SEO is to “manipulate” search engines. Actually, SEO helps make it possible for search engine software to identify sites as being relevant to the keyword someone is searching for. For a web site, it is sort of like putting your resume on high-quality paper and using a laser printer to make it more attractive for an employer.

2. Others state that just having high-quality content and writing “naturally” will usually produce a good keyword density, traffic, and high rankings. Realistically, the “spiders” which index pages cannot judge the quality of web sites, and there is a lot of high-quality content on the web that hardly anyone reads. Creating content which is of good quality is important, but does not eliminate a site’s need for SEO.

3. Another one of the myths within SEO is that only getting listed on the major search engines and directories is important. In reality, getting a link to your web site on a little-known site with a link directory about the same topic can bring it a substantial number of hits. It is also worth spending a bit of time to get listed on smaller specialized engines related to your site’s topic.

4. One of the more general myths is that the goal of SEO is purely to obtain higher search engine rankings. It is true that this is a big part of SEO’s purpose. However, high rankings are worthless if people don’t click on them, or quickly leave the page these results link to. SEO work must take into account the readability of pages, as well as the attractiveness of title and description tags. If this page had the keyword MYTHS in it twelve times, it would have a five-percent keyword density, but be less desirable to read.

5. Finally, yet another of the myths is that paying for links is always harmful (with regard to SEO). There are a few reasons why this is incorrect. First, Google appears not to penalize paid listings in (at least some) directories which thoroughly review sites before listing them; its “Webmaster Guidelines” page encourages webmasters to submit their sites to the Yahoo! directory. Also, if the “nofollow” attribute is used in a link, it won’t enhance or worsen these rankings.

No one indicator can be reliably used for measuring a blog’s level of success; several different factors have an impact on how much success it can be considered to have achieved. Criteria for measuring the success of a blog also varies depending upon the goals of its author.

One important measure of success for a blog is how many repeat visitors it receives. If many of the same people return to it daily or weekly, the blog’s content is probably of interest to them, updated regularly, and considered to be of good quality. It is less costly in time and money to retain repeat visitors than to promote the blog to new readers. If statistics show many people reaching the blog without a referring URL, they are probably typing it into their web browser’s address bar or accessing it from their favorites/bookmarks. A blog can still be considered to be a success if most of its readers come from links on other web sites, but it will be more dependent upon the other sites and may suffer if they disappear or change ownership. Positive comments to blog message postings, and voluntarily links from other web sites, can also be seen as indications of a blog’s success in offering interesting, high-quality content.

Some bloggers desire to earn advertising revenue or promote a product/service they are selling, while others want to express an important opinion or do both. Measuring success is somewhat different for each of these goals, but receiving a substantial amount of “traffic” or “hits” is important to all of them; all want their message to reach as large an audience as possible. While bloggers most interested in expressing an opinion may be satisfied if enough people read their blog posts, bloggers who want to earn advertising and/or sales revenue will be displeased with a large number of readers who are unresponsive to their promotional efforts. This may be a problem of attracting the wrong type of readers, or because the blog is improperly designed to encourage purchases or clicks on advertisements. Measuring how much success a blog has attained also depends upon how long it has existed; if it was started a couple weeks ago and already has several readers who frequently visit it, this is a greater indication of its successfulness than if it were several months or years old.

Overall, measuring a blog’s level of success involves determining the number of voluntarily-placed links to it, regular/repeat visitors, positive comments regarding it, total number of readers, and the advertising or sales revenue it generates.

Alexa.com ranks web sites based on how popular they are, with sites like Yahoo, MSN, Google, and eBay in the top twenty, and many others ranked among the thousands or millions. Good Alexa ratings can be of significant value in helping web sites gain advertisers and is also of value for comparing how popular similar web sites are.

To check your site’s Alexa ranking, visit alexa.com and click the “Traffic Ranking” tab near the top of the screen. Then enter the web site URL. The next page should show a screenshot of its home page, its popularity ranking, trends regarding traffic increases or decreases, which countries it is the most popular in, and other information. While ratings like 450,000 or 873,000 may seem poor to people unfamiliar with Alexa, they are actually fairly good; many millions of web sites are ranked by Alexa. Some or all of this information, including the traffic ratings, may not be available for relatively new or little-known web sites. If the home page screen shot is outdated, there is a way to request that Alexa update it; see their help section for details.

Alexa determines traffic ratings for web sites by monitoring the sites visited by people using their optional toolbar software, so their rating may or may not be an accurate reflection of how popular a web site is. The toolbar requires users to have Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer 6.0+ or Firefox for a browser, so visitors with Apple, Linux, or DOS operating systems are never counted in the ratings. Also, IE 6.0 requires at least Windows 98. This puts web sites which cater to an audience with older computer systems or alternative operating systems at a disadvantage. The ratings are of little value or importance to sites which lack advertising or use services like Google Adsense or Yahoo! Publisher Network to generate advertising revenue.

Overall, while good Alexa ratings are of value and importance to some, they are not absolutely necessary for gaining advertisers. A web site’s Google PageRank and rankings on other traffic ranking systems (ranking.com, quantcast.com) might also be considered, and advertisers can be provided with information from the site’s own statistics as well. If your web site has a good Alexa ranking, this can be of great value and should be pointed out; if not, point to different statistics, and keep in mind that some advertisers may not have even heard of Alexa.

Blogs are often an effective way to increase website traffic, especially from repeat visitors. Posting new information to blogs on a regular basis, putting blog entries on separate pages, and suggesting them to blog directories can often increase the effectiveness of this technique.

The use of blogs adds fresh content to a website, making visitors more likely to return. A website which rarely or never adds new content may receive traffic from search engine results, but is less likely to gain many users who frequent the website regularly. Like repeat customers in a store, repeat visitors are valuable because there is no need to spend time or money attracting them to the website.

Blogs can be especially effective for creating an increase in repeat website traffic if they are updated predictably, such as on a particular day of the week or time of the day. For example, the owner of one popular website adds an entertaining and informative message to his blog every Monday; this reminds users to visit the website on Monday, whereas they would be more likely to forget if the blog was updated at random intervals. Blogs can increase search engine generated traffic as well, but this is much more likely to be effective if each blog entry appears on its own separate page. Using an index page of entry titles (with or without partial excerpts) linked to pages the blog entries are located on will allow users to conveniently access them without loading entries they have already seen, as well as making it possible to more easily optimize the entries for search engines.

Allowing users to post comments to blogs can also increase traffic, as do many interactive features. Although concerns regarding offensive or “spam” comments apply, visitors to the website will be more likely to return if they can post comments, check to see if other users responded, and reply if they desire to.

Blogs also are eligible to be listed in blog directories like bloghub.com, blogcatalog.com, and blogarama.com, potentially producing an increase in traffic, and they can be indexed by services like Google Blog Search (blogsearch.google.com) and technorati.com as well. Many blog directories accept submissions of new blogs free of charge, although most of them require registration. The forms for registering usually do not require much personal information. Having a blog on the website also makes it possible to exchange links with related blogs, another good way to increase traffic and improve search engine rankings.

In combination, all of these characteristics give blogs great potential to increase a website’s traffic.