I need a break! This arduous task of topping the SERP for a keyphrase Busby SEO Test is already taking its toll on me. My more important blogs had been left out. I haven’t played badminton for quite a while. I haven’t really packed up for my trip later this afternoon. I have so many things left undone.

So I’ll take a break. A break from chasing links and keywords, and return to my sane self. I’ll go back to writing poetry and short stories. I’ll read novels and magazines. I don’t even know what had happened to America after Obama won. And what about Erap? Is he running for the 2010 elections? Or will the administration declare a martial law to keep PGMA in office after 2010.

Yes, I’ll take a break. I’ll explore Manila and Laguna this weekend. They say the Caliraya is awesome. I have to see it for myself. I know that without a guide, I’ll get lost in the maze of streets and highways. So I’ll buy a map.

But only in the Busby SEO Test that I’ll take a break. I have so much work to do. Tons of it!

Popularity: 18% [?]

Busby SEO Test News: Ceblogger is out of the top 100.

From a previous high of 44, his ranking dipped to an all-time low and is now among the unknowns, as he is also unknown.

In October 3, 2008, Ceblogger registered as a participant to the Busby SEO World Cup 2 upon the invitation of Lhurey of Phblogger.net. Despite his lack of SEO skills, he courageously restructured his blog in order to compete with the elite.

Now, a month and a half had passed, he is still nowhere near the top. And so he prays, pleads, and begs for mercy. And since today is Ceblogger’s birthday, he wishes that Google give him gifts. Not just one, but the two as follows:

1. Restore his other blogs’ PageRank.
2. Restore the top 50 standing in the Busby SEO Test contest.

But while Google still has to think about this, Ceblogger will just have to enjoy his pizza.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Are you ready for the PageRank (PR) update of 2009? Or you may ask, will there be any PageRank Update this last quarter of 2008? I saw in the feedjit of my other blog that a lot of people came there searching about page rank updates. Maybe the questions they have in mind revolve around one thing: How to Improve Page Rank.

PageRank

If we are following the trend of these PR updates, we should expect a toolbar update late next month or early next year. Google does it more or less once every three months. The previous update was at the end of September wherein this site got ranked. Yeah, a mere PR1!

If they’ll have another round of update in 2008, then the 2009 round will be towards the end of the first quarter. You may also try predicting you future pagerank. Go to pagerankprediction.com and check your URL. I cannot vouch for its accuracy though because it shows different results for www., http://www., and http://. Even my other blog shows a not so good and inconsistent prediction. And from that prediction (even how inaccurate it is), develop your strategy to improve your page rank.

Given more or less 45 days to improve your PR, what should you do? Two things actually: Gain Backlinks and Save PR juice.

Gain Backlinks

1. Create High Quality Content – When readers talk about the information you give, they usually link you back, and share that useful information to others.

2. Submit your site to web directories – There are free web directories out there. Though they may not be a good source of traffic, the high PR ones can at least give you the backlink you need.

3. Ask friends to link your site in theirs – Ah, this is easy! But they might feel bad if you won’t link theirs.

4. Put a link to your site as a signature in the forums you joined – This is applicable when they allow html in the signature portion. If not, put the link directly in your post, when necessary. But avoid spamming or you’ll get banned.

5. Reward readers to link to you – Did I write bribe? Make a contest and ask participants to link to you. A lot of people are doing this. Participants won’t really care about your ulterior motive as long as you have attractive prizes.

6. Comment on sites with Dofollow – The original intention of this is to reward commenters with a link juice. Take advantage of this, but leave well-thought-of comments. Don’t spam.

7. Persuade sites with high PR to link to you – The persuasion is up to you. Go back to no. 1.

8. Too much link in such a short period of time can backfire – Search engines reward hard work and punish the crafty evildoer. As much as possible, gain natural/organic backlinks.

Save PR Juice

1. Avoid too many outbound links – Google doesn’t want you to give out too many links, lest they suspect your site to be a link farm. If you doubt the site you linked to, add the rel=”nofollow” to your html tag.

2. Don’t link to banned sites – You should know what these banned sites are. Check also the footer of your free themes, as they may contain links to a banned site.

3. Avoid linking to unrelated sites – This could get you banned. Now, I have to think what is an unrelated site to a general blog like this one. If you’ve done paid posts in the past and got spanked, maybe it’s now time to restructure your blog in time for the next page rank update.

It is easy to achieve a PR3 in less than 90 days. I’ve done it twice, but not for this Busby SEO Test site. I got a few people linking to me since I joined the 2nd Busby World Cup, so there is a chance that I’ll get a better page rank come update time.

On the other hand, be careful that your site is up and running when the robot from Mountain View, California visits your site. You might not get an update despite the hard work you’ve put up.

Popularity: 35% [?]

I received a comment or two many weeks ago that says something like this: “Please don’t delete spam. The money gained will be used to feed the children in Africa.” Oh, really? Spamming for a good cause? Why don’t they just buy Spam and feed the hungry?

There could be money in spamming because there are people who do it. And the money flowing to the spammers could be larger than we’ve imagined. The other day, this site received almost 30 spam comments, when I normally get around a dozen. Where did they come from? What is their purpose of doing so? If they’re from somewhere, how much are they paid for spamming?  Can we join?  (oops, just kidding on the last one)

Or are they into SEO too? Using the spam links to push their websites up in SERP. This only signal one thing for me: Stop Spam ASAP by installing a plug-in. Now, where’s the plug-in I downloaded?

Popularity: 7% [?]

If you want more traffic from Google and from other search engines, then you should stop writing about SEO. What? Yes. Stop writing about SEO but start applying what you have learned however little it is right now. We’re not experts and gurus. Let us leave the lectures to the experts. Concentrate on writing valuable content that readers want and search in the internet.

My last six posts including this one are about SEO, but Google is not giving me any traffic. My Feedjit and the analytics results confirm it. Even in my other blog, the topics on SEO brought no visitors from the search engines. Hadn’t I stumbled my post, it would have remained unnoticed in the worldwide web. The thumbs up of other stumblers brought more than a thousand viewers.

The SEO niche is so crowded. To get a pie of the searchers, one must be on the fist three pages of the search engine resulting page. Those who are optimizing in the not so crowded niche got the better traffic. If you are in the SEO niche and get plenty of traffic from Google, then lucky you.

Blog Traffic

So, for the next five posts of this blog, the aim is to get visitors from the search engines. I’ll forget my Busby SEO Test for a while though the optimization will continue since the contest will run for three months. Google, please give me traffic!

Popularity: 8% [?]

Building backlinks is an arduous task, but it is necessary to push one’s site in the front pages of the search engines. Currently, the total backlinks that this Busby SEO Test participant has is three as per report generated by backlinkwatch.com. Imagine, after 30 posts, I only have 3 sites linking to me!

This SEO contest is an opportunity to change the inner workings of this blog. First it was the Title. Obviously, the blog title plays a vital role in the search engine optimization game. All others had their Busby SEO Test as their blog title (or added to their blog titles). There is almost no difference at all, because these experts recognize the importance of the title. Had it been allowed to use domain names containing the keywords to be optimized, the busbyseotest.com.net.org.whatever would have been sold out immediately, minutes after the announcement.

Then the meta tags. I’ve already done that in my previous post. To check the meta tags of a website, click view, then the page source of the site. Search for whatever meta found on the codes. You add and/or alter the meta tags of your site.

Now, it’s the backlinks. Google considers a link to a site a vote for that site, hence, improving the importance of the linked site in the eyes of Google. So, where do I start with the backlink building?

First, it would come from me. I got a few ranked blogs out there. None of which had linked this site yet using the anchor text: Busby SEO Test. I want it linked to my domain, and not in any single post. That would be my start.

Next are my friends. Friends, please link me in a post or in your sidebar. Use the code here:

<a href="http://ceblogger.com">Busby SEO Test</a>

If you had done so, please let me know so that I can give recognition at a later time.

Then to those who just want to help, you may copy the said code above. I don’t have money to buy links. But if I’d win, I’ll share the winnings, even if it will only be the fifth prize.

Popularity: 13% [?]