• Claudia! Look At My Blog! What Is Wrong? •
• A Real Life Example Of A Blog That Crashed •

I had a rather interesting situation arise last night. An SEO client called me somewhat frantic. Her blog was no longer visible. In its place was this:

Welcome to the famous five minute WordPress installation process?

Yes, it had happened … the dreaded “site crash”. It can happen to anyone’s website or blog at any time. None of us, no matter how inexperienced or how super-experienced, are immune from a crash of one sort or another.

The causes of a crash are varied. Some crashes you can easily track back right to the cause. Other times, as in the case of my client’s dilemma, there is no clue.

I asked her what she had been doing on her computer before she noticed that her blog had vanished and in its place was now a welcome screen. She said all she had done was write a post and click the “Publish” button. She walked away from her computer.

A few hours later, she decided to take a look at her blog and oh-oh! She discovered the problem.

Would The Offending Culprit Please Step Forward!

What could have caused this crash? Could be a virus in her computer that somehow passed to her WordPress blog when she was posting. I asked her when was the last time she ran a virus scan? She said just the day before. OK … but who knows? Maybe some other nasty got into her computer between the scan and the time she posted her new article.

Could be her blog was hacked. But I don’t think so, because it would seem that a more tell-tale sign of hacking would have been left behind, like a “graffiti” type message, such as “Ha Ha You’ve Been Hacked!”

Could be there was a hiccup at just the wrong time between the server and the moment she clicked the “Publish” button. Who knows? What I do know, is my WordPress blog is just fine, so we can’t point the finger at WordPress.

Back-Up, Back-Up, Back-Up!

Now, this whole situation could have easily been rectified had she kept a current back-up file of her blog. She hadn’t. (There is a great plug-in for easy WordPress database back-up called “WP-DBManager”. Find it here if you’re interested: http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/.)

Whether you have a large website, a mini-site, or a blog … it doesn’t matter. You MUST perform regular back-ups to protect yourself from having to scramble to get your site back online. Worse … think about loosing all the content and images you have placed on your site! Egads … I’d be sick to my stomach if I lost all my hard work, in some cases YEARS worth … just because I hadn’t bothered to back-up my site!

The only recourse my client had was to call her hosting company and hope and pray that they had performed a recent back-up of their servers. Guess what? They do that twice a week. Eureka! The technicians could reinstate her entire blog because of the back-ups on their server.

But many times it isn’t this easy. Many times entire sites are lost … gone for good. There is no bail-out that can be provided by the hosting company (different companies have different protocols).

The moral of this story is to learn how to properly back-up all the files of your website or blog. (And yes … I will help her and show her how to install and then use the WP-plugin I mentioned above. No more scenarios like this one!)

A back-up isn’t hard and usually only takes a minute or two. Get into the habit of doing one on the same day each week, or if you are making tons of site changes, or adding lots of content throughout the week … then back-up every day.

A minute or two of attention to this important bit of site maintenance — back-up — might very possibly one day be a HUGE lifesaver, er …. site-saver for you!

• Yes! You Want To Go After Quality One Way Links •
• Obsessing Over Page Rank Is Not A Part Of This Strategy •

A client was talking about link popularity and link reputation the other day. She was concerned about the ins and outs of working on a one way link building campaign in order to assure the long term success of her new website and blog that will be positioned in an extremely competitive niche.

I had just provided her with a custom keyword research report and we were going over all the results. Though attention to proper search engine optimization techniques will be imperitive for the new site and blog, I was discussing the importance of tackling other SEO concerns if she and her partner wanted to rise up to the top of the organic rankings.

In addition, as the website will be a membership site, it goes without saying that my clients want to be successful financially with their new endeavor!

The question of Google PageRank came up and how it correlates to going after in-pointing links to one’s site. She asked me about going after links from other sites that have a high PageRank to help propel them to top organic rankings faster.

Google’s definition of their “PageRank”:
A Google feature that helps determine the rank of a site in our search results. PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your searches.

I had to say to please, don’t become obsessed with PageRank! It is NOT an indicator of a guarantee that by having a link on a medium-to-high PageRanked site pointing to your site, that you’ll zoom up the organic rankings any faster.

It is also NOT an indication that you’ll receive more traffic flocking into your site from links found on higher PageRanked sites. And that, as a matter of fact, most SEO consultants pay little attention to it.

Another Site’s PageRank Should Not Be Your Focus Nor Really, Concern!

The relevancy of the other site’s theme, or subject matter  in relation to your site’s theme, is of more importance than the PageRank of that site! A site with a PageRank of 5 for instance, that you would like to have linking to your site, just might have very low traffic levels. So … what good will that one way in-pointing link really do for you?

And the next issue is, does that site’s overall theme tie in with yours? Relevancy, or the common relationship of the topics (content) between the other site and yours really matters to the search engine spiders! Getting in-pointing links from other sites that have nothing in common with your site’s theme will do nothing for you! Got that?

This is why buying automated one way “link building” software, or paying some company money to get you “hundreds of in-pointing links to shoot your site to the number #1 position on Google!” … is purely a WASTE of your hard earned money!

What is more important for the long term success of your site, is to carefully go after in-pointing links on other relevant sites, as I have just discussed. In addition, getting your full URL, or your domain name, or the keyword phrase as part of that in-pointing hyperlink is the best deal for you!  That is more preferable for your ranking, in the long run, than the too often favorite “Click Here”.

And, as I always stress here on my blog and to my clients, you also want to build links based on what makes sense for your visitors! Does it make sense for someone reading the information on the other site, to be referred to a page of information on your site?

If it were you … would you be pleased to have clicked on that link which points into your site … or would it irritate you?

We Thank Our Founding Fathers!
July 4th, 1776

God Bless America!