Why might an outbound link on a search engine tempt them to send you more visitors? Could these be a enigma of search engine optimisation, or a system to leak you page rank?

I have before now written about how I believe that outbound links on a page can boost its power on the search engines. I observed the effects that outbound links had on a low ranking web site in comparison to another that I run, without the outbound links, but with huge amounts of SEO work and a respectable page rank, not merely on the home page but additionally on the inner pages.

So, what grounds might there be for the search engines to raise your position merely because you point to another page, perhaps on your own site, with the search terms in the anchor text?

It appears foolish, but it is a deduction that I have come back to several times looking at quite a lot of sites covering different niches in excess of a couple of years. It does seem to work.

Looking at search engines, they live by providing their visitors quality results. You locate the results you be looking for on a search engine and so use it persistently. They have to provide quality answer.

Say then, you are looking for Acme Widgets. You want to learn how to make one and search ‘how to make an Acme widget’. What results would the search engines show you?

What the search engine does not distinguish is what level you are fascinated in the information at. Are you desiring to make one for yourself, or do you want to discover how they are made for the reason that you are interested in the development. The results have to cover this answer for all traffic.

It is the same with many searches. If you search for ‘search engine optimise a website‘, do you want a step by step set of results, or someone that could tell you what is desired and do it for you?

In both of these conditions, if you are sent to a page that gives you the high level assessment, probably a video of the manufacture or an SEO experts page, then the basic level query is clarified. If that website then links to the full details, say the step by step information, then you could dig deeper to find a fuller answer.

It has been established in the past that search engines like to send traffic to a page with the high level answer from where they might then dig deeper to a more complete answer. So, how do the search engines identify that your page could provide the additional facts?

Well, the page itself must have an critique of the search terms and there must be a link to other information. If this link carries the search terms on a page round those search terms, then it is potential that the target page provides further details around the subject.

And that is what makes me believe that an outbound link on a site page might hold some weight at least with the search engines. Perhaps not loads, but enough to tip the balance. Whether the link need to be on another site or whether it could safely be the same website, I am still working out!

If you are starting a blog, what is the best blogging software that you can use? Which is easy to set-up, fantastic to customise and well search engine optimised?

In my view, there is only one truly great piece of blogging software on the internet. But it is not always the best for all people, there are sometimes alternatives whilst not the best for the masses, are better for distinct niches?

So what attributes make up the best blogging software on the market? I believe that it has to:

• Be free to use – there are so many paid for blogging tools about, why pay for software?
• Be flexible and extendible – if you want to add a feature to it, such as site maps, captcha checked contact forms, this must be easy to do.
• Be easy to set-up and install.
• Be easy to make it look different to other blogs – there is no point in running a professional blog that looks like 3,000,000 other blogs.
• Have ready made (and free) off-the-shelf styles readily available to install at the touch of a button.
• Be well search engine optimised and accepted by the search engines.
• Ideally, it should have a community of other bloggers that can also drift over to your new blog from related blogs.

Well, in my view WordPress.org ticks all but the last of the above boxes. There is just that last box left unticked. In fact, if you look into WordPress.com, that does have the community of bloggers in the version of WordPress that it hosts, but there is not the flexibility and if you are running schemes such as paid posting, you are not allowed to run a blog there.

WordPress is also easy to install. If you are comfortable with downloading, unzipping and FTPing to a server, then it is simple to set-up and create it onto almost any paid hosting account. If you are not so technically competent and are just setting up a blog for tasks such as working from home, then the other great news about WordPress is that a lot of hosts have simple installation systems. With these, you buy the domain name and some hosting and simply press a button or two and the software is installed for you.

But, what if you don’t want to, or can’t afford to, pay for hosting? Well, there are still pieces of blogging software to use and in this case, take a look at Blogger, which is my second favourite for blogging. There are not so many avenues open to you, but it is still only a few clicks to install Google Adsense to earn a bit of cash and you are allowed to earn some extra cash through paid posting.

So, that is my recommendations for the best blogging software. Ideally you should install WordPress, but if you don’t want to pay a penny for the tool, then take a look at Blogger. Between them, they have everything covered. Happy blogging and feel free to leave a comment as to how you got on with your new blog.