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Its been months since Google had it’s last Page Rank update. They were updating Page Ranks every three months but the last Page Rank update was back in January. I was starting to think that the rumors were true. That Google wasn’t going to focus on Page Rank anymore.??I visited one of my sites this morning. I noticed that my fairly new site (less than 8 months old) had a Page Rank on every single category page that I clicked on. I thought that was strange. So I clicked on the home page and low and behold my page rank had jumped from a 0 to a 3!!!! I had to do my Page Rank dance right in my seat. That lead me to my other sites that I had just set up and those sites were PR 3’s as well. I also noticed that one of my sites that I have been working on getting to the first page for one of my targeted keywords that is well searched each month (dog boutique) was no longer on idle on the second page. It floated up to the 1st page!!! Yippeee.
Of course I was very delighted that my personal sites as well as my clients sites have finally gotten their Page Ranks updated. So went to Facebook right away with my new findings, just to find out that not everyone had seen an increase in their Page Rank.??Some even saw a decrease in Page Rank . Of course I was disturbed by some of the emails I received asking for help or tips on what they can do to increase their page rank or get it back to where it was.
I definitely knew that now was the time to send out a newsletter, blog post, Facebook post etc.. to let everyone know some tips that you can use to increase your Page Rank. Before I start on tips, let me give you a brief explanation of what a Page Rank is.??A Page Rank in my own words is what Google uses to determine the importance of website pages in their index. If they consider a page in their index to be “IMPORTANT” then they give it a score. The score ranges between 0 to 10, 10 being the best of course but also the most difficult to get. Google uses a lot of different ways to determine the importance of your website pages, ways that only Google knows about. One of the ways that I know that they use is the number of quality links you have coming into your site. Your goal is to go after quality not quantity.
Your can benefit from Page Rank in a lot of different ways. Your Page Rank is a great way to increase your keyword ranking, traffic to your site, income (if you charge for ad spaces on your site), other people that you link to keyword ranking and more. There are ways to increase your Page Rank but there are also some ways to decrease your Page Rank. So below are some Do’s and Don’ts:
What Should You Do To Increase Your Page Rank:
- Target Sites With Page Rank : When you are starting out with your SEO/ Link Building, you want to target sites that have a Page Rank. If you are just starting and have a Page Rank of 0 or nothing at all. Target sites that have a Page Rank that is higher than yours. If you are trying to get a boost from a Page Rank of 2 or higher. Target sites that have a higher Page Rank than you.
- Related Websites : Focus on adding your site to sites that are related to your market and sites that are not related to you (specifically blogs). You can contact the website owner and see if they will add your site to theirs. Now this is actually a really hard tactic to do but sometimes you get really lucky. It’s better to approach blog owners about adding a link to your site in their side bar or Blog Roll. Blog owners are usually fairly easy going site owners.
- Give them something to talk about! Create a buzz or what SEO experts like to call Link Bait. The goal is to get people to link back to your site or add their link to their article, blog post or website content. Be creative and think of something that will get people’s attention. Something that will make someone say. Hey, look at what I just found on XYZ’s site.
- Write Articles : If your good at writing, make sure to write articles and add them to some popular article sites like Ezine, GoArticles etc.. You can also add them to Social Content sites like HubPages and Squidoo.com. This is a great way to generate traffic to your site and if your articles becomes popular it can transfer some Page Rank love to your site as well.
- Internal Linking : We tend to forget that our very own websites can help us with ranking and Page Rank. If you notice that some of your website pages already have a Page Rank, Why not link to some of your other pages from the page that has already established a Page Rank. That way when Google does another Page Rank update, your inner pages have a chance of increasing Page Rank as well.
What You Should Not Do:
- DO NOT add your site to low quality sites. These are sites that look like they are not maintained. Sites that have a lot of broken links, broken image pictures etc.. Google looks at these sites as not being maintained and not a high quality site. If these sites have a high Page Rank when you first add your site to it then an update is done and Google drops the low quality site’s Page Rank down, your Page Rank can be effected as well. So if you are keeping tabs of where your site is being added and you have a spread sheet that says what the Page Rank of the site is. Then you check the site after an update has been done and the Page Rank has dropped. Chances are, your Page Rank will drop as well. Reason Being : A websites Page Rank can transfer some Page Rank love to your site when you site is added. So when their Page Rank is effected, your Page Rank love can diminish as well.
- DO NOT get into the habit of participating in link farms. Sites that promise to add your site to 1000’s of websites. You want to build your incoming links to your site naturally. Google likes to see a steady flow of incoming links to your site but not 1000’s in a day etc..
That’s it. I know that the Do’s were much longer than the Don’ts and it should be in this case. Just remember that Google updates their Page Rank every three months. So now is the time to take advantage of the time in between the Page Rank updates. Use this time to focus on your SEO for your site and making sure that your site is properly optimized, and buzz worthy : ).
Start keeping a spreadsheet or a page in your admin that list who is linking to your site and monitor the sites. Take the time to clean up any broken links you may have on your site as well. You can check this by looking at your 404 error messages in your CPanel or your Google Webmaster Tools account.
If you don’t have a way to check your Page Rank yet, you can download Google’s free Tool bar at the link below. Their tool bar has a Page Rank checker or you can use the site below to check your Page Rank:
http://www.google.com/toolbar/ie/index.html
Online Page Rank Checker:
http://www.checkpagerank.net/
Wishing you Tons of Luck and Hope to See You At The Top.
Carla Phillips
Small Business SEO
http://myseogal.com
Very informative article and great tips!
So happy you liked it : )
Very informative. I’ve always been a 3 and don’t think it will ever change…
I have a site that’s like that as well. It’s been a 3 forever but then again, I really haven’t done any linking to it in years.
Thank you for a great post.
I never thought of it that way, well put!