Way(s) that could have improved your ranking :)

[Dimitri]

Hi,

I've never been involve in SEO, or chasing tricks to artificially optimize the ranking of my site (I am just trying to make my site the best I could, and happens what happens).

However, I thought I could share my story about an "accidental" traffic booster :)

So it was in the old times, when PageRank was THE main ranking factor at Google, elders will remember the Google toolbar with the little green rectangle :) . So back to that time , all was a matter of PageRank, which was connected to backlinks and the way each link was carrying a fraction of the PageRank to the next page.

So the goal was to get a link from a page with a high PageRank, and, if possible, this page should have had a limited number of outgoing links. There was an ultra easy way to achieve it, free, and nearly instantaneous. At that time, there was the attempt of the P3P protocol [en.wikipedia.org...] , and they had a page, listing P3P compliant sites... So you just had to create the P3P files (correctly), and submit your site and they were listing it ! The P3P's site front page had a page rank of 10 , and the page, listing compliant sites, had a PageRank of 9 ! Very few webmasters minded this new protocol , when i submitted my site, there were only 4 other sites listed! Also, articles being written about the P3P protocol were listing sites already compliant as examples, including mine, with a direct link!

As a result, my site 's font page, went from a PR of 4 to a PR of 7 ! and my traffic doubled from one day to another, two months after my site was listed on the P3P site (it was the time Google had a monthly update).

The old good times :)

[graeme_p]

I created some Wordpress themes with footer links before it became a known tactic for link building (at least I did not know it was - in 2006 I thought it was my own idea!). Some sites were still using them until an year or two ago.

No idea how much benefit I got from it.

I do remember watching PR.

[not2easy]

I found I was able to instruct the bot with <!-- NOT --> operators in my text where the main keyword of the page(s) had more than one use. I got AdSense to stop showing ads that promoted a completely different use of my word. This was a very long time ago when AdSense was still cute and cuddly. I highly doubt it would be useful today.

[Dimitri]

in 2006 I thought it was my own idea!

:) ... There are plenty of things for which I thought I was the only one on earth to have thought of it :)

I found I was able to instruct the bot with <!-- NOT --> operators in my text

Oh, yes, I remember this too.

[JS_Harris]

One of my competitors had a large network of sites and he had new domains for projects lined up. He interlinked all his sites from one main network hub and he put those new and completely undeveloped domains in the sidebar links too. Result, PR 5 on blogs that only had a single post titled "Hello World".

Glad they fixed it and ditched PR.

Well, they didn't really ditch PR, just didn't report it, PR is still a page's value but it's not reported on a scale anymore. You can still PR sculpt, just not with nofollow and not for PR.

Now we're feeding an AI that only understands facts so give it fact morcels rich in data and hold the opinion.

[tangor]

I guess memories of the old days are fun ... I reserve that activity for meets with high school and Army buddies (some 60-55 years ago) ... as for memories of g and the web ... unless you made a fortune in the 1990s, it's been pretty much ordinary hard work since then. :)

And that's great!

Never chased page rank, just had the content that inspired participation and was "easy to index" ...

I would be an idiot for not recognizing that there have been, and probably still are, ways to game the system ... but never chased them myself. Has worked out pretty fair so far ... as KISS and DON'T DO SOMETHING STUPID (DDSS) has worked.

Now we're feeding an AI that only understands facts so give it fact morcels rich in data and hold the opinion.

Unless you're MSM and facts AND opinion are your bread and butter. :)