PR 5 and beyond

What doe it take to climb the PR ladder?

[jaytierney]

I currently operate a number of web sites, all of which are currently PR5. I'm curious what it usually takes to knock a site up a notch into the PR6 zone. Would a single PR7 link, a couple PR6 links, and roughly a dozen PR5 links probably do the trick? Any personalized responses from site owners who made the jump to PR6 or higher would be much appreciated... Aside from good content, clean HTML, etc. - what did it take?

[tigger]

Blood sweat & tears. My jump was due to some PR5 sites I linked up to, so try contacting some PR5/6 sites and beg, believe me it works, all I need to do now is crack the PR7

[lioness]

This past update caused 2 of my sites to move from a 5 to a 6. I wondered if Google was just changing the algorithm the way he/she did earlier this year, when many PR0 sites were given PRs again. One site gets updated weekly w/ new content. The other site has not changed in months. So, there's no rhyme or reason why the 2nd site would have been bumped up. From what I can tell, there weren't many sites linking to the 2nd site.

At what rank do people stop sharing the 'secrets'?

[brendan]

A well constructed site with more than about 7 pages should be going in at a five with a DMOZ listing behind it in my experience.

PR6 is a bit harder but can be achieved with a very well constructed site and a lot of content and just a few inbound links.

It is always important to realise that the easiest way to link to your site is from your own pages but to get a six I have alway shad to call on the power of external links until recently when I did it with loads of hard work and a well planned navigational structure.

PR7 is slightly harder you normally achieve this with about 500+ good inbound links if you can get a link from an 8 that helps but not everyone has that luxury. I have a few sevens but and contacts with 8's but I haven't got my own 8 yet which will take me another few months I hope.

It's all about spending ages making content and it helps if you are hosting other peoples sites or you know other good webmasters who have a reason to help you out.

Running forums is a good way to boost your PR as well.

[lioness]

I've seen a new site, w/ only 4 pages, come in at a 5, w/ a dmoz listing behind it

[fathom]

PR is a result of the many factors coming together but it shouldn't be the focus. Traffic and visitation must drive this effort. A DMOZ listing does great thing here (and the more the better) but the bigger picture must be looked at.

A DMOZ listing accepted three month ago just hit Google SERP's #1 on 3 - 2 word phrases and its PR is 3.

It compete with 1.25 million other pages and now receives about 200 visits a day from google.

Notice today that last nights log files that the page was just included into AOL directory which showed that 20 some visitors came from. Google will eventually update its directory as well which will add a few visitors and another quality backlink.

The page will increase in PR that's for sure, but a page doesn't need PR to get high SERP's.

Still DMOZ is the place to start.

[altyfc]

We got our first PR7's (two at once) recently. As the first respondent states, it's down to blood, sweat and tears. Get as many links as you can. That's the crucial part. Remember, the Google PR is something close to a logarithmic scale. If you do get a PR6, it'll then be a long struggle before you reach PR7, but stick at it and you'll get there. We're now going for a PR8... God help us!

Good luck,

Paul

[coconutz]

While checking PR and backlinks I came across a small 6 or 7 page site that has 14 backlinks, but Google only lists 7 of them (assuming these are the ony ones that are PR4 or higher). It's listed in DMOZ and Google's directory. I've never seen this site in the SERP's for any relevant search terms, yet this site has PR7 for it's home page and internal pages.

I never noticed this site before as it doesn't show up for popular related kw's, so I don't know if this PR7 is new or not.

[steveb]

In my area four of the highest page rank sites don't register at all in search terms. Their page rank is the result of two or three top inbound links (dmoz, yahoo, google directory) and no outbound links. The pages have no traffic and haven't been updated in two years.

My view is: having page rank doesn't help you a bit in the rankings if you don't have good content, but low(er)pagerank can hurt you even if you have good content.

[fathom]

My view is: having page rank doesn't help you a bit in the rankings if you don't have good content, but low(er)pagerank can hurt you even if you have good content.

steveb you are quite correct. PageRank (PR) really has nothing to with Search Engine Ranked Position (SERP).

It can make the different particularly on less targeted keyword phrases.

In the case of an un-optimized site it can have high SERP's without doing anything at all because of PR but generally PR defines an order of listings on sites that are comparable to each other.

[Beachboy]

<<My view is: having page rank doesn't help you a bit in the rankings if you don't have good content, but low(er)pagerank can hurt you even if you have good content.>>

And "good content" would be defined as...?

I think we're making the assumption here that the purpose of "content" is to attract links to your site. The fact is, there are ways of gaining PR without any need of providing excellent content, thus saving hundreds or thousands of hours of valuable time. And that implies obtaining links of importance and relevance....

I doubt any robot (even Ms. Googlebot) has the ability to determine what constitutes quality content. That's why link analysis is so important. The robot assumes the inbound links are votes to validate "good content."

Done properly, one can get very high ranking in SERPs, in highly competitive kw phrases, with decent optimization, good PR, inbound links and "enough" content, the "quality" of which is not exceptional or even very good.

Been there, done that.

[24bit]

Beachboy, that really seems to make sense to me too. The content on my site hasn't changed much lately, but I've been focussing more on getting more inbound links to boost my PR. So far it's been working. My main keyword produces 1,740,000 results. The last update I was ranked around 80th. This update I've ranged from 26th to 33rd. So increasing inbound links has raised my PR and has resulted in better SERP for my main keyword. Like I said, my content hasn't changed much at all.

[KakenBetaal]

Surely content isn't just about getting links - it's there to attain your goals for the site, be it more traffic, more sales, etc.

First and foremost that content should be what your target audience is interested in reading. If your target audience isn't interested and even captivated, it's time to start all over again because they won't stay.

The more content and the more interesting it is, the easier it is to get external inbound links with relevant link text key phrases. That's because your content covers relatively more of the subject your site is about.

More content also allows your internal linking and navigation to employ more key phrases in link text. Not only can you use those key phrases in your nav bar, but articles on blue widgets can reference a similar process as applied to blue-green widgets, for example.

More content generally lets you use more pages, on average, and more pages lets you optimise for a wider range of on topic key phrases with a better chance of getting to the top of the SERPs.

Optimising for keywords / phrases can sometimes make content read slightly less smoothly than unoptimised content, so there's a real word skills requirement to get the key phrases in without doing this. More pages can make it easier to avoid this problem by letting you reduce the number of related keywords per page.

That's why content is king!