Jump starting PR

How to get to PR 3-4 fast

[mayor]

When starting a new site, any suggestions how to get to Google PR 3-4 right out of the gate without waiting for the whims of a DMOZ editor or buying your way into the high priced Yahoo directory? Are there any paid directory or classified listings that should do the job for fifty bucks a year or less? Stickymail me if posting a URL will be outside the rules of this forum.

[Lisa]

Just put up a website with 5 pages and you get a PR3. My basement's webpage has only 8 pages and a PR5.

[mayor]

Lisa, how long did it take you to get the PR3 on a site with 5 pages? Don't you have to have at least a few relevant external links pointing at your site to rank at all?

What did you do to get PR5 on your 8-page site? I have a six month old site of about 30 pages with several relevant external links, including DMOZ, that is only PR4.

[jaytierney]

A single link from a PR5 site will do the trick, even if your site is a one-pager without any content (except for 1 word of text). I know this for a fact because I know of a site that matches this description.

Otherwise, a well structured five-pager site should garner a PR3 all by itself.

[Mark_A]

mayor its my experience that if you make a site about anything, as long as you make an honest effort to cover the topic with clean fast loading content rich pages, no tricks, no frames unless you do them well, as little javascript etc as you can (including no counters), lots of easy navigation around your site, (no broken links) etc pages anywhere from 8-800 you will enter googles index with a pr of 3-4 out of the gate without really any inward links.

After that rising up the Google PR values requires more work and a focus on that. But, I have to ask, do you want PR? or do you want to be found for what you do? The two are imho only slightly related.

Oh and from recent painful experience: start on a proper server with the domain name you are happy to live with, try all you can not to have to move your site to another domain once established. As I can testify (from the site in my profile at the moment) it takes many months (across most of the engines) for an old site to be removed and a new one to get back to the position the old one was in.

[Marcia]

mayor, it can be done with one or two. I've never had a PR3 site, but I've got one site now with 12 pages, they're all PR4 with only 2 inbound links to the site, both low PR5. When one of those pages slipped to PR4 that site still had a 4.

[Nick_W]

When I get a new clients site up I generally put a link in my 'client list' and they automatically get pr 4 minimum and if the DMOZ folks are on the ball the combo get's them the PR5

Nick

[mayor]

Mark_A >> I have to ask, do you want PR? or do you want to be found for what you do?

Naturally I want to be found, Mark. And because I aim at low-competition keywords, past experience tells me PR3-4 will do the job. I started two new sites in the past few months. One got PR1 and the other got PR2 out of the gate. Neither had any external links pointing at them. I went on a link campaign and now they both have a couple relevant external links pointing at them but it doesn't look like Google has picked them up yet (they're not seen on WW2 or WW3 during the current dance).

Mark_A >> as little javascript etc as you can (including no counters)

I didn't know JS could hurt Google ranking. I thought Google just ingnored JS. Have I missed something?

Nick_W >> put a link in my 'client list'

Nick, paranoia tells me not to interlink any of my sites. If I do something to offend a SE, all they have to do is go to my links pages to find some other sites I'm working on (optimizing) so they can really put the hurt on me. A jealous competitor can do the same thing if they find some way to trash me. My paranoia is the child of painful experience.

Well, we'll see how things go when this update is finished. At a minimum, it's looking to me like it takes 3-4 months for PR3-4 of a new site to kick in.

Thanks everyone for your replies. I guess I'm probably on the right track, but need to have more patience.

[stevenha]

I would suspect that Google gives a jumpstart to PR for all new sites... probably a default initial PR of 5, that will decay down to its natural value over the ensuing months. This gives new sites a chance to be seen, ( and linked to- if they are good). I support that, by the way, even though it probably stimulates some "disposability" of domain names ( in some keyword areas).

[mortalfrog]

hmmm... I would suspect that you haven't tried to start a page recently!

Pages start with a PR of 1, and you have to work to get more than that, in my experience.

I've been building links to one of my pages for 3 months and it looks like it finally made it to PR5 this update.

[Mark_A]

I didn't know JS could hurt Google ranking. I thought Google just ingnored JS. Have I missed something?
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
My understanding re js in page is only that it can push content down reducing the amount some SE's will grab. Someone with more of a clue will be along shortly :-)

>>Nick, paranoia tells me not to interlink any of my sites.
+ from a non SEO pov..
you need to know your customers,
your competitors don't
neither do your customers "need" to know your "other" customers.

The information customer lists give out is that these companies are / have spent on the web and who they spent with ..
All clients to date already had a website (on which they wanted to improve) - that they already paid for work with someone else may be a good indicator they may spend again in the future.

If someone wanted to be nasty they could target the "other clients" of such a competitor, the reasons for switching might be the same.

[Nick_W]

Just to address the paranoia thing -- the sites I publically list are just good sites with sensible text, link text, navigation etc etc... anything more doesn't get published.

Nick