How to make the most of your Page Rank

choosing your target carefully

[mack]

AS many of us have probably found out page rank is very much the element that powers your ability to rank well within the serps. It can be said that every industry has it’s own entry-level page rank for being successful. For example a site about “door wedges” would find it possible (of properly optimised) to hit the top spot with a page rank of 4 or greater. To the other extreme a site related to “travel” would require a page rank of at least 8 to be within the first 2 pages of the serps. What you could do is to analyse your situation what keywords are you marketing for, what PR do you require to rank well. If the PR required is more than you have available then try finding keywords that are similar. I have found that a lot of sites that rank very well for the more powerful keyword are often no where to be found on searches for similar keywords. I can only assume that they optimise specifically for the preferred keyword
Good examples would be ……

Car, auto, automobile, vehicle

For “car” you would need PR8 to have any chance of making the first page
For “automobile” PR7 could get page one
For “vehicle” PR7 could be enough to secure the first page
For “auto” PR 6 would do the same job

By doing this you can obtain good placement for related keywords or phrases and allow your PR to build. By assessing the market you will be able to re-optimise your site for better key words when it becomes possible or practical.
:)

[mortalfrog]

Excellent advice. I myself have ended up doing exactly what you suggest - I surveyed the SERP's and found a key - phrase that involved relatively low PR and optimized for that, with good success. My page has been consistently placed within the top 3 for that search.

I'd suggest, however, that you will get more bang for your buck if, when looking for new phrases to conquer, you optimize not for more competitive keywords but *more* less competitive keywords, which you can secure with increasing ease as your PR climbs. Since, as Brett has pointed out several times, the vast majority of hits come through pages other than your index, targeting different key-phrases on most every page of your website seems to be an effective way to increase search engine traffic.

In fact, this may well be the wave of the future, as search engine users struggle to avoid less relevant high-pr sites and become better at creating focused queries likely to be of high relevance.

The main point is that your time can often be more effectively spent on loading up the less competitive keywords than struggling to place somewheres in the top 20 for really competitive ones.