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I could hardly find a Swiss Website with a PR higher then 7. The reason for this is obvious. No high PR site that is international would link to a Swiss Website, cause that would usually be to regional. Also there is the language problem.
In the area I work in ( bicycles ) the highest PR is a PR6. The site is old and had plenty of time to gather a good ammount of links. My two sites both have a good PR5, which is higher then most. All I would need is a PR 7/8 site to link to me and I would be set.
Does anyone have any suggestions? I know about Searchking and Co., but surely there should be another way? I don't mind investing something, it is a commercial business. However, I want it to be a "clean" thing. Appreciate any Feedback!
( don't waste your time on pre-update threads.. help some poor swiss guy! ;) )
One thought: aren't there any high pr manufacture sites that would prob like to link to / exchange with you? Or some event / race sites?
Stay away from sk like offers!
Unless you are trying to get 100.000 pages indexed, I doubt you necessarily need a higher Pagerank.
Your Swiss competitors will also fall in the same range.
However, it is annoying if a higher PR site beats you, just because they are "older". I think a higher PR would make a big difference. Also it is a good way to beat "spammy" sites.
Well.. guess a PR 6 would just give me some comfort. Right now I just feel vulnerable with my results. I built up a business mainly with good Search Engine Results and an excellent product. One would not work without another. 35% of my sales are due to SE's, 35% word of mouth and only 30% due to offline advertising.
You might build a small and high quality web directory in your field and list good and relevant websites. Those websites might want to link back.
It is just annoying to know that dozens of links from national sites, can not make up for a link from "a big one". Maybe there is someone out there who has a high PR and could donate a text link? :-)
I guess the way to go would be to build some english content, mainly to be able to generate links from english site? Not sure if I want to do this, as it isn't really in my users interest.
Another idea is writing some good articles about your bikes and offering these articels (sure, including a about box / link to you / copyright info) to other bike portals. From my own experience i know that good content is always searched by portal webmasters.
Additionally i use google adwords to get the rest of possible visitors. Adwords can be dirt cheap if you think about the returning visitors. If you can attract people to click your adword ad and convince them that returning to your site is of value for them, adwords can bring you more traffic than just the first click.
As long as your site is german only and your bikes are sold only in german language countries, i'd say it's a waste of time to get links from foreign sites. In the long run search engines will get better in geo targeting - returning and ranking country / language specific information and you'll loose any benefit of "foreign links".
Guess I will have to try and find some more PR 5/6 sites and work on my PR5 to get it to a PR6. Seeing as the business I am in is a bit neglected, it will be hard to get many more good links.
he he, it is hard work if you want to be amongst the best :-)
In the area I work in ( bicycles ) the highest PR is a PR6.
I think you will find that if you compare like with like, in other words "bicycle" sites in the US, you will find that PR of 6 is as high as they go.
I have done a fairly comprehensive study of "hotels" and PR5 is a good rank for any individual hotel anywhere (a few get PR6, but that is as true of UK as USA)
PR "capping" is, IMO, more a function of the category you are in, rather than the country.
On the other side I managed to get my business model on a half page article in the largest swiss newspaper. So if they can write about it, I should be able to get good links. It is just a shame that the "big ones" are very restrictive with their linking policy.
Ya, might be so. Do you link to them (one of them or some of them?). I recently included two dedicated outbound links to valuable sites into every page of my site (a niche directory) - the links are related to each category.
This way i open my site (rest of the listings are "closed" to spiders) and additionally increase the chance to get a link back if they see all the hits in their logs that come from my site.
You can hunt a wolf or feed him. ;)
As most contributions have already remarked with a PR5 a site is very well equipped to play for the top 5 in most of their serps.
With english being the lingua franca on the web it is in fact easier to get a high PR for an english speaking site. But then competition grows accordingly.
I suppose all of that is subject of rather slow evolutionary processes. Slow in internet terms.
We'll see what the web looks like once Asia has fully arrived on the scene. How many chinese sites will be out there linking to each other?
Big chance for onza - think about all the bicycles there in asia ... ;)
<off topic>I have got difficulties with that special r of yours. I would really like to be able to write Dvorak's name in the correct way. Could you supply me with the html-code?</off topic>
Onza, it ought to be fairly easy to build your links page into a small directory. With good content it could be of interest for all your huge Sprachraum. You might not sell anything to all these people, but the webmasters among them might want to link to you.
And Martin: Welcome to WebmasterWorld
troels, my quick research for Dvor<caron>ak has shown that there's no iso code for the sign <caron>. Goolive on Mac encodes it as Dvor&Mac255;ak ... (WebmasterWorld doesn't decode it: the <caron> tag is the opposite of ^).
Google doesn't return anything at this search. But if you search for "Dvor+ak" it returns czech and slowakian sites with the correct spelling and charakters. Google treats the charakter <caron> as a space.
<added>
- w3schools say: [w3schools.com] s<caron> = š
- this ancient w3org discussion [lists.w3.org] explains the usage of entities.
</added>
The problem is, they are usually pretty low PR sites that just don't seem to add up. And I don't seem to be getting a lot of traffic through these links. Well, guess at least it would be very well targeted traffic.
I did get pretty good at building links and good SE Results. However, I seem to have reached a point, where "only" the swiss market won't get me much further.
That is why I started this thread.
Okay, but is that a PR problem? Sounds to me as if the answer would be to actively target other countries. Is that site and the directory internationalised?
Obsessing with PR is not neccessarily the answer to increase marketshare.
Sites that focus on environmental issues might be a productive category to trade links with. A good hook for links might be some interesting, informative content (there could be lots of angles here) about ways in which it is "greener" to ride a bicycle than drive a car.
Looking at what the concept of PageRank is meant to represent, it's hard to see why a single hotel's site or a bicycle manufacturer's site should have a pr8 or 9.
Precisely. And there is no need for them to have that sort of PR. A hotel with PR of 6 will do well in most "normal" searches for information on hotels in its particular location.
Driving onself demented, or wasting hours getting more links, will not actually get you any (well many, anyway) more visits to that hotel's web site.
So, is it really necessary for a webmaster to look for higher PR than 6 on a bicycle manufacturers site. Will the PR 6 not bring it up well on most "normal" searches.
PR is important in realation to your competitors, and not to its absolute value.
Can I just add, that the Feedback I got here is amazing. I will print all this out and surely will put some suggestions on my to do list. Thanks guys!
