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NO luck at all with PR

This is getting crazy

         

mikko

11:18 am on Feb 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



i am a web designer and love it but have no success with Googles page rank.

I try and play by the rules of limiting the Title/kewords/description and on each new page of html i creat entirely new title/keywords etc. but out of all my 20 sites i have created over the past 2-3 years, the highest has a page rank of 3.

I spend alot of time adding my sites to search engines with free submission just after i put them live. I cant understand, the content is unique and even alt tags contain relevant information

Any body got any ideas on how i can increase mypage rank?

tigger

11:22 am on Feb 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



links, if you've got a PR3 use it and contact other webmasters to exchange links

creative craig

11:23 am on Feb 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



To gain higher PR you must have more incoming links to your site, the higher PR the page that links to you, the higher the PR your own page should have... in theory.

Craig

sem4u

11:23 am on Feb 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Yes, ask more people to link to you. How about requesting some links from PR5 sites?

mikko

12:26 pm on Feb 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I have started to do this but i have found people are not linking back to me, is it because i have only a page rank of 3 that they wont link back?

creative craig

12:31 pm on Feb 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Find a category that best fits the description of your site at the ODP. This will get you a few links (Google directory and the odp directory)

If you offer a regional service look at local sites and ask if they are willing to swap links. You need to keep working at it, it's something that will help you in the long run as well as boost your PageRank.

Craig

mikko

12:54 pm on Feb 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanks for all the help but what about customer web sites that i have designed for. For instance i recently did a web site for an architect, wanted to put a links page in but Architect firms keep to themselves and dont link.
So now how do increase rank?
A few quick questions, will any of the following penalise me/you:
1) Adding more than 80 charchers in the title
2) 200 charachters in the description
3) 20 keywords
4) And i have also add Header tags with text and key words in the <noscript> tags so that it is visible in html but not to browsers
IS any of this good or bad?

trillianjedi

1:05 pm on Feb 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Mikko,

For google, you really need inbound links to improve your pages ranking in the SERPS. On page factors will help, but you don't want to get spammy. And what you're suggesting sounds spammy (80 character titles etc).

Try for the usual directory links (dmoz especially).

If you offer very good content, people will naturally find you and link to you anyway. The problems generally occur when all of the other sites on topic that might link to you, are your competitors.

Try some lateral thinking also. If your firm of architects offer some interesting/useful content on their website, try and get links from surveyors or lawyers, or any other professionals that would use architectural services (even builders or material suppliers).

If you don't have that unique/useful content, then go build it. Put yourself in the other guys shoes. If you had a site that was about architects, or some lateral but on-topic subject, what would make you want to link to it?

Invariably, links follow content. And links are very important in google. Still.

TJ

mikko

1:37 pm on Feb 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanks trillianjedi,
What i was suggesting with the charachters etc. was from a meta-tag analyzer that can be found at <snip> and i know many others and they suggest to have no more than the stated amounts above.

The point i was trying to get over was that i personally have not breached these rules but i know of other sites that have as many keywords as they can think of BUT their PR is very high, could i play that card or would it pull me down?

[edited by: WebGuerrilla at 6:12 pm (utc) on Feb. 24, 2004]

creative craig

1:54 pm on Feb 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



PageRank is gained by external pages linking to your site. On page factors do play a small part but overall, link building is the way to increase your PR.

PatrickDeese

1:57 pm on Feb 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



> wanted to put a links page in but Architect firms keep to themselves and dont link.

How about if the architecture firm exchanges links with its clients. If they built "Widget Towers" chances are that they could get links from the website of the businesses that are in their building.

mikko

2:50 pm on Feb 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Sounds like a good idea PatrickDeese but unfortunately alot of their clients have corporate websites that dont need links to get a high ranking, such as the Police, Fire Department, Major Car Dealerships and they would not think of adding any link to the company that designed their building.

For some reason the site has not been picked up as quick as others i have put live in recent weeks, the site has been updated in the past 3 weeks for the first time in 2 years but the se's such as alltheweb and google still pick up the old site which was not rich in text and was mostly flash.

trillianjedi

4:13 pm on Feb 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



The point i was trying to get over was that i personally have not breached these rules but i know of other sites that have as many keywords as they can think of BUT their PR is very high

Mikko, I think you misunderstand Page Rank (PR). See Creative Craig's and my posts.

I'll try again:-

Page Rank *directly* relates to the number of other sites that link to your pages.

Outbound links (you linking to other sites), it has been suggested by others, may have an effect on your ranking in the SERPS (not PR of course which is only inbound links related). If that is the case, it's likely that you linking to authority sites (the top performing sites in that market) would be the way, don't just link to any old site.

PR = inbound links.

If you're in a competitive market, or targetting a competitive phrase, then PR may be your only leverage. However, the thing to bear in mind is, PR is based on incoming links. And you need those anyway (anchor text especially) so the PR will naturally follow the good promotions campaign which includeds getting those inbound links.

If you can't get inbound links, then your content needs work. If your competitors won't link to you, then edge sideways as far as you can while remaining on-topic and build pages which non-competitors will link to.

If you just can't get those links because you can't build that content, then you need AdWords. Or a miracle.

could i play that card or would it pull me down?

*That* card is a waste of time. You need to get your off-page factors sorted first. Get in the top 10 (or even top 20) in google, and then start playing with on-page factors, if you have to.

But beware - users are getting more sophisticated day by day, look spammy at your peril. Users can and do spot keyword stuffed titles and descriptions.

Brett's 12 month guide to a succesful site in google alone is still the benchmark. Follow that and raise your SERPS positioning using inbound linking.

TJ

PS Google all but ignores meta-tags.

[edited by: trillianjedi at 4:28 pm (utc) on Feb. 24, 2004]

mikko

4:23 pm on Feb 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanks TJ that makes things clearer.
So if i had a PR of 4 then came back to a 3 is it because someone else has linked to me with a much lower PR?

trillianjedi

4:30 pm on Feb 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



So if i had a PR of 4 then came back to a 3 is it because someone else has linked to me with a much lower PR?

Nope.

It means someone stopped linking to you - you lost links, or someone that was linking to you lost you a link, thereby lowering the PR transfer onto you.

A low PR link will not "pull down" your PR, it will increase your PR, just not by as much as a higher PR page linking to you.

All links are good. Links from PR1 pages will increase your PR, just not by as much as a link from a PR5 page would.

Make sense?

TJ

mikko

4:46 pm on Feb 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Wow, this has been a huge slap on the face.
Thanks TJ for being so informative but as you guessed i had the whole PR thing mixed up, i know what i have to do.

I never realised that links to your site played a bigger part for PR than site detail itself, although still important.
So basically i have to get my site listed in SE's and hope they pick up my info and link back with a high PR? I noticed that alot of SE's charge money now to add this info is there a list anywhere of ways to add your site for free.

I finally managed to get my site listed in dmoz the other week and since then noticed that i have ALOT more back links so i guess dmoz id pretty important.
Its just a question of when will my other sites get looked at by dmoz and will they get accepted.

trillianjedi

5:05 pm on Feb 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I never realised that links to your site played a bigger part for PR than site detail itself, although still important.

Links to your site play the *only* part in the calculation of PR.

The content of your site plays a *massive* part in how your site is positioned in google's search results.

The former generally follows the latter. The chicken and egg situation can only be broken by you building fabulous content and getting people to link to it. Brett's "12 month guide......" expands on that.

Now that you understand that, forget about PR for the moment, keep building the content and keep trying to get more links.

As you achieve that, your PR will increase through the new inbound links. That will tempt googlebots deeper into your new fabulous content pages, and you'll start to achieve high ranking pages for search phrases that you didn't even consider as well as the ones you're targetting.

At a certain point in time (100% determined by the market your site is in) you reach a critical mass, the thing takes on a life of its own, the egg hatches and becomes a chicken (lol).

Take this site as an example of one that has achieved that critical mass. Do you think Brett goes out asking for links to WebmasterWorld?

But I bet the backlink count to this site, averaged out and ignoring the inevitable blips, is on a constant increase.

TJ

creative craig

5:27 pm on Feb 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



A good internal link structure is important as well. Once you have that high PR, it is critical to pass it to all the other pages on your site, don't just let the home page hog it all.

See Bretts 12 month Google plan

Ccraig

mikko

7:54 pm on Feb 24, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanks TJ once again.
Creative Craig, when you talk about linking to other pages do you mean when asking other sites to link back to you, you ask them to link to domain.com/whatever.htm rather than index.htm?

I have found with my site that has an index page PR of 3 that the 40 or 50 pages that are all linked, a good 30 of them also have a PR of 3, does that mean that people are linking to those pages also?
OK, im away to add links to my site and ask some people for the return favour, thanks again folks.

mikko

9:20 am on Feb 25, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



So how come, doing a bit of research, some sites have a few pages on them with a PR of 4 with no 'links' page and it looks to me that no one would want to link to them for instance <snip> how would this site get links to bring it to a P4?

[edited by: engine at 2:09 pm (utc) on Feb. 25, 2004]
[edit reason] No urls, thanks. See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

PatrickDeese

2:04 pm on Feb 25, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



mikko -

the site you mentioned has links from pr 5 pages - just those two links (as shown by Google) are enough to give that particular site PR 4.

One of my client's sites recently got two links from a directory and those alone got them to PR 5. Getting to PR 5 is easy. Its PR 6 and up that is where it gets tough.

mikko

7:34 pm on Feb 25, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Getting to PR5 is easy, so far not for me but maybe because i have been going about it the wrong way.
Hopefully if i swap links and get enough links back i will see a difference

NLightN

8:09 pm on Mar 12, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Has anyone noticed PR updates recently?

I've been waiting two months, is this normal for Google to update PR?

Thanks,
NLightN

bhartzer

8:20 pm on Mar 12, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



No, it's not normal to go this long without a PR update. PR hasn't been updated since at least January 7th, maybe earlier.

nlrookie98

9:42 pm on Mar 23, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



How do you know when Google updates the PR's? I realize they must have done it on the 17th of March, becuase we went from a 0 to a 5, but how will we know after this?

Spica

1:46 pm on Mar 28, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



nlrookie98:
The simplest way to know whether there has been a Google PR update is to read Webmaster World... :)
There is always someone noticing the update early on and posting here, telling us which datacenter has the new PRs.