Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
My site has a PR 3 as of now. Google states that I have a total of 7 reciprocal links (in reality, I have about 28 links linking to me)
Now, how do I increase my PR from PR3 to PR5? Also, I was successful in getting my site ranked #2 in MSn for a particular phrase which Wordtracker claims has about 300 odd searches a day. It isnt that great, but ok for starters I guess?
So coming back to my question, how to move from PR3 to PR5?
1. Do I increase the number of links to my site?
2. Should I try to optimize my site more to take in few other phrases?
Google states that I have a total of 7 reciprocal links (in reality, I have about 28 links linking to me)
Submit the URLs of those linking pages to Google, just to be sure.
1. Do I increase the number of links to my site?
You don't, others may do.
2. Should I try to optimize my site more to take in few other phrases?
Yes, no, maybe... it's hard to tell :-)
Taking PR to the next level
I think you first of all need to decide exactly what it is you want to achieve with your work on your site, and what it is that's going to get you there.
For most of us here, 99% of the time the answer to that question is "more traffic" (usually "relevant" traffic).
PR won't get you there on it's own. As Tigger states above, PR is purely a calculation based on inbound links, factoring the PR of the page that is linking to you. One link from a PR6 page might be all you need to get to a PR5. Will it help you to achieve more traffic from Google searches? Depending on how competitive your market space is, on it's own, probably not by a great deal.
If you want to achieve a nice chunky bit of green on your toolbar, go for it. If you want more traffic, I would suggest you concentrate on carefully aquiring inbound links with anchor text relevant to searches you are targetting. PR will naturally follow from those anyway.
Should I try to optimize my site more to take in few other phrases?
Again, if what you want to achieve is more traffic, then absolutely, yes. And the best way to achieve that is to build new pages around that subject matter, rather than try to re-target existing ones, or try to cover all bases with existing ones.
TJ
No it won't - unless the page that links to you is PR 6 or 7 and there are only a few sites listed in the category.
But you shouldn't worry about what the toolbar says as much as making a site that people will link to for quality content and looking for link opportunities that will bring on-target visitors to your site.
When I first made my site and started SEO, I had no clue about it, so I think I might have goofed up somewhere.
What I did was, while adding my link on other sites, I used a different set of Anchor Texts in the links (in other words, I used different descriptions and link titles) at various sites.
I have a feeling that because of atleast 10 different descriptions and link titles, I am missing out on the actual ranking. Or am I mistaken?
Yes, I did submit to DMOZ and a couple of other open directories. Hoping that it will work.
As well, the reason why google shows just 7 inbounds to your site is because they don't show every link. It is completely random. For a better understanding of how many links you have, you should check out yahoo or alltheweb.
Thnks for that info. I did try writing some articles and they are pending for review.
So, Google shows just 7. Yes, Yahoo does show the entire links though. However, Clickz.com has 98,800 links to it. :-s
Any idea how it shows 98,800 for clickz.com and only 7 for me? Am I right in saying that for example you have 50 links, then Google will show you 10 links randomly?
Or of the 28 links that I have only 7 links have the same anchor text?
It sure is getting me confused here.
There is no hard and fast rule, IE PR 2 = 4-10 backlinks, PR 3 = 11 - 25, etc.
PageRank is rather complicated. Google explains it in laymans terms in the 2nd paragraph of this page:
[google.com...]
But basically, comparing a PR 3 to a PR 8 is like trying to compare the circulation of a interoffice memo to the New York Times.
I think an important lesson for anyone who is new to SEO is not to get hung up on PR, just check out search results and you will see that PR3s beat PR5s on tons of searches. What that means is that the lower PR site has a more focused set of links for that search. There may be many more links (of an equal weighting) required to reach PR5 than PR3 but if they all suggest your site is about something different than the phrases you want to target then you won't get much traffic.
I would try to get links from sites that are a good match, or at least reasonably close, and try to make sure the text used in the link (anchor text) has words that you target. A good example of how to do this would be 'site name' as a link is useless for many people but 'widgets from site name' is better, 'widgets and widget information' may be better still.
I try to think of whether a visitor to a site would appreciate the link, if they would then it's very likely that Google will see it as a good link too.
So apart from PR, what else needs to be done? Any hints/suggestions?
Hi sacrelage - the best thing you could do is have a good read through this forum. There are loads of "hints" & "suggestions" here if you are prepared to look for them. I don't think anyone can weigh it all up in one thread, even if they tried.