Stuck at PR 2 and near-zero traffic

[thatsehatesme]

I have a site and domain that are more than 1.5 years old. It has thousands of high-quality, 100% original content pages, excluding "fluff". It has many backlinks. It has NO blackhat SEO or any shady tactics at all. I have a specific sitemap for Google.

My site has PageRank 2.

What? Every single past project of mine has had at least PR4 days or at least weeks after the launch. This domain is fixed at PR2 no matter what I do. As a result, I receive near-zero traffic from Google.

Since they have no means of contacting them, I am stuck in a horrible situation. What am I supposed to do? You can't even begin to imagine how frustrating it is to have a very high quality Web site (with no ads on it, might I add!) and having it "bullied" by Google like this.

What do you suggest? I have tried all means of contacting Google but they never reply to me. That corporation is like a big black hole, sucking in information but never responding.

I am very depressed as a result of this and I am seriously starting to wonder what the point of life is when no matter how well you do something, external factors mess everything up anyway.

[tedster]

Hello, and welcome to the forums.

The first observation I had reading your post was this. Many PR2 sites that are 1.5 years old get decent traffic from Google Search, so there may be some other factor going on here. Search traffic depends on keywords. PR is only one factor involved with ranking it is dependent only on backlinks -- that is, keywords are not part of PR.

So there are many ways to get Google traffic without a lot of PR. I'd suggest reading some of the discussions in the Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com], which is always pinned to the top of this forum's index page.

As you read, keep an eye on discovering what factors about this particular website are keeping your site from getting traffic.

[thatsehatesme]

Is this gonna be the only reply that I get?

[LifeinAsia]

Is this gonna be the only reply that I get?

Not sure what you are expecting. There's not going to me a lot of magical "fix this one issue and Google will turn on the spigot flooding you with traffic" responses. (Or if there are, you should probably ignore them.) Did you read any of the threads on this topic? Have you applied any of the ideas in them?

Time/energy/past experience is no guarantee of PR. And PR is not any guarantee of traffic. No one is entitled to traffic from Google just because they put up a site. What if there are dozens (or hundreds or thousands ) of people who put in more time/energy than you did and built larger sites with better quality than you?

starting to wonder what the point of life is when no matter how well you do something, external factors mess everything up anyway.

Not sure how old you are, but you are going to find that this is the way many (if not most) things are in life.

[StoutFiles]

I am very depressed as a result of this and I am seriously starting to wonder what the point of life is when no matter how well you do something

:(

Welcome to the real world.

[robzilla]

Is this gonna be the only reply that I get?

Patience is a virtue, not just with Google rankings. Tedster's post is, for now, all you need to start learning more about trying to fix your issue. As LifeinAsia said, don't expect a quick fix. With the help of that newly acquired knowledge, you'll have to critically examine your website and promotion strategy, and then put in the work.

Every single past project of mine has had at least PR4 days or at least weeks after the launch

Note that public PageRank, as displayed on the Google Toolbar, is only updated roughly once every quarter of a year. It is, therefore, practically impossible for you to get a (public) PR4 within weeks, not to mention days, after launching your site.

I do think that if you have acquired "many backlinks" and "thousands of high-quality" pages over the course of 1.5 years, a PR2 seems quite low. Only you can verify your statements, however. If you are convinced that your website is under some kind of penalty, caused either by you or a previous owner, you could try submitting a reconsideration request through Google Webmaster Tools (I suggest you refrain from calling them "bullies"). They will probably read it, and act on it when necessary, but you are not likely to get a reply. Remember, though, that Google's algorithms have gotten pretty sophisticated over the year; if your site is not performing as well as you would like it to (isn't that the case for most of us?), you should, first of all, give your website a good perusal before blaming it on Google, or any other "external factors." Good luck, and do keep us posted.

[sean22]

"Is this gonna be the only reply that I get?"

Hey thatsehatesme,

I am a noob but maybe you should read the Hot Topics area(like Tedster suggested), you will gain a lot by reading what other webmasters have gone through when dealing with Google.

Maybe you have to go back to square 1. And by that I mean taking matters one post/article at a time and try to rank for it under your current predicament. Google has never been personal, it is a machine, anyway when lost go back to square 1.

[Robert Charlton]

Regarding your comments about PageRank, I agree with all that's been said here. Traffic has to do with targeting, relevance, content, and the quality of inbound linking. Toolbar PageRank is an approximate indicator, updated infrequently, that's just one component of this.

That said, looking at your PageRank comment, and fishing for ideas...

This domain is fixed at PR2 no matter what I do.

This makes me wonder whether a lot of your inbound links might be blog links. Blog posts tend to go off home page over time, so the value of inbounds from blog posts often decreases as the links age. The effect might be like running on a treadmill and not getting anywhere.

I have a specific sitemap for Google.

An xml Sitemap doesn't actually distribute your PageRank. It perhaps gives Google extra information about pages on your site for crawling purposes, but your inbound links and the navigation structure on your site still determine how PageRank flows.

[Timetraveler]

Has the website ever seen traffic from Google?

Was it a newly registered domain when you first started the site or did you purchase the domain. Someone could have dropped the site for that very reason if they were doing blackhat.

Hard to answer your problem with little information.

No luck with any sort of reconsideration requests in your GWT?

[thatsehatesme]

To answer the questions I have seen:

* It was a virgin domain.
* It has and does receive Google traffic, but very little (IMO).
* All my attempts to contact Google, in countless different ways, for years, including "reconsideration" now, have resulted in no reply at all.

[tangor]

Sometimes it is the site (content) that ranks low, not what you do. Keep that in consideration. Not everything we touch turns to gold, or bronze, or even a tarnished patina. I have several websites that give me some joy and those who visit, but are not PR winners... and I don't care. The sites were not written for google and their "ranking".

[fishfinger]

Is this gonna be the only reply that I get?

Gratitude!

Google does not owe you a living. Terrible but true.

There are so many things that could be 'wrong' - and by that I mean in Google's eyes. Content, architecture, link profile, coding, hosting. You could be being scraped/hacked. You could be in a seriously competitive niche. Go to the hot topics, start reading. Anything relevant/familiar? Then you acn come back and post some more specific questions and get some more useful advice.

thousands of high-quality, 100% original content pages

Let's assume it was 1000 in 18 months. That means approx 2 pages of content a day.

Do you have a writing team? Is it a community site? Where does the content come from? Not attacking you personally, but there are a great many people in the world who are unrealistic about the quality of their content.

[Timetraveler]

So many variables it's hard to tell. If after a year and a half, and no traffic it might be time to dump the domain ( I wouldnt suggest this at all unless you had the site looked at closely)

If you're getting no positive results from the reconsideration requests it either means youre doing nothing wrong, or whatever problem you have is not fixed.

Either that or Google really does hate you. :) I've had numerous penalties for no apparent reason, never more than 3 months though.

Wish I could help more but not much to go by but I for one understand your frustration with unnecessary penalties, if indeed it is undeserved.

[edited by: Timetraveler at 1:58 pm (utc) on May 12, 2009]

[robzilla]

It has and does receive Google traffic, but very little (IMO).

What do you consider to be "very little"? Are we talking about dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? Perhaps your expectations are too high.

[piatkow]

I haven't looked at my site's PR for years. What I do check is where it comes in the SERPS for search terms that my visitors are likely to use. As long as they are in the top 3 then I don't worry.

If you think that you are the top site for "red widgets" and you are on page 20 then you have a problem. If you are top for "red widgets" but only 50 people a day are interested then it might just indicate how specialised your niche is.

The most frustrating thing for me is the site that regularly tops mine on searches of the format "widgets freedonia" as they are in Freedonia Road, Sylvania.