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Its been a while since I last posted here... been very busy with stuff at work and not had time to check here for aaages!
I have been looking into my site and I have been trying to increase my PR. I just can't seem to get higher than PR4 on my index page and PR3 on all my other pages. I have tried changing my text/keywords around, changing anchor and H tags & text, meta tags, alt tags, inbound links, outbound links and general content but no matter what I do, I cannot beat my current PR.
Does this mean that I am still missing something... or is this actually the highest I can go for the search terms I am using? I have seen other site with the same phrases with a higher PR than me and when I do a backlink search they have less than me.
If anyone can throw a few pointers my way it would be much appreciated!
Phil
PageRank doesn't depend on on-page factors. If people with high PageRank link to you, then you get more PageRank.
It's on a lgo scale, so PR6 is much higher than PR5 is much higher than PR4, etc.
PR stands for PageRank as you most likely already know. It is Google's measure of how important your page is. Each page is assigned a PageRank, as opposed to the complete site. Therefore, although you can sometimes improve the PR of internal pages of your site by your linking structure, your on-page text content will not make any difference.
PR is directly related to the number of links from other websites that are pointing to your page. Broadly speeking, the higher the number of links from other sites pointing to your page, the higher the PR of your page will become.
The PR of each web page linking to your page also makes a difference. Broadly speeking (again), the higher the PR of the linking page, the more PR will be passed to your page. In reality the amount of PR passed to you will also depend on the number of links on the linking page.
So, without going into great detail, the general rule of thumb is to increase the number of incoming links to your page, preferably with high PR (if you are choosy). In addition, although it is not related with PR, including your page keyword in the incoming link text wil also benefit you greatly in your overall ranking.
Bonus
The new version is, I think, a major improvement in many many ways. But it's only been live a couple of week. Fingers crossed... maybe I'll make PR7!
I had one site that once had a PR of 6 from only having about 10 back-links.
One of those backlinks was probably a PR7.
TJ
For the industry I'm in, Its a mission and a half to get a backlink from someone with a similar relevance site as they are all competitors! I'm listed on tons of SE's and dir's but I guess I'll just have to try and find a higher PR site who will link to me :D
Thanks to all for the input though!
Phil
Yep.
Get all the links you like but it may not really benefit you a great deal on a ranking for a particular keyword. Get your keyword in the link text from each of those links, and, well, then you're in business. Don't be fooled by PR, it really is not as important as it used to be; the ranking equation is a much more balanced one these days.
Bonus
Pricey, send me a sticky if interested in advertising on my site(s). They would be a good match for your site theme, and they might help to boost your PR, too.
I got a listing for my 2 sites at bocat.com - the one posted on a page with PR5 luckily passed by google's axe - the other on a PR4 page didn't. The pages are both 3d level from root, the only difference is that the 1st one is linked to root and site map, the other one - to root only.
Same about 3,4 other sites.
Dunno what to think.
It is Google's measure of how important your page is.
The new version is, I think, a major improvement in many many ways. But it's only been live a couple of week. Fingers crossed... maybe I'll make PR7!
Don't be fooled by PR, it really is not as important as it used to be
I still see PR as very important.
It really isn't, but don't take my word for it - have a look at google's SERPS for some popular/competitive search terms.
TJ
I've just had a quite glance at your site - I would say you could do a little more on-page optimisation - some keywords in your URL's wouldn't hurt.
Rather than:-
domain.co.uk/shinywidgets.html
you want:-
domain.co.uk/shiny-widgets.html
That helps a bit in google at the moment.
I doubt you'll get many more links from industry people - as you say, they're the competition. But your client list contains a number of websites (the not so high profile ones) that I'm sure if you approached in the right way would be happy to give you a mention "Shiny Widgets for the 2002 show by Pricey" in the anchor text.
The GoGuides directory is also worth being in, although it wont offer you a huge link in terms of PR.
Most directories will link to you based on company name (or site title), so you will always do well for that in the search engines, which is nigh on useless. That's where some deep-links to your money pages, with appropriate anchor text, will serve you much much better.
That's what you need to think about, and you need to make the thinking lateral (like from client's sites) rather than competitive.
TJ
Just something I was looking at today though... I found a site that it #1 in google for one of my keywords and they have a PR6... I checked their backlinks on ATW and they don't seem to have any above PR3.. but whats interesting is that they have hidden <h2> text right under their body tag in a hidden form by the looks of things... and they have about 15 entrys on the NBCi directory.
It annoys me to see that people can get all the business this way :E
TJ
I checked their backlinks on ATW and they don't seem to have any above PR3
Backlinks in ATW and backlinks in Google are two different things! Most discussions about PR relate to the importance Google gives your pages.
Try checking backlinks using Google.
Odd this company have a 20 odd links listed from one pr6 site yet none of the pages listed actually have a link in them (I searched the source) :/
AllTheWeb (generally) shows all of them that are in it's index.
If you're monitoring backlinks, both are useful.
TJ
No wonder my backlinks are not listed in Google!
I'm working on getting some better links though.
