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I now have a site which is a leader in its' field, good links from all high ranking sites in the field (none of which are above PR6 though), as well as Yahoo, ODP, Looksmart/Zeal, About.com; very well structured according to all the rules - prominent keywords in titles, headings, good internal links and so on.
The site has 7 million visitors which is a major success for me. The thing is, it has stuck stubbornly at PR6.
Is getting links from higher PR sites the only way to increase my PR - and what can I do if there aren't any in my key area above PR6.
(It's not the site in my profile by the way, although that one has the same problem!)
You should, of course, still go after good quality, on topic incoming links, but that PR7 is a false goal. The real goal is to stay on top.
But if you still need that ego boost of having the PR7, think about how cool it will be to have a PR7 with no incoming links above PR6. Contrary to what some people will tell you, you can get there.
Just for kicks, I did a link: on htdig.org, a pr9 site that produces one of the most popular site search engines for websites. There was nothing above a PR7 on the first 6 pages of results. Those PR0-PR6 links will eventually get you there.
Of course there is no way of knowing if that is what brought my root directory index page up to PR7 but my overall PRs improved throughout the domain.
I agree Dave, it's somewhat ego and it does feel good. ;)
But also having a PR7 root index page that links to other sections of your site helps their PR. At least it seems to have for me. I don't have any page under PR6 that is linked directly from my PR7 page and all but one of these pages has been up for months, even years, so it isn't Googles estimated PR. Even my form has a PR6! The PR7 page has only 11 links so that may be a big factor.
Anne
And continue your other efforts.
It will happen.
Well I guess I wouldnt' be entirely honest if I said there wasn't some ego involved. ;)
But really it's about the goal of constant improvement. The site is so popular exactly because I did focus on quality - now it partly just bugs me that it's not getting any higher, but partly I know if it was higher I would get better GG traffic, particularly from lesser keywords. My current GG traffic is good, but I know it could be better.
Thanks for the suggestion about internal links - will give that some thought.
The thing is, for my sites sake, I would much rather bring my PR2 content pages up to a PR3 than have my home page make it up to PR7 and have my content pages stay where they are.
You are obviously doing something right to have gotten where you are. Just keep doing what you are doing, and you will get there. But that logrithmic toolbar PR scale and the ever increasing number of links to the top pages makes it that much tougher to hit PR7 than PR6.
And the traffic from a PR7.01 is not going to be much better than that from a PR6.99. Every link counts, even if it doesn't show up on the toolbar, it still counts.
I'm not sure what this means.
Does it mean adding a links to sites with PR above yours or to major sites such as Google or Yahoo etc? Surely if you had two outgoing links per page, it would be a major distraction and people would be more likely to leave your site?
The discipline is that it makes you make sure your site is the best in the competitive field, or that it focuses cleanly to a segment of that field or is related.
After all which sites plainly link to their competitors? Only those who are convinced they have the best site for their own readership and people will come back if they at all serious.
To me it's a great "spam" filter.
And notice Google does this too in their own site too, linking to all major search engines.
I would be more flexible than Fathom's suggestion of two on each page, I'm sure he was only giving an example, but links to "good" related sites sprinkled any way through your pages is what we are doing.
Remember also that Googleguy said at one stage t beware of creating sites which keep the Pr all to themselves! Possibly one of the most uselful clues GG has ever given us.
If you do web design or SEO, you can link to Google's SEO guidelines, and explain to your customer that you follow the guidelines to avoid any problems.
Are there any true consumer information sites about your product or service? How about .edu sites that have doen any sort of research in the area?
If you are a travel site, do you link to the airlines that serve the nearby airport?
And they don't all have to have higher PR. Just worry about whether they are sites that will help out your users, and let google worry about deciding that they are what google wants. That really is all that google wants, they want to link to the best sites for *their* users. Make your site the best site.
[google.com...]
diggle said >>Are you saying that a link to Google would be looked on favourably?
No, just links to authoritative sites in YOUR area. Hint: government sites, university sites, newspapers and journals, professional associations, etc etc.
google judges you by your mates. Good ones as well as bad ones!
At one stage at least, and quite recently, Google had a line at the bottom of some SERPS - Try this search in Av Hotbot MSN etc etc...
Thanks.
I looked at the url you provided but this is really only a search for a search engine (it's getting complicated now isn't it :)) Google wouldn't be much of a search engine if you couldn't search for, well, "search engines".
This still doesn't really answer the point that has been made about linking to major sites.
Is it going to help rankings to put a link to Google?
Also - wouldn't the other search engines get jealous and drop you from theirs?!
Craig
If you're seeing the visitors, then why worry about PR, why not start concerning yourselve about UA.
There are many reasons for this.
First they (outbound links) should be on theme - that is "site theme" or more specific to "page theme" with a very good anchor. The very best sites (normally higher PageRank) - which is to say they will probably not reciprocate the link, but don't worry about this.
Forget about PageRank for the moment and concentrate on common sense.
1. - authority sites get crawled continously, with 10's to 100's of thousands of links in and out. This means that if on-theme the connectivity within your niche is near everyone. Therefore, your link to them, they link to others, which some are linked to you, and the crawl continously picks up new links quickly, thus faster PR credit to you, when a new link is added. (ever get a new link and waited, and waited for Googlebot to find it).
2. Removes templating effect - particularly if your have many cross-links -- the more unique links in your site (in & out) the greater chance Googlebot will not see common patterns. If a pattern is detected the less chance of link credit.
3. Webmastering - anyone knowing the power of the link -- looks for sites that adds value to their site (and PageRank). Think about it - if everyone is looking for links how many link requests do you receive? If few or none - it's obvious that other webmasters don't believe you'll acknowledge a request. On the other hand... if every page of your site has outbound links, this is a broad set of topics that another webmaster could find and know their request will be acknowledged.
4. Webmastering again - the more holes you fill in content or the more quality links you offer the greater chance another webmaster will link to you. They don't need to litter their site with links to fill their holes in content -- you have it all.
5. Considering just the above points may or may not produce PR8, but it's guaranteed to help push you higher in ranked, more visibility, more chance of repeating 1. to 4., and assist in making you into one of those "preceived" authority sites... in turn others will continue along the same strategy that you did simply because you are an authority and they want to be one too.
Everyone that believes "hording" helps your position in your niche... loses, they will never be an authority site themselves.
A good place to start - DMOZ - your category - since you add PR there and get the added value of a little extra PR back, it's on-theme, and in most instances higher quality sites.
Industry association, goverance agencies, non-profits around your theme etc. Everything that you can do the continue googlebots reach via mutliple paths won't hurt you one bit.
You'd be surprised how wise Brett is.
Note: you can even con your competitors to linking to you. But that's a different thread. ;)
Craig
You forgot #6. By sending traffic to that authoritative web site, they will often times become aware of your site. They may not play the reciprocal linking game, but if they become aware of you through the amount of traffic *that you send them* it can greatly improve your chances of getting a link *from* them.
That link isn't likely to be on their PR9 page, but they will probably have hundreds of PR7 pages. And if you have lots of good content, you might pick up a couple of nice deep links from some of their content pages.
It never ceases to surprise me how many people get hung up chasing PR. It's as though somehow PR is the ultimate objective. Far from it.
I catalogue new referrals everyday.
I just needed to mention that one because we just picked up one of those just the other day. It's a link on a PR6 page on a site with a PR9 home page. But I really don't care about the PR of the page, it is the prestiege of having this institution linking to us that will do more for our real life reputation. They rarely give out permanent links other than in the online version of their magazine.
