Google Pagerank
The Pagerank system, in short, is
basically Google's system on a 1-10 scale of measuring a
website's importance. Google.com has the highest Pagerank
(PR) of 10. A brand new website domain has a PR 0. There
are other websites that discuss how it's calculated. Here
is a quick gauge: 0 - new website, 1-2 a "drop"
of popularity, 3 - popularity is beginning, 4 - an established
web presence with periodic attention from Google, 5 - a
stronger presence, 6 - a semi-powerful website that gets
crawled daily, 7 - a powerful, frequently visited website,
8 - a very, very powerful website, 9 - 10 - Off the charts
in power.
The Pagerank of a website influences
a. How often it gets crawled for future search listings,
b. How high those search listings will be listed. The Pagerank
of a website will appear in the Google toolbar (with Pagerank
enabled) when your browser is on the page of that website.
This plan will show you how to increase your Pagerank and
the frequency of crawls by Google.
Spiders and Crawls
For the search engines to "index"
your website, it will send its "spider" robot
program to "crawl" your homepage and any other
pages it "sees" on your domain. Visits by a spider
are erratic, at best. Spiders will visit your website more
frequently if it thinks "your website is important".
With Google, importancy is measured by Pagerank. I discuss
raising your Pagerank is Part 3.
I. - Choose Your Weapons (keywords)
Obviously, some keywords are searched more than others.
In nearly the same proportion, more websites will optimize
for the more popular keywords over the less popular ones.
This means that you have a higher chance of success (less
competition) if you target the "moderately" searched
keywords, instead of going straight after "the big
ones". I'm not trying to underestimate or limit your
success. My strategy for anyone is to achieve "some"
success first, and then increase it over time. Many webmasters
will "swing for the fences" and after not having
any success for so long, bow out of the race entirely.
I'll give a rule-of-thumb way to
gauge your competition for optimized keywords. With the
Google toolbar on, search Google for the broadest keyword
term that describes your website. For this website, I chose
"small business". You'll probably see a bunch
of high-powered PR7 and PR6 websites that have your term
in title. Observe their Pagerank (PR) rankings. Getting
listed on the front page for a popular broad term is a tough
battle and a long process that may be too high to reach
for a new website.
Next, search for less-popular, but
more specific keyword terms that describe your website.
For this website, I chose "low risk business".
Depending on the keyword term, you'll eventually find one
that is specific to your site, but the competition doesn't
have those scary-high PR rankings. You should be able to
find terms that only have PR4 and PR3 sites listed for them.
This is the target for YOUR website. If you're finding that
you can't find keyword terms with lesser competition, you
may seriously consider altering your website's theme to
make it more specific for a particular "niche"
of the market.
II. - Lock and Load. Prepare Your
Site
The bottom line is, you will need to concentrate and stuff
your target keywords throughout your website, whenever possible,
until they are actually 7% or so of all the words on the
page itself (If you go higher than 7%, its at "your
own risk". Google and other search engines have "spam
alerts" that detect overzealous practices). Repeating
keywords too many times on a page can look "funny"
to your customers even though Google may like it, so you
have to balance your SEO goals with common sense.
This is a brief list of SEO tips
you should do to your website in order to focus on a particular
set of keywords:
The TITLE tag of your html should
include your target keywords
The META TITLE tag of your html should
include your target keywords
The META DESCRIPTION tag of your
html should include your target keywords
The META KEYWORDS tag of your html
should include ALL of your keywords, with the most targeted
ones listed first, and separated by commas. Last time I
checked, Google doesn't read Meta Tags, but its good to
do this anyway for the other search engines.
If you have a domain which also includes
your keywords within the name itself (www.my-keywords-are-here.com),
you'll get "brownie" points from Google that will
help.
Your header tags (H1, H2, etc.) should
include your targeted keywords if you use them.
The first major sentence on your
page should include your target keywords and concentrate
on the overall theme of your website.
The overall "density" of
your page, should be high (7% or so of all the words on
the page) for your target keywords. I use an online density
checker to help with this.
If you "bold" your target
keywords on the page (sometimes), you'll get brownie points
from Google. Link and image ALT tags are good places to
"stuff" with target keywords if you need to build
your density.
Other pages on your website that
link back to your homepage should have the target keywords
within the anchor text (displayed text) of the link.
The more pages on your site that practice the step above,
the better
III. - Party Invitations. Get Your Site Listed on High
PageRank Websites
This may be the most important SEO
step and that's why I listed it in red. The heart of the
Google Pagerank system scores your site based on the quality
of links that OTHER sites have pointing to yours, known
as incoming links. By quality, I mean other sites with a
high Pagerank score. My personal opinion is that the Pagerank
system has turned the Internet into a "country club"
in some ways. If you run with the "in crowd",
you get points for it. Regardless of what I think about
the system, I decided to "play ball" in order
to get my websites listed well in the directories.
One of the easiest ways to get incoming
links is to participate in a common Internet practice called
reciprocal linking. This is where you agree with another
website that "if you link to me, I'll link to you".
What matters here is the Pagerank of the other site. If
your site starts out at PR 0, it can be hard to find a PR6
site that wants to link to you! This is also because OUTgoing
links actually cost the sponsoring website a few points.
One type of site that lives to list other websites and aren't
so PR-conscious are the web directories. All most require
is a reciprocal link.
Search on Google.com for web directories
that have a good PR ranking.
Reciprocal links are good and will get spiders to recognize
your site, but one-way links are even better. Google doesn't
score reciprocal links between two sites "as high"
because it's "an arrangement" between the sites.
Google will score your site much higher if you have a one-way
link on another site that points to your site, even though
your site does not link back to that site. When I learned
this, I thought "Great, but where can I get one-way
links?"
I discovered that because of the
rising demand of links with high Pagerank, there is now
an auction specifically made for auctioning off high-PR
one-way links (search for it on Google). PR7 one-way links
are auctioned off there for about $50. The rule-of-thumb
is that the highest incoming PR link you have should make
your site 2 PR less (a PR8 link should at least create a
new PR6 site). I highly recommend the site as a source for
high PR links. One link can set your website on the fast
track to great search engine listings.
One more quick tip: The anchor text
in your incoming links should contain your target keywords
for maximum effect with Google.
Conclusion:
After you've done Steps I. - III.,
you should see some spider hits within a few days of your
directory listings. Google may then list some or all of
your website pages. You can check your listings in Google
by going there and searching for "allinurl:www.yourdomain.com".
After 6-8 weeks, you should see the full effects of your
efforts, and your Pagerank should rise. If you've "reached
for the skies" and targeted very popular keywords and
aren't seeing any results, alter your website so that it
targets keywords whose listings in Google are more attainable.
Be patient. This process takes monitoring and fine-tuning.
That's all I have on search engine
optimization for today. It's a challenge that takes effort,
but it's nice to actually see some results after a few weeks.
That's more than I can say for some of the other "advertising
magic wands" that are sold all over the Internet.
Good Luck!
About the Author
The author of this article, Andrew Kalinen, is an Internet
Entrepenuer who lives in New England. Apart from constantly
updating GetYouPaid.com,
Andrew enjoys hiking, snowboarding, and making home videos.
GetYouPaid.com is a free site dedicated to providing small
business advice to anyone interested in starting their own
Internet-based business.
