|
Staircase to Higher PageRank
By Ryan Parsons | Formula and image used from Google, Alexa and Yahoo! image are property of both respective companies.
Google is the king of rating websites and their value to users.
There are two essentials things on the net that
tell how successful your website is. The first is the Alexa
Site Rankings [linked to Amazon and Google],
which offers traffic summaries and site standings showing your website’s
statistics when compared to all other sites indexed by Alexa. For some reason,
I found an easy way to get listed among Alexa is to join Google’s
AdWords program for a month or two. Google
AdWords allows you to purchase pay-per-click advertising within the
Google search engine. It is a great way to kick start your site as you will
be listed among search results immediately, and you only have to pay $ .05
a click. Not a bad deal to get some early marketing for your site.
The second indication of how your site is doing is the PageRank system created
by Google. PageRank goes from a PR0 to a PR10 and, unlike Alexa rankings,
your rating is based more on the amount, and quality, of incoming links
you have for your site [not the amount of traffic].
What this article will try to do is offer you information on how to get
your PageRank and Alexa ratings up for your site. These two statistics are
used by advertisers to decide if they want to use your site, and how much
they are willing to pay; all for reasons that will be explained below. However,
before we get too much into this, lets discuss Google Ad Words, Google PageRank,
and Alexa Rankings more in depth.
After doing so, we will discuss our ‘Staircase to High PR’ to
help increase the popularity of your site.
Google PageRank
Google uses PageRank to help decide what sites will appear on each page
of the search results. This means that if a person were to search ‘hot
girls,’ Google will find all the pages featuring ‘hot girls’
and then list them in order of their PR with a PR10 being first on the list.
This is the most simplified description of what Google does, but it is accurate
enough to give you an idea on the importance of PageRank. Besides search
engine listings, PageRank offers another major benefit for your site and
advertisers alike.
A lot of people/advertisers seeking online advertisement options will justify
the quality of your site solely on PageRank. Sites that offer advertising
also usually charge depending on the PageRank of the page that the ad will
be placed on [partially]. So, if a site has three pages that they are selling
ad spots on and the pages have a PageRank of PR3, PR5, and PR7, they are
going to charge low prices for PR3 and high prices for PR7 [with PR5 somewhere
close to PR7]. Is it worth the price hike because of increased PR? Of course!
Placing your ad on a PR7 page is going to offer more benefit than placing
on a PR3.
One of the main reasons for increased benefit is that you know the page
probably receives a lot of traffic and by having a high PR page link to
your home page, your site will definitely get the needed help to increase
its own PR. *A small point: if you are purchasing text links on pages such
as these, do not expect a boost in traffic. Text links offer more in PageRank
than traffic. This is because Google will log that a PR7,5,3 or whatever
other rank is linking into your site. Google than applies this link into
its formula on judging your page’s PageRank. Google also gives you
more ‘points’ by having higher PR pages linking to you. So,
two things your site should try to do to increase its PR is to get a lot
of incoming links and to make sure that at least some of these incoming
links are ‘quality links’ [have a high PR as in four or above].
Alexa Rankings
Alexa is a site offering numerous details about a website including those
on traffic, reach, and your overall rank in the internet. You are ranked
out of about five million+ sites with Alexa placing your site anywhere between
one and so many million. This site can definitely help give you an idea
on the success of your site with regards to generated traffic.
Advertisers will also use the Alexa Rankings to determine how many users
may come across their ad during a certain time period. The more ad views
they can receive, the more valuable the ad. If you were selling ads based
on impressions, this stat would not matter as much as the advertisers ad
would just last longer. An example being if you were a really busy site
and the advertiser paid $50 for 50,000 impressions, his ad may only last
a week. However, if you were a slower site with little traffic, that same
ad setup may last a couple months on.
Alexa also has their own spider that will come and check out your site from
time to time after they have established your site in their database..
Google AdWords
This advertising option offered by Google does not display any statistics
that really show how successful your site is. Instead, AdWords can help
give your new site a boost off the ground with respects of getting your
site listed with the Google Search Engine and pages hosting the Google AdSense
program. Google claims that by joining Google AdWords, your site does not
get any special treatment when it comes to indexing your site and listing
your site’s pages among the Google search results. However, I noticed
that after joining Google AdWords [and AdSense], the googlebot seemed to
pay at least a little more attention to indexing my site. However, this
could also just be my imagination doing tricks on me.
When using Google AdWords, you tell Google which keywords or key-phrases
will list your site amongst the sponsored listings on the right side of
the page. You also state the most you are willing to pay per click on your
ad [minimum is $ .05]. You can then later see which keywords are performing
better for your site and update your AdWords setup accordingly.
A Brief Note on Yahoo
Yahoo! makes you beg for their appreciation. Unless you are willing to
pay the $299.00 insertion fee.
Now that we have finished discussing some of the statistics that enable
you, and advertisers, to judge your site’s performance, we will go
into our idea called the ‘Staircase To High PR.’ This idea outlines
simple steps to achieve a higher PR with little or no cost to you.
First Step- Published Site
You purchased your domain name and have published a fully functional site
to the web that either sells your business/products or offers information.
On initial publishing of your site, you obviously start off as a PR0 with
Google. So, what is the first thing you do? Get out on the net and search
for sites willing to do link exchanges. It may even be wise to create a
‘Links’ page on your site that includes all the links you have
done an exchange with. Get as many incoming links as possible, even if they
reside on PR0 pages. You never know if the PR on these pages will go up
later. However, still try to get links on sites that have a PR3 or more
as well. This part of the game takes time as you have to look for sites
to exchange links with and you may have to convince these sites that it
is worth their time exchanging links with you, especially since you are
currently a PR0. If you have friends that already have sites, convince them
to link into your site.
For this reason, be sure that your site offers something that will convince
others that your site has what it takes. Make sure your site offers more
than just a few pages [your site should be deep] and that it has a professional
or, at least, well created design layout. You will find it hard to participate
in link exchanges if you are a small site hosted on GeoCities for free or
other similar free hosts.
Remember, the ‘First Step’ takes time as you spend hours communicating
with sites that you want to link exchange. If you do have experience with
programming such as PHP, PERL, or ASP, you could even create your own link
exchange program that takes a lot of the load off of yourself as people
will now be asking for your to link with them [instead of the other way
around]. It is also nice to see your link up on a site before you reciprocate
the exchange.
Step Two- Google Updates Your PR
It can take Google up to three months to update its PR ratings for sites;
it used to be only a month. This means you must be patient and keep striving
for more incoming links as you wait for Google to update your site. If you
did fairly well in collecting incoming links, you probably could receive
a PR3 [or maybe even PR4] within a month or two of establishing your site.
Now you have some negotiating power.
A PR3 is not going to bring advertisers to your site, but it will allow
you the added power to negotiate with higher PR sites [such as PR4,5,6]
in a link exchange. Now your site has some type of value according to Google,
which now offers you a numbered PR. Other sites will see this and use the
information on deciding whether to link with you or not. Furthermore, a
PR3 is a good start, but remember to take your time and not rush into trying
to link exchange the higher PR’s [like PR6,7] too quickly. You will
have much more luck doing link exchanges with PR4’s and PR5’s,
which will usually be willing to have a PR3 link to them for their link
back.
Step Three- Bypass the Middle Phase
Now you have been negotiating as a PR3 site for some time, be it two weeks
to three months. You were able to collect even more links that have even
higher quality. Now you are only willing to exchange links with sites of
a PR3 or more. You were successful in getting incoming links from fourteen
pages with a PR between PR3 and PR5. Google updates your site’s PR
to a PR5. PR5 is an excellent PR that will enable you to now have negotiating
power with not only quality link exchanges but with advertisers as well.
Advertisers should be at least willing to advertise on PR5 pages. The advertisers
to look for are the ones that have a bit of money to help promote their
new, or smaller, site. They will be willing to pay a certain amount to have
a PR5 link coming into their site.
Now you can term your site a success in one regard, you achieved a respectable
PR with the power to earn on advertising. Your site also lists fairly well
on Google [and maybe other sites as well].
Now you may want to head over to Alexa and see if your traffic statistics
are in any way reflecting the changes with PR. You want to try to get under
the two million mark on Alexa by this point.
Top Step
Alexa should give you an idea of how your traffic rates. You want to be
in the top 400,000 to feel real good about yourself.
With these purchased ads or exchanged ads you were able to get your site
up to a PR6. Now, to have a PR6 is a great achievement by itself. You should
respect this rating because many advertisers will. If you never get higher
than a PR6, do not be disappointed. At a PR6, you can charge around $50
for an ad spot. This price can go up and down depending on how much your
site has to offer and how often you update it.
Which comes to my last point, update your site often [daily even]. The googlebot
will come back to your site more often if you update regularly. A site that
updates often can also help out increase the PR of your site as well. So
start getting into the habit of updating your site at least once every couple
days. You should start this habit around ‘Step Two’ or ‘Step
Three’ to even ad more power and ‘quality’ to your site.
The more pages Google has to index on your site, the more respect its rankings
will show it.
Skipping the Steps- Paying the Money
The ‘Steps’ mentioned above are tips on getting to a higher
PR with the limited use of money. However, if you do have some money you
are willing to spend, the best thing to do is start looking for PR7 sites
that have deals for advertising. Contact the site directly and see if you
can negotiate a better price if you were to purchase three months worth
or a lot of impressions. Three months is a good period to ensure that Google
takes that incoming link into account for your site. It is possible to find
PR7 pages that offer ad spots for as little as $50 a month. Even though
they are hard to find, they are out there so keep looking. If you are able
to get three PR7 sites linking to yours, you can almost guarantee your site
a minimum of a PR3 ranking to start. Using money is less time consuming,
as you do not need to take the steps required to build up your PR. However,
unless you improve on your site [such as updated it daily or build more
pages into it] your established PR will not last after your advertisement
period has run out.
The perk is that you quickly achieve a PR that will enable you to negotiate
with similar, and slightly higher, rated PR sites. Hopefully in time before
your paid links and ads run out.
If you were striving to only increase PageRank, it would be wise to have
your link/ad placed on sites that have no or a limited rotation. Make sure
that your banner or link appears at least two-thirds of the time.
A Final Note on Textlinks for PageRank
Remember, textlinks should help you attain a better PageRank but will not
usually increase your traffic significantly. So do not be disappointed with
links that do not usher traffic to your site. Remember, they have other
purposes. If you want traffic, begin looking into Google AdWords or banner
advertisements.
Also, do not sell advertisements based solely on PageRank. Google discourages this and will even
suspend some of your PageRank points if it discovers that you are committing this practice. It is best to
let the person discover your PageRank on their own. If they are wise, they will know where to look.
Formulations for PageRank
The first way to figure PageRank from one additional incoming link:
What you do is find out the page's PageRank where your link will be placed. Then count the number
of outbound links that reside on that same page. Now apply this formula:
.15 + .85(pagerank / outbound links)
So, if you placed your link on a page that has a PR of six with eight outbound links, your increase would be:
.15 + .85(6/8) = .79
This means your PageRank should increase somewhere near .79 points. Furthermore,
it is important to remember that Google PageRank is close to this, but not
as simple. To be a 'true' PR5 page, you may need to have 8 to 10 points
[a guess]. Each PR category has a bracket range for 'points'. So, .79 may
not actually increase your 'true' PR up .79, just your points. But the point
increases are what give you your 'true' PR. See what I mean?
Here is another way to guess your PageRank thanks to SeoCompany.Ca
Rule 1: 18 PRx links to get PRx (i.e. 18 PR5 links to get a PR5).
Rule 2: 3.339 PRx links to get PR(x-1) (i.e. 3.339 PR6 links to get a PR5).
Rule 3: 101 PRx links to get PR(x+1) (i.e. 101 PR5 links to get a PR6).
Resources to Check Out:
Alexa.Com- You can go here to get the
latest stats on your site. All you have to do is use the following URL and
insert your website at the end.
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main?q=&url=www.yoursite.com
Google PageRank: The following sites offer a utility to help discover the
PageRank of each and every page within your site. You will have to enter
each page on a separate line.
http://www.pagerank.net/pagerank-checker/
http://www.top25web.com/pagerank.php
PageRank
Update List History: Shows every time Google updates their search engine
in either backlinks or PageRank.
|
Ryan Parsons
Sources: Formula and image used from Google, Alexa and Yahoo! image are property of both respective companies.
Contact
© 2004 Minds Eye One, All Rights Reserved
The Can Magazine™ is a trademark of Minds Eye One
All movie titles, movie icons, movie stills/clips/trailers/other media... are registered trademarks and/or copyrights of stated holders
CanMag.Com banners contain movie/gaming icons that were created by individual holders
|
|
|
Add to Heffee!