Breaking the Myth about Page Rank (PR)
by: Christopher Smith
The most difficult challenge most web designers face is
getting traffic to your site. There are plenty of companies who
promise to send traffic your way. Sadly, most of this traffic is
not qualified. Yes, your hit counter will move higher, however,
if its not qualified, you may find you have unhappy visitors to
your site. Unhappy visitors will not click on your ads or
purchase your products.
Once you have optimized your site, consider submitting it to
every search engine. If you want to get spidered quicker in
Google, have a web page with a PR of 4 or higher point to your
site. Your site will be spidered within a couple of days!
One myth I would like to bust is that PR is a measure of a
web site. Its not. I receive countless emails offering a
reciprocal link with their PR5 or PR6 site. Unless my link is
appearing on the main page, or a page that has PR6, I am not
getting a share of PR6. Most likely, my link will appear on a
page that has a PR2!
Page rank is Google's ranking of that specific page's
relevance. Just because the main page has a PR of 4, does not
make every page on the site a PR4. Beware of sites who claim
that they will exchange links with you and its to your benefit
since they have a PR5 or PR6. Where is your link appearing? If
its on a page that has a PR of 4 or 5 or 6, great!
Reciprocal linking, if done properly, will ensure that your
keywords are at the top of the search engine. If you have a
popular keyword, you will need to have more back links. Pick
your link partners properly, and ensure that they are linking to
your keyword.
For example: if your site is www.joesdinner.com, consider
sending out requests to relevant higher ranking pages to start
with, followed by lower ranking pages and ask web designers to
link back in a manner so that your URL is a hyperlink for your
keyword, not your site URL or site name.
Presuming their keyword is "best dining in New York", having
links pointing to your site with an anchor tag incorporating
your keywords will improve your search engine rankings
dramatically.
Once you have established a collection of sites pointing to
your site using your keywords, you will start receiving
reciprocal link exchanges from other sites. This is where you
can start to be particular.
If you want to maintain an effective PR and attract better
sites for linking, follow these tips:
- Is it indexed?
While their site may be indexed, the page where they are
placing your link, is it at least indexed by Google? If you
type in a URL www.sitename.com/links/right_here.html and
there are no results, consider declining their offer. If the
page your link appears on has not been indexed, there is no
benefit whatsoever to you. If your pages have PR, they may
consider placing your link on another page. If the page your
link appears on is indexed, but does not have PR, consider
accepting their offer. While the page today may not have PR,
it will in time.
- How many neighbors?
The value of the page rank is shared with each of the links
on that page. If you are splitting that PR with several
other sites, your share of PR will be small, which doesn't
help you. Reconsider accepting any link exchanges if your
site is 1 of more than 30 - 40 sites that will appear on
that page, unless its a very high PR. Further, if there are
too many links on that page, Google may consider the page to
be part of a link farm, which may end up penalizing your
site.
- Is it relevant?
Google is big on relevancy. Ensure your links pages are
relevant. If you operate a site about golf, having links
from cooking sites will not help you establish your page
rank. It may cost you more than you get in return.
How to Find Good PR sites
- Do a search for them by typing in your keyword
and start asking for reciprocal link exchanges. Take a look
at their PR and go from there. Remember, its the number of
sites that backlink to you that matters, not strictly the PR
of the page. I would rather have 50 pages that have a PR1
pointing to my site, than to have 5 sites that have a PR5.
Of course, if you can get 50 pages that have a PR5 pointing
to your site, you are laughing!
- Take a look at your existing link partners and
check out their links pages. Its clear the people appearing
on those links pages are interested in reciprocating.
- Purchase software that will help find quality
link partners.
It is important to attract higher PR sites when you are on a
reciprocal link campaign. However, its not the most important
thing when it comes to search engine rankings. Its the backlinks
that point back at you that are key. The more of those, the
better off you will be for your keyword.
Remember: every page starts off as a PR0. Just because its
new doesn't mean it wont get a higher PR once Google gets around
to assessing a score. If the page your site appears on is
indexed, and its a relevant site of quality, consider exchanging
links. You'll grow a large list of link partners in a short
period of time, and increase your search engine rankings in the
process. |
