This is proof I’m either certifiably insane or my goals are slowly changing. I’ll opt for the latter while most of my closer acquaintances will undoubtedly opt for the former.
Having been working in SEO for about 5 years now I have resisted having my own blog related to the subject. Anyone who works in this field will tell you we spend a lot of hours writing, modifying code and in otherwise “glued to monitor” situations so why would we want to add to this by becoming a blogger?
I know, I know…I’ve heard all the arguments about how important blogs are to SEO yadda yadda yadda…sorry, I’m still not convinced. Blogs may be important too some sites but I haven’t needed them to promote any of my sites to date. I’ll be writing a lot more about linking, blogs, quality traffic and more as this blog matures over time. The only tidbit I can add right now would be: think of each link as an advertisement and you’re going in the right direction.
So why did I decide to start an SEO blog after all these years? I’m guessing insanity. But after some reasoning it may boil down to:
- I have been fortunate enough to have had good success in SEO and I wanted to share some of what I know with others
- I’ve spent almost 15 years in web design/development but I must admit I enjoy the challenge of pure organic SEO – wrestling with the big Search Engines (in a white hat sort of way)
- I enjoy writing about SEO and the subtle changes that can have a big impact on a web site’s ranking
It goes without saying web site promotion can encompass much more than simply organic search engine optimization. Tactics such as Pay Per Click Management (PPC), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Email Marketing, Reputation Management, Virtual Spokesperson, Press Release Distribution, Web Analytics, Social Media Optimization, Link Popularity Services, CSS Conversion and many other terms, buzzwords – whatever you wish to call them – will be thrown around, used, abused, misused and discussed by those within this industry. Remember: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. As soon as a new idea comes along a load of amateurs and newbie sales people come along and slice-it, dice-it, repackage it and give it a load of fancy new names and sell it to you at a higher price.
IMHO the best traffic has always been free traffic sent to you by people who believe in your product (or in this case, web content). Sometimes you have to pay for traffic for a while to get things going. Nothing wrong with that under some circumstances where schedules demand it. Sometimes SEO is not the way to get traffic at all (an example would be a new home community where a web site might be used for 18 months then closed down – in such cases SEO is almost useless).
You can expect straight talk from me. I don’t pretend to know everything but I know more than most about web marketing and SEO. What I don’t know I can usually wheedle from friends and colleagues within the trade. I may have to trade them a root beer float or something even more expensive but such is life. I’m willing to live with such sacrifices. That’s just the kind of person I am.
Thanks for dropping by and reading my new blog. I look forward to learning a lot from you…and hopefully you’ll learn something from me too 
What is PageRank?
PageRank is a value.
So 500 million variables may go into calculating the value of a page before Google determines where it should be ranked within it’s search results. If you were to sit down and try to reverse engineer all that you would have to spend several lifetimes before you would come close to deciphering even part of their algorithm and by then you may rest assured it would have been changed multiple times and science would have found new ways to manage data anyway.
Don’t waste too much time on PageRank
In simple terms PageRank is a measure of the importance your page in Google’s view – but that doesn’t mean they will rank it higher. It’s not a measure of traffic or anything else. Most serious SEO practitioners use PageRank more as a measure of how far along their linking efforts have progressed rather than as a measure of the real value of a web page.
What makes Google think one page is more important than another?
Actually Google doesn’t think. It’s just one huge robot. It collects data, analyzes it and spits out results. It considers each link to your page as a “vote” for your page. However, as George Orwell once observed in his book Animal Farm “some are just more equal than others”. In this case – some votes count for more than others. Links from pages with higher PageRank will result in a higher vote-value for your page and thus a higher PageRank.
How Can I Increase My PageRank?
Go and get more links to your page from other web pages. HOWEVER! I strongly suggest you trade links only with sites that are related to your industry or web site theme, and that you avoid link-farms. Link farming is the practice of linking without any consideration of the relevance of the pages being linked. Link farms are often automated and if you’ve ever been invited to trade links with a site that has a gazillion links to just about anyone, don’t waste your time. Google pays little attention to these links and the actual value you are adding to your page is likely zero.
Make sure you are linking to real web sites with real quality content – places you would go to find information for yourself.
How Can I See My PageRank?
Should I Be Concerned About PageRank?
The short answer? No. Traffic (and quality traffic at that) is what the web is all about. I have one web site that has a PR5 home page and gets about 900 visitors per month. It is well ranked for several highly competitive search terms but is a niche site and brings in web development and SEO work. I have another that is PR4, also well ranked for highly competitive search terms and (at the time of this post) gets over 35,000 visits per month. Right now it only produces advertising revenues but PR has nothing to do with the traffic. The PR4 site has much higher traffic than the PR5 site. In fact the PR4 site continues to grow in traffic almost daily and is expected to hit about 100,000 visits per month by say mid 2009. In both cases PageRank was the furthest thing from my mind as I began building traffic. Both sites grew in PageRank naturally as the links began growing.
Try to think of each external link as an advertisement for your web site and not as a way to build PageRank. You will do much better in building web traffic and PageRank will happen naturally. How many times do you run to a web site and say “oh boy – I can’t wait to get to the “links” page and see what’s there!”? Links placed on “link” pages does not bring you traffic. Carefully placed links do.
Organic Links are the Bestfor PageRank
What do I mean by Organic? Imagine someone reading your web site and being so impressed, they have to recommend it to everyone else. So they post a link to it on their own web site, Blog about it, Stumble it – whatever. Isn’t this the best type of link to get? They ar eplacing your link on a page with traffic! That page will likely get some PageRank of it’s own over time but who cares? It is already a trafficked page because it is a page offering advice to people – even if just a few, it is a “traffic” page. That is where REAL quality links and eventually PageRank come from. A REAL vote for your page!
To sum it up: PageRank is Google’s way of seeing how many other web pages vote for your web page. That’s about it. So get REAL votes by gaining links people give you organically on trafficked pages. The best kind.