Google have just completed their latest PR (pagerank) update. How did you fare? If you went up or down it doesn’t really matter. Even though Google states sites with higher page rank can expect to get ranked higher, in my and many other search engine optimiser’s opinions we find the exact opposite to be true.
You’ll often see PR Zero sites dominating the first page of the search results. And if you are still over obsessing about the importance of PageRank find out what Google says about it here:
Just because your home page has a PR of 3, this doesn’t mean all the pages on your site will be PR3. If you’ve just created a new page on your site it will start off as a PR0. But will that mean you can’t get this site ranked on the first page? Definetely not. As long as you are getting a steady stream of high quality links to your site with anchor text appropriate to your content you will see your rankings improve.
That’s the bottom line with seo – high rankings and not high PageRank. Pagerank is a fickle attribute which can rise and fall without reason, even if you do everything by the book. Pagerank is suppossed to rise if you get new links from high PR websites and place new content on your site between PageRank update cycles. No one knows when the update will take place but it usually happens every 3 months or so. And when it does a hullabaloo stirs around the web with many sites owners boasting or dismaying about the results.
But it all actuality it matters very little how high your PR is. Well it would be strange to have a 5 year old site you have been progressively promoting via seo when you are ramping up you off site and on page optimisation efforts. If this site had a PR0 there would probably be something wrong in what you are doing. But apart from that i’d leave the PageRank strategy there.
People have come up with wild Pagerank sculpting schemes over the years and while it’s true having too many outbound links on a page can dilute your PageRank, i’m still not sure all the software engineers outside of Google know exactly how Google calculates PageRank and whether it still uses the same formula.
Google is still pretty secretive about it methods these days. After been challenged in many professional business circles recently including The New York Times about being more transparent about the factors that make up their ranking formula Google point blank refused to reveal the exact formula, saying it would open up the floodgates to abuse.
But if you are looking for the best search engine optimization tips, do what Google already tells us. Place your most important keyword in the meta title (html code that only the search engine read) of your page. Write a good human readible description and place the keyword in there. Make sure it reads naturally as the desription is used by the search engines in their listing snippet just below your website title to show what your page is about.
If your description reads logically and attracts interest this can be the deciding factor a byour site or the one a browser makes to visit your site or the one above or below it. Coming first is not the only answer. Remember people on the net want information and answers. If they see this is your description spiel and it appeals to them they will visit your site.
There is some debate as to whether or not placing your keyword in the first sentence or two of your page and in the last sentence or two of your page is beneficial. I would probably do this, but there probably is no concrete proof as to whether it helps with ranking. The best thing to do is test it out. It certainly won’t cause any harm to do it this away unless you keyword stuff your main phrase too many times on the page.
Check back in a day or 2 for more seo tips.
