Improving your Google Page Rank
No sooner than I had posted Technorati: The Six Month Link Window when I heard that some bloggers are noticing that their Google Page Rank has dramatically descended. If you are among them then maybe these blogging tips and blogging tools will be exactly what you need to improve your page rank but, first, a definition is in order.
Page Rank calculation is Google’s way of deciding relative importance of a webpage. PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is. Google calculates a page’s importance from the votes cast for it. How important each vote is is taken into account when a page’s PageRank is calculated. It matters because it is one of the factors that determines a page’s ranking in the search results. It isn’t the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one. Source: Google’s PageRank explained and how to make the most of it
My blogging tips:
- Learn from the experts.
- Check, maintain and tracks your links.
- Use relevant keywords in titles and in the body of blog posts. Use Google Suggest. As you type into the search box, Google Suggest guesses what you’re typing and offers suggestions in real time. This is similar to Google’s “Did you mean?” feature that offers alternative spellings for your query after you search, except that it works in real time. By suggesting more refined searches up front, Google Suggest can make your searches more convenient and efficient by keeping you from having to reformulate your query. Google Suggest might offer suggestions that you will find novel or intriguing.
- Validate your html in your draft posts and clean it up prior to publication.
- Validate the html on your front page and correct all errors.
- Set up a Google Webmaster Account, verify your blog and use Google webmaster tools.
- Use the resources at Google Webmaster Center.
| Automatically inform Google when you update your pages Google Webmaster Tools provide you with detailed reports about your pages’ visibility on Google. To get started, simply add and verify your site, and you’ll start to see information right away. |
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| Discover your links and see how users are reaching your site View, classify, and download comprehensive data about internal and external links to your site with our new link reporting tools. |
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| Enhance and increase traffic to your site Learn which queries drive traffic to your site, and see exactly how users arrive there. |
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| Learn more at Webmaster Central Visit our Webmaster Blog, Help Center and more. Get the latest news and info on webmaster issues and browse through hundreds of frequently asked questions. |
Tips from Experts
These are the positive factors that Google’s algorithm takes into consideration:
1. Keyword Use In Title Tag
2. Global Link Popularity Of The Site
3. Anchor Text Of Incoming Links
4. Link Popularity Within The Site
5. Age Of The Site
These are the negative factors that Google’s algorithm takes into consideration:
1. Server Is Often Inaccessible To Googlebot
2. Content Which Is Very Similar Or Duplicate to Existing Content On The Web
3. External Links To Low Quality Sites
4. Participation In Link Schemes or Actively Selling Links
5. Duplicate Meta Tags On More Pages
Google Optimization - Key Factors
- Make sure your new pages link to your old ones (related posts).
- Add a sitemap to your blog.
- Use title optimization
- Use but do not overuse relevant keywords in your posts.
- Submit your site to web-directories.
- Use robot.txt files to prevent non-relevant content from being scanned.
- Submit your site to Google for site verification.
- Write blog content for your readers - not for search engines. Source: makemoneywithkassper.blogspot.com
Optimising your images
- Google seems to prefer images of a reasonable resolution, and that makes sense because so do people. If you have to use small thumbnails on your page, make it link to a bigger image of 800×600 or bigger.
- Name images in the format “/images/my-image.jpg”
- Do not rename or move an image unless you really have to. The Google image bot is very slow at indexing images, so by renaming an image it may disappear out of Google for 6+ months.
- No upper case filenames (nothing to do with SEO, but for your peace of mind when you move that Windows site to Linux)
- NO SPACES in filenames
- Use rewriting where images are dynamic
- Name your image to match the phrase you want to be found for, where appropriate
- Use relevant alt attributes on the images that include the phrase you want to target. Try to include the phrase in the alt attribute and filename
- Use the search phrase in text in close proximity to the image. A caption below the image is perfect. Source: Just because Google hates your site doesn’t mean it hates your images.
Related posts:
How to structure a reader and search engine friendly blog
How to: Google site verification
















Wow, Google has turned out to be such a disappointment. It’s really to bad!
Comment by April — March 17, 2008 @ 8:28 pm
Hi April,
I’m sorry you are disappointed with your Page Rank but I do know that if you do what’s in the blog post above it will improve.
Happy blogging!
Comment by timethief — March 18, 2008 @ 10:35 am
I didn’t know that my small blog would be ranked number 4. I have a friend who has nearly 100,000 hits and is on the same rank as I am. I think that I am going to continue blogging since I have the longest running Clubpenguin blog that is still active. All of the others have been shut down, like Paintboy100, who used a text widget to generate his blog hits.
Comment by hellopayton — March 18, 2008 @ 2:43 pm
@hellopayton,
I’m so glad to hear that your blog is doing well. Hopefully the tips I’ve provided will help you increase the Page Rank even more.
Comment by timethief — March 18, 2008 @ 2:48 pm
I am going to use your tips. I am trying to reach at least 100,000 hits by the end of this Summer, and I know that will be hard, but I think I can do it.
Comment by Hellopayton — March 18, 2008 @ 7:09 pm
Thanks for the tips!
Lots of great info and now I will have to try what you suggest!
Best wishes,
~Lisa
Comment by lisaheidrich — March 18, 2008 @ 8:26 pm
Thanks for the sharing…. I’ve been doing some of those but wasn’t quite sure what’s next
now I know
Comment by A.Ho — March 18, 2008 @ 8:27 pm
Great tips. i had a hard time figuring out some of them because I am new at this, but I am sure I will learn.
http://amloki.blogspot.com
Comment by damyantig — March 19, 2008 @ 12:02 am
Thank you very much. It is an important information for bloggers.
Comment by pormadi — March 19, 2008 @ 3:43 am
Lots of suggestions here for me to work on. For a blog that has just passed 10,000 hits, I have a lot of room to improve.Thank you so much.
Comment by marylandonmymind — March 19, 2008 @ 11:32 am
@One and all
For a blogger like myself, who does not gain any income whatsoever from blogging, there is nothing more rewarding than receiving “thank yous”.
I’m so happy that you found the blogging tips in this post to be helpful. And, I’m delighted that you took the time to say so.
Happy Blogging!
Comment by timethief — March 19, 2008 @ 12:05 pm
[...] structure a reader and search engine friendly blog Here are some blogging tips that flow from Improving Your Google Page Rank and Technorati: The Six Month Link [...]
Pingback by How to structure a reader and search engine friendly blog « one cool site: wordpress blogging tips — March 19, 2008 @ 10:28 pm
Thanks to you, there seem to be some wonderful tips on this. I guess my comment is more of a question than anything. Improving all this does what exactly? I’m assuming that it gives you a better chance at being randomly discovered when someone enters a Google search? I hear the term “Google page ranking” and I do have a Google account- so how do I find out if I’m like last on their list or whatever?
any way time thanks for all the effort and time that you have put in to this site….it has helped me on more than one occasion with other problems.
DB
Comment by DB Reese — March 24, 2008 @ 4:03 am
Hi there,
The way you find out what Google has on your site, in other words, to determine the posts that have been spidered and indexed and are now searchable is to type site:normaljoe.wordpress.com into the Google search bar. Notice that there is no space following the colon. The result you get back is site:normaljoe.wordpress.com
The way you determine how many links the site has, according to Technorati is to type in normaljoe.wordpress.com and when you do that you get these results normaljoe.wordpress.com
There you can see the number of “reactions” received to your posts which is 2. The Authority is currently 2 but the question mark indicates that it’s still under review Authority: 2 ? and by clicking the ? mark you get Info on how authority is calculated http://support.technorati.com/faq/topic/71?replies=1.
You say you have a Google account. Do you mean a WebMasters account? And have you verified your blog with Google? This is how to do that is found here How to: Google Site Verification
Verification:
(1) Sign into your Google Webmaster’s account.
(2) Get ready to write a new PAGE (not a Post) in your blog
(3) Ask Google to verify your Blog by clicking the “verify” in your Google WebMaster’s account.
(4) You will be given a code. Paste on the title (subject) the exact code that you get from Google Webmaster Tools option “Upload an HTML file” (this is the verification method you have to choose). Example of the code:
google4f645e3adsdaa48g3a41z.html
(5) Click to publish the Page.
I hope this is what you are looking for but if you need more help then just post again.
Comment by timethief — March 24, 2008 @ 9:39 am
I have been doing some commercial SEO recently on some very tough and challenging projects. It has made me revisit everything I thought I knew about search engines and restructure it from the ground up. Things like *keyword density* are not very informative in isolation - without understanding Zipf’s (sp) law for instance. I think blogging poses serious difficulties for SEO for a number of reasons - not the least of which is that the blog platform often does not behave in an optimal way. I have started to analyse pages and the pages they link too in tandem. It is very revealing.
Comment by Root — March 24, 2008 @ 1:57 pm
w00t! You’re back [she does a little dance].
hmmmm … “analyse pages and the pages they link to in tandem” would you care to expand?
Comment by timethief — March 24, 2008 @ 4:11 pm
I am giving away valuable tradecraft here but I look at pages and the immediately descendant pages (one level down). I test for both relevance and in the descendant pages for what I call data sub sets. So on a page for *jobs* G expects sub sets in h2 tags and child pages to include things like industry sectors.
Most of our blogs reflect our diverse and eclectic interests rather than predictable data sub sets. We can all make better use of NOINDEX and NOFOLLOW for all our junk like about pages which dilute our page relevance and arguably do not need to be listed at all.
More globally I am beginning to think that the way we all build sites is inherently flawed from the SEO perspective. I think that better use of sitemap.xml plus more focussed navigation schemata are the way to go. The interesting thing is that the more I get into this the more I think that a lot of very old fashioned simple practises actually work wonders from the SEO perspective. Just my 2c.
The other thing that is interesting is how many people are interested in SEO - and how much they pay for it
The fascinating thing is how much info Google has published themselves which clearly sign posts what they want us to do. The original paper at Stanford by the Google Guys is really interesting. As is Zipf’s law.
Comment by Root — March 25, 2008 @ 4:29 am
@Root
SEO is a fascinating subject and I really appreciate the fact that you took the time to explain this. I know you are busy but, is there any chance that I could sweet talk you into writing a brief guest editorial at a time that’s convenient for you?
Comment by timethief — March 25, 2008 @ 5:09 pm
Possibly
Comment by Root — March 26, 2008 @ 7:21 am
Great - any time would be fine with me.
Comment by timethief — March 26, 2008 @ 9:26 am
Hum, nice page, I will send this to digg for you
Hi there,
Thanks for the support.
Comment by <Orbvab> — March 27, 2008 @ 12:30 pm
I’m glad you found it useful.
Comment by timethief — March 27, 2008 @ 4:37 pm
Many thanks for this insite, it’s most useful.
Comment by Charles — April 3, 2008 @ 2:58 am
I”m glad you found the post to be helpful. Happy blogging.
Comment by timethief — April 3, 2008 @ 9:07 am
Hi Richard,
This is a fantastic post. I know I have most definitely noticed changes in my stats and with google.. There are a very hard one to figure.. and half the time drive me crazy. This information is absolutely invaluable!! I am always searching for more ways to get up to par with SEO and more.. this will help tons.
Thanks so very much.
elle
Comment by elle — April 11, 2008 @ 4:02 pm
Hi elle,
Richard did not write this post, I did. Thanks so much for the compliment. I’m glad to hear that you find the information useful. Many bloggers are totally confused about SEO so I attempted to reduce this to a bare bones state.
Timethief
Comment by timethief — April 11, 2008 @ 5:04 pm
Hi,
Thank you for the great ideas. Happy surfing!
Best Regards,
Seok Lee
Comment by Seok Lee — April 11, 2008 @ 7:18 pm
You’re welcome and best wishes for happy blogging!
Comment by timethief — April 11, 2008 @ 7:59 pm
Wonderful, informative post. I really enjoyed reading it.
Comment by bellavida2008 — April 12, 2008 @ 6:55 am
That’s great — now you can get busy using the information to improve your blog.
Comment by timethief — April 12, 2008 @ 9:26 am
I just caught up with this. Lots of great tips here. A bunch of stuff i’d never even thought of.
Thanks.
Comment by Jack Payne — April 19, 2008 @ 11:11 am
Thanks very much Jack Payne. I’m glad that you found these tips to be helpful
Comment by timethief — April 20, 2008 @ 4:27 pm
timethief: This is very valuable information. Thank you for taking the time to format the post the way you did. It is very clean and easy to read.
I have one question. You pointed out in #2 of ‘negative factors’ about content that is very similar or duplicate. I am wondering, my wife and I have accounts with Zimbio which allows us to “repost” our content under their ‘magazine categories’. Would this be considered duplicate content?
Comment by Outside My Brain — May 19, 2008 @ 11:01 pm
Consider this. In the beginning there were bloggers, sans the profit motive. Then came the opportunistic sploggers. They acquired every free hosted blogging account they could get and posted duplicate content to all the blogs. This is gaming the system and it has a negative impact on all bloggers.
Users typically want to see a diverse cross-section of unique content when they do searches. In contrast, they’re understandably annoyed when they see substantially the same content within a set of search results.
Google provides advice on this issue.
Comment by timethief — May 20, 2008 @ 12:08 pm
So just a quick question: Does a say 3 out of 10 ranking mean my site is three times better than a 1 out of 10 in the eyes of Google? Or is it more complicated than that? Can you recommend an article about this for me? Thanks, C.
Comment by Contessa Marshall — May 23, 2008 @ 1:35 am
No and the best information comes from Google. http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html
Comment by timethief — May 23, 2008 @ 6:43 am
thank’s a lot for tips..
i’ll try now.
Comment by rikez — May 27, 2008 @ 2:04 am
You’re welcome
Comment by timethief — May 27, 2008 @ 7:58 am
[...] http://onecoolsite.wordpress.com/2008/03/17/improving-your-google-page-rank/ [...]
Pingback by do it because u like it, the rest is BONUS! « BaoBao’s Simple Life 包包的简单生活 — July 10, 2008 @ 6:33 am
I am sure it will work, but it sure looks like lots of hard work and also time consuming. Thanks for sharing anyways. Hopefully I will get around to implementing it soon enough.
Comment by moserw — July 15, 2008 @ 11:04 am