That is right very recently we had a page rank update and many people who did well last time took a step backward this time. Many people stayed the same, but as usual no one is certain what factors made this update more loving than the last. I wanted to do as I usually do a post dedicated strictly to the update. I have finally gotten it written up for you and I hope you enjoy my spin on the whole page rank ordeal.
Last update was epic many sites in what I consider my neck of the woods fared fairly well a few faltered on predictions with no explanation or rhyme or reason. I want to tell you right now that just because you have 80 gazillion incoming links and even if you reciprocated the high PR ones nothing was written in stone. In my limited time here in the blogosphere I have noticed things tend to go in cycles like most things in nature do to begin with. Having pointed that out I want to talk about what I did differently and what I did not. This should give you at the very least a small shred of something that is truth if you infact worry about the page rank you have or have recently loss.
First off this update changed what people were shouting from their roof tops, while some still stand by what they originally said. One thing I want to point out that is you can optimze for page rank or SEO or both. I was purely optimized and campaigning before just for the PR. Having come out of the gate with a PR3 showed I was on the right path. Alas though page rank does not influence a tremendous amount what you are ranked for in the SERPS. This being said I noticed to sites roughly my size that I was lacking 100% of the search engine bound traffic that they were. No problem right? Wrong. Let’s break this down and show you how I changed this and how not crossing your t’s and dotting your i’s can get you into a bit of trouble with google.
I am generally being indexed by google in 2minutes or less at least in the data center for my region. This is great and acheivable by anyone who is posting quality content regularly. That being said I was having trouble making the relevant ranks for phrases and keywords that I wanted. So instead of letting google decide I took matters into my own hands. I installed the SEO Platinum plugin first. To have the title of your article in the title of the site goes a long ways. This does not cause any issues with google. I did however go back and add relevant tags to every post I have done, and changed the catagories a bit to be more relevant and optimized. Now I went back and checked quite a few of the not so hot for traffic posts I had and did something some may debate as a + or a – overall. I edited them with the knowledge I have now to make it relevant to search traffic and potential readers viewing my archives page.
These things in themself did not cause much trouble. But add into the equation that I also edited the robots.txt to restrict it from non essential pages and from my archives and suddenly you are piling on not found errors and all kind of warning signs in google webmaster tools. This being said I have quite a few pr4+ reciprocated follow on links that are highly relevant to the topics when mention and in the beloved blogroll. To no avail I even added the highly valuable and relevant .edu and .gov links that I could. Now some of this may not have made it into this update as the page rank is actually from a cache and not so much the live site, or so say the indusry leaders at this point.
Something to keep in mind while changing anything with your site related to linking, seo, serps etc. Make sure your cleaning up your errors and fixing broken links. I did not in time and some I even missed completly. If google webmaster tools is giving you a warning by goodness you had better be asking someone how to fix it.
One bandwagon I am going to jump on though is that after the seo change for optimization for SERPS instead of PR I have increased my search traffic by 100%. It will be quite interesting to see what happens this month with the incoming search traffic from google.
I would love to hear how you faired with the page rank update, but more over if you were slapped and not doing anything grey or blackhat what exactly you think caused it. Together we can build a credible list for making sure some of the basics many of the paid by the hour pros take for granted.
Related posts:
- The Page Rank Update And What You Need To Know
- Important Page Rank Factors Exposed
- Google Page Rank Update In Progress!
- Page Rank is sooooo 2008
- Sunday Link Love – PageRank Link Love
Google brought my PR from a 3 to a 2. It doesn’t really matter to me anymore because PR isn’t that big of a deal anyway, unless you’re selling links (which by the way will result in a Google-slap of a lower PR).
Like you said, I’ll need to work on my SEO. My robots file for example has been untouched for quite a while now. I am going to have a lot of work to do.
I have to agree with most the increased serps traffic is far far better than just having higher PR. As you have pointed out and many have learned selling your PR=slap. It can in some cases even get you taken out of the Serps all together which is really bad unless you have the reach and word of mouth of someone like John Chow.
I got slapped across the board on PR, yet my SERPs have greatly improved. I don’t really optimize, though. Once in a while I’ll change a page slug, and if I’m bored enough, I’ll do a little keyword research and adjust phrases accordingly. But these are occasional, rather than regular things.
Once something is working for you I would be of the mind to not fix it, if it is not broken. Best advice a person a can give in that situation. It seems most everyone that was focused on page rank is now much more interested in serps and serp traffic. And obviously for good reasons.
Ben, my PR stayed the same…PR0. LOL! I haven’t been building this site at all, but that is changing now.
I am just catching up with all that can be done with regards to your article. I am still fuzzy on the Robot.txt and SERPs, but getting there.
I will hit you up in the Hood for some more tips and tricks. I usually hang out on Jarret’s site for this type of information, but good to have a few sources.
Oh yeah, Ben, my main site didn’t lose any Page Rank. It is a PR3 that stayed the same. I need to do some optimizing there.
My FT.com site doesn’t even have the Permalinks changed yet. I have been getting razzed about that lately, but will make it happen soon. I need to move my sites to my HostGator account first. They do all that for you, which is great!
Some of my sites stayed the same, but a few dropped. I agree that you need to forget about PR and focus on SERP’s. Good post
Got a 2, really don’t care, more concerned with traffic and repeat visitors lol.
No one knows what google does, I don’t even think they know what they do! Them sum bees lol.
On the point of google webmaster screaming at you due to ‘not found’ now causing a loss…I disagree on that point that this was the cause of PR loss.
The Nexus was originally a gaming website…it had 000’s of free game / reviews etc plus some other articles etc.
When I switched to the blog I had 10s of thousands of this url not found now errors BUT the PR went UP at the update and hasn’t gone done yet.
Though in regards to robot.txt very useful to block of archives etc to prevent dupeing.
Tags are important as they can become keywords for SE’s.
SE tarffic I don’t get a lot only about 30-50 a day and all I use is allseo plugin and recently smartseo links which provided a 5-10% increase.
Im working on a new plugin idea to help keyword targeting which I will mention if I make much headway.
I like your site. This is first time that I have left a comment; how lazy of me
I am wondering about PR. My site is almost 3 months old and I still am at PR0. I did slack off for the last few weeks and my traffic dropped, but I am back on track once again.
Does a higher PR translate into better placement in the serps ? I am curious about the power of PR. It seems, based on the above coments, that it is best to focus on great keyword selection, heavy duty networking, grunt marketing work, and having lots of unique context.
I just added your site to my favorites in my entrecard toolbar so you should be hearing from me again and again
Cheers, the goof blogger.
from my observations what I have found is that if you are well placed in the serps then you will get good PR for that page.
This PR will help you keep your position. Though a better optimized page can easily outrank you. But if optimization levels are the same then your PR will help you ‘outrank’ the other site.
well thanks for such a nice post it’s been always interesrting to know new facts about page rank there is always something new about it…… thanks a lot
Luckily… My PR went from N/A to PR4 in just 25 days.. Right now my blog is around 40 days old and it is doing well..
Page rank sure is one of those large items that can be thought about all day long but might be good to be left unthought of. It sure does seem to get set quite appropriately for sites of all different kinds.
bumped up from an n/a to a 3. doesn’t matter though since google isn’t really giving me any serp love. bummer.
I got a slight increase in PR this time (from 2 to 3) though it could have been better
Another thing that is getting better now is the increase in search traffic especially after all-in-one-seo and landing sites plugin installations.
Ajith
PS How can I get that little cloud before the comment link on the blog? Is that Haloscan and Blog template?
Stumbled upon this late but there’s so much hype about PR. Page rank sure is one of those large items that can be thought about all day long but might be good to be left unthought of like armen said.I concentrate on traffic and conversion rather that PR.
That’s a good idea – The rules for setting PR are too ambiguos anyway. Half the time you don’t even know what exactly is it that you need to do to get it up. It’s better to worry about stuff that you can have some impact on.