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There was a page rank update last week, me, personally, I’ve lost all interest in that little green bar but I know there are a lot of people who still hang on that figure. To them “unranked” is a dirty word, a dirty horrible nasty word! I’ve had my fair share of unranked pages in the past and for the most part where I’ve chosen to I’ve managed to get them “some rank”, here’s my tips for getting back on Google’s good books.
So after all the fuss of the last much delayed page rank update that saw many blogs and link sellers getting slapped by Google who would have thought that they’d slip in a page rank update so early in the new year?
It was certainly a surprise for me but I’ve just gone through all my websites and it looks like an improvement all around. One or 2 pages have dropped from a 5 to a 4 but other than that everything else is up at least a 1, some as much as a jump of 3. Great news for this Blog as well, not the 5 that the page rank prediction tools predict but still an increase to a 3. As the domain and content ages and Google begins to trust me more hopefully it should continue to improve.
Anyway that’s enough about me, how have you got on with this latest page rank update?
Ah well, such is life. First of all I’d better explain my apparent over keen interest in Page Rank. Put simply it’s because I’m a professional SEO consultant and real companies like real performance goals (No matter how pointless). Page Rank is one such goal, Page Rank gives business people who know nothing about the web something to talk about (Kudos to Google for that one), that things are moving forward and that their money is going somewhere. Of course the profit they make online is the most important goal but like I’ve said previously PR is just one more thing for me to check. Cool, so why the PR2 here?
Some Linking Mistakes
It’s a good job this is one of my personal websites because I have made a couple of quite big mistakes with my first jaunt into blogging-
Overall the linking pattern here is not that natural at the moment, this combined with my posts about TLA (even though I’ve never sold a link from this site) and buying links has probably resulted in a downgrading of my PR. On raw link data it really should be much higher but Google are just not that easy to work out! Chances are I’ve got several months before the next export to correct it so that might be an interesting little case study into how to build a natural linking pattern. Then again visitor numbers, RSS subscribers and earnings are all on the up so should I care? (Who am I kidding, there is professional pride involved here).
In better news every client site has been upgraded and most to a 4 or better (One site was only started the beginning of October!). Of course it means nothing in terms of profit but it keeps them happy and that keeps me happy.
Ever since I announced that the Make Money Online was showing a predicted page rank of 5 the number of comments here increased significantly. This is great, I never ever imagined that I’d have such an active little blog this early into my blogging career. Some of these commentators really make this a great place to visit, Michelle, SEO Optimization and a few of you other guys add to posts with your comments and it’s really appreciated.
However on the other side of things ever since the PR5 announcement there has also been a large increase in what I like to call shit comments. They’re not strictly spam, they’re just a crap few words from somebody who hasn’t even bothered to read the post! I suppose I should be grateful as they make this blog look even more popular but I’m just beginning to get a little annoyed with it. I’m not asking much, just that you read the post you’re commenting on before posting a comment. I think that from now on I’m going to start deleting shit comments, it’s just not fair on those genuine people who take the time to read what is posted here.
So we all know that Google’s latest page rank export is taking forever and a day to complete, fortunately there are a few page rank prediction tools out there that can help. Obviously the accuracy isn’t going to be 100% but from my previous experience I’ve found that on average they tend to be right 9 times out of 10. When you have a brand new website (like this blog) even the prediction tools don’t always work and that is what I was experiencing up until today. Finally I’ve got my predicted page rank and it’s a…….FIVE. Not just a 5 but quite a strong one at a 5.3
If this is true then that’s great news for a blog that has only been around for 2 months. PR is not the be all and end all but straight away this will allow me to monetise in many more ways, reviews, sponsors and links can all come into play. I’m even more excited about Google’s next PR export now!
Everybody should be using Google’s Webmaster Control panel by now. In registering your domain not only can you submit a site map to help speed up indexing but you can also see various stats and figures about your website (it’s a great way of seeing what page rank you can expect at the next PR export). One of my favourite tools is the “Links” facility. This allows you to see all your back links (the websites that link to you). In the past Google made a small amount of this information via the link: operator but now you have an easy way of viewing all back links.
However, Matt Cutts was very nice to point out that not all the links in that list count in terms of a vote for your website. A lot of those links will be passing 0 page rank, have nonsense link text or any of a number of other problems. Luckily for us web masters somebody has come up with a way of viewing that information as well. You’ll be able to see the Page rank of the pages that link to you, if it’s “no followed” and even what link text is used including the alt tag for image links.
In order to get this to work you’ll need a copy of Firefox, you should have a copy of Firefox installed anyway because enough users use it to warrant testing all your websites on Firefox! The next thing you’ll need is a Firefox plug-in called Greasemonkey. Greasemonkey is a HTML post-processor for pages loaded into Firefox (it does something after the page has been loaded), by using scripts you can manipulate the content of what your browser shows you. It’s mainly used to insert extra HTML into a page. Once you’ve got Greasemonkey installed you’ll need to install the following script (just click on the link to have it installed for you, after you’ve installed Greasemonkey!). By activating the plug-in and going to the links page you’ll now get all that extra information. A colour code is available to help you:-
Red – The link no longer exists
Orange – The link is not counted for some reason (normally a rel=nofollow is being used)
Black – Everything is OK
Although the results aren’t always 100% reliable it does provide some great insight in to who is linking to you, with what text and with what page rank.
For more information about the extra link info script please follow the link.
I was chatting to a mate of mine over the weekend about supplementing his income when this question cropped up. You see I reckon that if you can elevate any single website to a page rank of 7 then you should be able to make enough money from it to be setup comfortably for life. I can’t repeat what he said exactly but it rhymed with rollicks!
I have a habit of making things sound too simple but my reckoning on this one was easy. If I look back at my own websites over the last year and look at how much money they bring in then it goes something like this:-
I’ve got quite a few websites spread over a lot of different topics and those seem to be fair averages of my income earners, some get a lot more traffic than others but that’s how my sites balance out. When you add to that the fact that JohnChow.com with a page rank of 6 is pulling in somewhere around the $400 a day mark then I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that a website with Page Rank 7 should be making somewhere near $1000 a day for anybody with any clue on monetising websites. Of course with Page Rank you get the added bonus of a better search placement and chances are more traffic but just looking at Page Rank as a goal, do you think that getting a single website to PR7 would be enough? How about we all try and get themakemoneyonline.net to Page Rank 7 and I’ll be happy to share the answer!