“SEO and Page Rank”
Google’s Dirty little secret…
Have you ever seen search results where a site with a higher PageRank ends up under the lower one in Google’s search results?
Ever wonder why?
Since there is a possiblity that a new session of PageRanking going on now, there is quite a bit of buzz about PageRank all over the internet. From reading other Blogs, and reading the comments of their readers, you would think the latest Google PageRanking was somehow all that mattered in SEO. It is almost funny how excited people are getting about all of this. “I went from a 3 to a 5,” “I don’t know why but I now am PR4, and I was PR7,” “I am happy that my measly PR3 didn’t change, with everyone dropping in rank I was worried.” These are just some of the comments I have read recently.
Is page rank really all that important? From all of the buzz you would think that it is all that matters in the results Google returns.
The truth is that PageRank is only one aspect of how Google ranks a site in the search results. From some of the posts and comments I have read, you would think that a PageRank higher than 6 equates to guaranteed success on the internet.
The truth is, if success means being in the number 1 spot in the Google search results for your keyword, then it is not. I have seen PR7 sites come back below PR3 sites.
Is PageRank just another way of saying “hey mine is bigger than yours?”
The truth is that page rank is just one of many factors used to determine where you land in the search results. Don’t get me wrong it is important to have a good page rank, but it is not the only thing that matters. If it was a higher ranked site could never come back below a lower page, but they do.
One possible explanation of this Phenomenon could be the higher ranking page has some bad outbound links. By bad links I mean they are pointing to sites that no longer exist, or have been banned by Google. This is an area that is often overlooked as a problem.
In the quest for the holy PR, webmasters often exchange links, buy links, post to blogs, submit articles etc… but, how many times do they go back and check that the pages they are linking to are pages they should be linking to? The answer for many is not enough.
If high page rank is your goal, then a linking strategy must be an integral part of your strategy. If you don’t follow up and make sure that you are linked to sites that are acceptable to Google you could end up hurting yourself.
I recommend that you check the pages you link to at least once every couple months. more if you have developed a large list of link partners. If you find that a site you link to has suddenly lost all of its PageRank, then you may have a problem.
Check to see if they are still in the Google index by searching for their entire domain name. If no results come back, then they are banned (presuming that they were once in the index, you did check that before exchanging links right?). You should immediately delete the link from your page to the banned page, or Big G wont like it. And if Big G doesn’t like something you do, they may not ban you, but rest assured they will penalize you in the search results.
Don’t avoid exchanging links because of this. It is still important to gain PageRank (if for no other reason than to be able to comment every couple months on the new ranks). Just keep an eye on your linking partners to make sure they don’t bring you down.
Thanks for reading,
Rob
P.s. I discuss linking and PageRank in depth in my new eBook “The SEO Secret Revealed” and I am making it available free for a limited time to subscribers of my SEO Blog.
