I’ve been a loyal reader of High Rankings Advisor for several years now and the one thing I’ve appreciated most is the way you’ve been completely honest with people who write in with questions seeking answers.

Well, I guess I’m one of those people because I would like to get your expert opinion on a question I have about Google’s PageRank. Yes, I know you’re not exactly the biggest fan of PageRank, but I thought I’d ask you anyway.

I recently signed up as an advertiser with [a blog review website] so I could purchase blog review postings for one of my clients. After enrolling, I purchased a PR5 blog review posting at the standard PR5 price of $40. Eventually my offer was picked up by a blogger, but the review posting only stayed on their PR5 home page for one day as the next day it was shifted from the front page of the blog to an archived page that had a PR0.

When I complained to a site representative that I had spent $40 for a link that should last more than one day, they reassured me that my client’s website will get the full impact of the PR5 link even though the review posting was no longer on the front page.

Here’s their representative’s exact quote:

“Blogs are ranked as a whole, the post pages are not ranked in Google. So what counts is the home page not the post links.”

My question to you is: When evaluating the value of a given link, is the representative correct, or does Google consider the PR of the web page the link is actually on, not the PR of the home page of the website?

Yours on the ‘Net,

Kenneth

++Jill’s Response++

Hi Kenneth,

It’s a bit more complicated than what the rep. told you. Pages are most definitely not ranked by the home page’s PageRank, as every page has its own PageRank. That said, PageRank *does* get passed throughout the website by the way the pages are all linked together.

For instance, if the page your link is on was linked from the main navigation of the website i.e., every single page of that website linked to it  a whole lot of PageRank would pass to it. However, I doubt that your one review page on their website is linked to within their main navigation. More likely there’s a section called “reviews” or something that is in the main navigation, and that main section page would most likely have a decent amount of PageRank. Then from the main reviews page, there is probably a list of reviews.

(Please note that I haven’t checked out the particular site you’re talking about, and am just making assumptions based on the way websites are generally put together.)

Now, depending on how many other review links there are on that page, and if your review is actually linked to from the main category page or not, your review page will of course gain some PageRank from that link. Then your review page will in turn pass some link popularity to the page of your actual site to which it links. (As an aside, please don’t use the toolbar green graph to judge PageRank because it’s only updated once in awhile…I’m talking about REAL PageRank…the kind only Google knows about.)

The thing is, because the review on their site is most likely linked to from only one link somewhere else on their site, it’s not going to be given a whole heck of a lot of PageRank. This doesn’t mean that it’s not a good link, or that it doesn’t pass some link juice to you, but it’s highly unlikely that it is anywhere close to passing the toolbar PR equivalent of a PR5.

Still, no worries. A link is a link, and a $40 one-time fee isn’t so bad for a link these days.

That said, there’s something else you should know – Google is actively trying to discount any paid review links and not allow them to pass PageRank because they don’t consider them a real vote for your site, but more of an advertisement. So if Google can in any way tell that the review and link to your site were paid for, then your site will get no PageRank or link juice passed to it. If the review site that your review is on is public about the fact that they take money for their reviews, chances are that Google knows this and is not passing PageRank to your site from the paid review link.

While many people are up in arms over this, it really does make sense that Google wants to count only actual votes for people’s sites in their PageRank algorithm, not purchased votes. So if Google already knows that your review was paid for, then whether it is on a PR10, PR5 or PR0 page it will provide your site with the same amount of PageRank – exactly none!

Hope this helps!

source : http://www.isedb.com/db/articles/1857/1/Are-Websites-Ranked-as-a-Whole/Page1.html

Anybody who monitors their rankings with the same vigor that we in the SEO community do will have noticed some fairly dramatic shifts in the algorithm starting last Thursday (July 5th) and continuing through the weekend.  Many sites are rocketing into the top 10 which, of course, means that many sites are being dropped at the same time.  We were fortunate not to have any clients on the losing end of that equation however we have called and emailed the clients who saw sudden jumps into the top positions to warn them that further adjustments are coming.  After a weekend of analysis there are some curiosities in the results that simply require further tweaks in the ranking system.

This update seems to have revolved around three main areas:  domain age, backlinks and PageRank.

Domain Age

It appears that Google is presently giving a lot of weight to the age of a domain and, in this SEO’s opinion, disproportionately so.  While the age of a domain can definitely be used as a factor in determining how solid a company or site is, there are many newer sites that provide some great information and innovative ideas.  Unfortunately a lot of these sites got spanked in the last update.

On this tangent I have to say that Google’s use of domain age as a whole is a good filter, allowing them to “sandbox” sites on day one to insure that they aren’t just being launched to rank quickly for terms.  Recalling back to the “wild west days” of SEO when ranking a site was a matter of cramming keywords into content and using questionable methods to generate links quickly I can honestly say that adding in this delay was an excellent step that insured that the benefits of pumping out domains became extremely limited.  So I approve of domain age being used to value a site – to a point.

After a period of time (let’s call it a year shall we) the age should and generally has only had a very small influence on a site’s ranking with the myriad of other factors overshadowing the site’s whois data.  This appears to have changed in the recent update with age holding a disproportionate weight.  In a number of instances this has resulted in older, less qualified domains to rank higher than newer sites of higher quality.

This change in the ranking algorithm will most certainly be adjusted as Google works to maximize the searchers experience.  We’ll get into the “when” question below.

Backlinks

The way that backlinks are being calculated and valued has seen some adjustments in the latest update as well.  The way this has been done takes me back a couple years to the more easily gamed Google of old.  This statement alone reinforces the fact that adjustments are necessary.

The way backlinks are being valued appears to have lost some grasp on relevancy and placed more importance on sheer numbers.  Sites with large, unfocused reciprocal link directories are outranking sites with fewer but more relevant link.  Non-reciprocal links lost the “advantages” that they held over reciprocal links until recently.

Essentially the environment is currently such that Google has made itself more easily gamed than it was a week ago.  In the current environment, building a reasonable sized site with a large recip link directory (even unfocused) should be enough to get you ranking.  For obvious reasons this cannot

(and should not) stand indefinitely.

PageRank

On the positive side of the equation, PageRank appears to have lost some of it’s importance including the importance of PageRank as it pertains to the value of a backlinks.  In my opinion this is a very positive step on Google’s part and shows a solid understanding of the fact that PageRank means little in terms of a site’s importance.  That said, while PageRank is a less than perfect calculation subject to much abuse and manipulation from those pesky people in the SEO community it did serve a purpose and while it needed to be replaced it doesn’t appear to have been replaced with anything of substantial value.

A fairly common belief has been that PageRank would be or is being replaced by TrustRank and Google would not give us a green bar to gague a site’s trust on (good call Google).  With this in mind one of two things has happened; either Google has decided the TrustRank is irrelevant and so is PageRank and decided to scrap both (unlikely) or they have shifted the weight from PageRank to TrustRank to some degree and are just now sorting out the issues with their TrustRank calculations (more likely).  Issues that may have existed with TrustRank may not have been clear due to it’s weight in the overall algorithm and with this shift reducing the importance of PageRank the issues that face the TrustRank calculations may well be becoming more evident

In truth, the question is neither here nor there (as important a question as it may be).  We will cover why this is in the …

Conclusion

So what does all of this mean?  First, it means that this Thursday or Friday we can expect yet another update to correct some of the issues we’ve seen rise out of the most current round.  This shouldn’t surprise anyone too much, we’ve been seeing regular updates out of Google quite a bit over the past few months.

But what does this mean regarding the aging of domains?  While I truly feel that an aging delay or “sandbox” is a solid filter on Google’s part – it needs to have a maximum duration.  A site from 2000 is not, by default, more relevant than a site from 2004.  After a year-or-so the trust of a domain should hold steady or at most, hold a very slight weight.  This is an area we are very likely to see changes in the next update.

As far as backlinks go, we’ll see changes in the way they are calculated unless Google is looking to revert back to the issues they had in 2003.  Lower PageRank, high relevancy links will once again surpass high quantity, less relevant links.  Google is getting extremely good and determining relevancy and so I assume the current algorithm issues has more to do with the weight assigned to different factors than an inability to properly calculate a links relevancy.

And in regards to PageRank, Google will likely shift back slightly to what worked and give more importance to PageRank, at least while they figure out what went awry here.

In short, I would expect that with an update late this week or over the weekend we’re going to see a shift back to last week’s results (or something very close to it) after which they’ll work on the issues they’ve experienced and launch a new (hopefully improved) algorithm shift the following weekend.  And so, if you’ve enjoyed a sudden jump from page 6 to top 3, don’t pop the cork on the champaign too quickly and if you’ve noticed some drops, don’t panic.  More adjustments to this algorithm are necessary and, if you’ve used solid SEO practices and been consistent and varied in your link building tactics – keep at it and your rankings will return.

Source : http://www.isedb.com/db/articles/1689/1/Google-Algorithm-Update-Analysis/Page1.html

The lifeblood of any website/ecommerce business is traffic, and every webmaster knows the best type of traffic is natural, organic search engine traffic. There are two very important reasons for this: (1) it is extremely targeted, and (2) It is FREE! The hard part is getting top ranking for your sites keywords… or is it? The purpose of this article is to provide a few simple, effective, and most important, search engine friendly strategies to help boost your websites’ ranking and ultimately your traffic.

1. We will start with the Meta Tags. I know you have already heard of, and are probably currently using meta tags on your site. This is great. I just want to make sure you are using them effectively. We will only go over 2 tags: the “title” tag, and the “description” tag. We will not go over the “keywords” tag, as the major search engines have placed less and less weight on this one, and some would argue this tag has no weight at all. I still use this tag however, as I feel there is some merit and no drawbacks to using this tag.

I have found it effective to use similar text in the “title” and “description” tags, and to place your keywords prominently in these tags (near the beginning and more than once). I have seen sites with “sitename.com”, “New Page 1″, or “Welcome to my site” in the “title” tag, which really does not help in their quest for higher rankings for their particular keyword. Also, try not to use words such as “and”, “or”, or “the” in these tags.

Important note about keywords Search engines evaluate keyword prominence, keyword weight, and keyword density when determining a site’s ranking. All three are calculated individually for the page, the title tag, the description tag, as well as other areas on a page. Keyword prominence means how close the keyword is to the beginning of your page. Keyword weight refers to how many times a particular keyword or phrase can be found on the page. Keyword density is the ratio of the keyword to the other words on the page. You do not want the keyword weight or density to be too high, as this can appear to the search engine as “keyword stuffing” and most search engines penalize sites that stuff their keywords. 2. Place your navigational links (and JavaScript) at the right or at the bottom, but not on the left, of the page. When the search engines “read” your site, they read from the top left to the bottom right. Search engines place an emphasis on the first 100 words or text on the site. You do not want these words to be navigational links or Javascript. Ideally, you want to have your “heading” tags with your keywords in the beginning of your page. This being said, placing your links/JavaScript on the right or bottom of your page ensures the search engine spiders get to the text first, giving more weight to what’s important on your page.

3. Place alt tags on all of your images. Search engine spiders cannot “read” pictures or images. The only way a spider knows what an image is about is by reading the alt tag. This is also another chance to place more of your keywords in your HTML, improving your page’s keyword weight/density. Alt tags are easy to make and they can make a big difference in your sites keyword ranking. A simple alt tag looks like this: alt=”put your keyword phrase here.” Search engines separately calculate keyword prominence, density, and weight in alt tags as well, so optimize your tags.

4. Place your keywords at the bottom of your page. Just as search engines place more weight on the first words of your page, they also do the same to the last words. The general thinking is this, if your site is about a certain subject, then the main points, or keywords, should, appear at the beginning, be spread throughout the page, and be prominent at the conclusion. But if you have all of your navigational links and JavaScript at the bottom, your relevant page text could end well before the HTML does. An easy way to have your keywords at the bottom of your page is to include them in the copyright information. For example, if you have a dog food website, you could have something like this at the very bottom of the page:

copyright 2005 yoursite.com World’s best dog food

Search engines are not (as of this writing), penalizing sites using this technique, and it wouldn’t really make much sense for them to do so.

5. The Anchor Text of your links. Anchor text is the actual linking text on a site. It is what the user clicks on to navigate to that particular site or page. If a search engine finds many links to your site using the term “dog food”, then the search engine concludes your site is about “dog food”. This is overlooked quite often, but it seems to have a very large impact on your search engine rankings for a particular keyword. Your anchor text needs to be the keyword or phrase you are trying to target. Try to avoid anchor text such as “Click Here” or “www.yoursite.com”

Also, if you’re running a reciprocal link campaign, be sure to use variations of your text. If an engine notices every link to your site is identical, it could place less weight on these links or potentially penalize your site. This is because search engines generally give more weight to “naturally occurring” links, and less to “reciprocal link exchange campaigns”. Using different, but relevant anchor text can dramatically affect your targeted keyword rankings, by making your links appear more natural.

Effective SEO may seem difficult at first, but as you have read above, little tricks that require little or no programming knowledge, can make a huge impact on your website’s keyword ranking.

author Noah Ulrich