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EP:009 – The Cotton Club Podcast

May 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Just wrapped up another episode of The Cotton Club Podcast tonight w/ guest hosts Brant Collins and Robert Blake.  The topic for discussion for this evenings show was SEO, or search engine optimization.  I have actually gotten a lot of requests from people to do a show on this topic so hopefully we did a good enough job explaining our viewpoints without confusing everyone.

On the show we discuss some popular misconceptions regarding SEO as well as some standard practices that we all put into our clients projects for SEO.  We also discussed which search engines you should worry about, and what market share the big SE’s have at this time.

Brant and Robert also shared some findings from a few of their own personal analytics reports to help give us some insight as to what they are seeing and we also touched on what impact social media saturation can have on a websites traffic.  We also discussed quality versus quantity in terms of traffic analytics.  If you own a website and would like to maximize your search engine rankings, you should definitely check out this episode.

To wrap up the show we each talked about our favorite iPhone apps of the week.  Robert mentioned a game he has been playing called Angry Birds, Brant mentioned an augmented reality browser app called Layar that sounds pretty interesting, and I shared an app called Wind Meter that uses your phone to measure wind speed.

As always, thanks for listening and if you have any questions or topics you would like to see us address on the show be sure to drop me a line at: cotton.rohrscheib@pleth.com and I will be happy to consider it.

EP009-TheCottonClub [ 37:25 ] Play Now | Play in Popup
Filed Under: Podcasts, Search Engines Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Be Careful What You Say on Facebook & Twitter

October 22, 2009 By 3 Comments

In case you haven’t heard this already, Google and Microsoft (Bing) both announced that they will be displaying tweets from Twitter and status messages from Facebook in their search results.  Now for the most part I know that most of us already exercise caution in what we put out there, but I honestly believe that there are going to be a few “less cautious” people that are going to be caught off guard when all of this comes to fruition.  You probably know exactly what I am talking about too, it’s not just the expletives and profanity, but I think that element is going to be the most fun to watch and read about.

For as long as I have been working in this industry, I have always worked under the assumption that anything I put out there is going to live forever.  I also try to keep in mind that there could come a day where my clients or my mom might actually read my tweets or blog posts.  I think that a lot of us in this business long enough already know this, but I am concerned as to whether everyone has come to this realization yet…

Your Social Brand Reputation is More Important than Ever!!

Honestly though, I think that the biggest result that we will see from the search engines incorporating these “social nuggets” into their search results is going to be even more emphasis placed on social media by corporations.  Especially in the realm of customer service and dispute resolutions.  I think that companies will realize quickly that their customers bad experiences are showing up in Google and Bing (CEO’s and Marketing / PR People are always googling themselves and their companies in their spare time, after all the perception falls broadly on their shoulders). 

One recent situation came up with a friend of mine who had his luggage lost by one of the major airlines and it took a few days for him to get the airlines to work with him.  This all played out on Twitter, and for the most part I think all of Central Arkansas heard about it (and rightfully so, good for him! I even retweeted him a few times myself).  Granted, the airlines that I am referring to already has a Twitter account, but I think they could have jumped on this opportunity and handled it better and more efficiently than they did.  Well, take this into consideration, not only is this bad experience going to live forever inside of Twitter, but now it’s also going to be archived w/ two of the most widely used search engines in the world. 

In case you missed what I was trying to say through all of this, here it is in the nutshell; Your brand’s social reputation was already important, but now it’s a lot more important than you can imagine!!  I recently did a presentation related to this topic, you can find that here along w/ my slides…

How’s All of This Going to Be Rolled Out?

Honestly I don’t have all of the details.  I do know that each of the search engines are probably going to have their own policies for including peoples social content.  I suspect it will be some sort of opt-in model, but that’s probably still up in the air right now.  I also envision the social networks themselves adding another layer to this equation, probably an opt-in model in this case as well.  You will likely see a checkbox in Facebook and Twitter that will say something like, “include my status updates in search engines” or something along those lines.

My Prediction for Facebook and Twitter

I honestly don’t think Twitter is going to have near as many concerns going into this model that Facebook is going to see.  For the most part I don’t think that Twitter users look at Twitter with the same concerns that they do Facebook.  I think Facebook users think that they have a lot more invested in Facebook (20 year old school yearbook photos, baby pictures, vacation photos, relationship statuses, etc.).  All of this to say that I think Facebook users are going to be a lot more guarded on this issue once they figure out what’s going on.  You just thought the Facebook terms of service issue was a biggie, wait until someone’s inappropriate status update shows up in Google underneath their employer’s listing… Whew!!

My Predictions for Google and Microsoft (Bing)

I think that both of these search engines are going to see some positives for adding this content to their search results.  I am anxious to see how it is presented, I have some ideas as to how they could do this if anyone from either of these companies wants to give me a shout…

I also think that by doing this that search engines in general are become even more useful and relevant than they were before.  Unless of course, you are looking for Kanye West’s concert dates, they are going to located on page 100 or so, tucked neatly behind all of the “you suck” tweets he got after the VMA’s.

More on this Topic:

There has been a lot of coverage since these announcements were made but there are a couple that I recommend checking out, Dan Zarella actually saw this in his crystal ball, and PC World did a nice piece on this story here.  I also like Web Worker Daily, they covered this story here…

What Are Your Thoughts?

I would be interested as to what some of you are thinking on this topic, hit me back or leave me a comment and let me know…

Filed Under: Search Engines, Social Media / Web 2.0 Tagged With: , , , ,

Great Blog Content –vs- SEO

September 26, 2009 By 5 Comments

A while back I did a post on Social Saturation and Search Engine Optimization, in that post I emphasized how important it is to get your content onto the social networks.  I was reading a post today by Dawn Foster at Web Worker Daily and she brought up some points that I also agree with and I wanted to share it w/ you. 

In her post she mentioned a discussion panel that she was a part of where there were 2 content people and 2 seo people that do seo full time.  She hit a home run in the first few sentences on this post and I could not agree with her more:

This weekend I was on an “SEO Smackdown” panel at our local WordCamp Portland. Two of us were from the content side, while the other two panelists were SEO experts. My take on SEO is that writing compelling, interesting blog content that people will want to talk about and link to will get you around 95 percent of the way to good search engine rankings. If you don’t have great content, SEO is not going to be very useful for you. You might be able to do some SEO trickery to get people to your web site, but if they aren’t impressed by the content when they arrive, they won’t stick around long enough to have any impact.

Now, I want to emphasize that I am not advocating abandoning SEO, there are some basic principles that you should adhere to, you can find some of my thoughts on SEO in a post I did a while back, that’s not what this post is about though.  You should pay attention to key things such as page titles, descriptions, etc., but you should do that on everything you publish to the web.  Much more than that though, you need to focus on your content.  Here are some valid points that Dawn brought out in her article…

Write Great Titles

Keep in mind that you are writing titles for human beings, so your title should be catchy and convey the meaning of the post as a first priority. While you write the title, you should also be thinking about the keywords that people might want to use to find your content and make sure that you have included a keyword or two in the title. I’ll illustrate this with a couple of examples of good and bad titles.

  • Bad: Dawn’s Thoughts for March
  • Better: Analysis of Facebook and Twitter Demographics in March
  • Bad: Day 1 of LinuxCon
  • Better: Mobile Linux and Open Standards on Day 1 of LinuxCon

Write New and Interesting Content

Write content that people will want to link to and discuss. If you are rehashing the same stories as every other blogger, people are much less likely to read and respond to your content. Write posts that are new, fresh and unique with analysis and insight from your unique background and perspective. You can talk about a news story that other people are blogging about, but spend some time writing about your experiences and ideas that offer a different perspective than the rest of the crowd. Use research in new ways, interview interesting people, and talk about your experiences. By offering something new, people are much more likely to read your blog post and link to it, which is where the real SEO magic is found.

Include Personal Anecdotes

Nothing makes a post unique quite like personal anecdotes based on your experiences. I saw this first-hand when I started writing for WebWorkerDaily. I wrote what I thought was a brilliant post on using Yahoo Pipes and then I wrote a short, quick post about how I dread answering the question, “So, What Do You Do?” during the holidays when talking to non-technical family and friends. The “brilliant” post got a few comments and some traffic, but nothing like the short, personal story about how to answer that difficult question. Human beings read our blog posts, and personal stories resonate with people in a way that technical facts and figures never will.

I just thought that this was very good information and thought that I would share it w/ my readers.  Of course, if you work in this industry you well know that getting clients to write content is a lot like pulling teeth, but the ones that do put forth the effort usually see the results from it.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous, Search Engines, Social Media / Web 2.0 Tagged With: , , ,

Good Social Saturation -vs- Organic SEO

August 5, 2009 By 11 Comments

A lot of times when my partners and I are speaking with a new client about a project they will always list “Good Search Engine Placement” at the top of their priority list.  This has been the case for as long as I can remember, and for good reason.  If a website doesn’t pull up well in the search engines it means that the website owner is going to have to spend that much more money on targeted PPC campaigns just to drive enough traffic to their website for them to break even.  With me so far? I did a post last month citing an article found on Yahoo discussing how people spend their time online, I only see this trend improving…

In last month’s blog post I mentioned that since social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter have caught on in popularity there has been a sharp trend in how people spend their time on the internet.  There have been a lot of studies performed, but for me the biggest indicator is my log files and traffic analytics.  People aren’t using Google to find my content as much as they are Twitter and Facebook.  Now, I am going to say for the record that by no means am I implying that website owners should abandon or neglect their SEO practices, I am just saying that there should probably be a lot more emphasis put on social media saturation.

By Social Media Saturation, my own terminology for promoting content inside social networks, I am talking about putting your content onto the social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and even MySpace if possible.  My most recent log files show me a lot of interesting things in regards to how my content is discovered.  For instance, my number one referrer is Twitter, and my second referrer is Facebook.  Google comes in a close third just below Facebook in terms of referring traffic to my blog.

Okay, so how do you get your content into these social networks?  That’s where a company like Pleth can help you out.  We will often tie our clients RSS feeds into Twitter and Facebook so their content is automatically sent into these networks.  Now, there is a fine line as to what is appropriate to send inside these networks, and there is also such thing as overkill.  You don’t want to have friends or followers unfollow you just as soon as you get them.

If you are interested in learning more about how you can penetrate the social media landscape with content from your business website, please don’t hesitate to contact us to discuss your project.

Filed Under: Search Engines, Social Media / Web 2.0 Tagged With: , , ,

Tools for Managing PPC Campaigns…

June 1, 2009 By 2 Comments

If you are using the Internet as a vehicle to market your products or services through PPC campaigns I strongly recommend ShoeMoney Internet Marketing Tools.  And trust me, I know that when you are running PPC campaigns that you often find yourself on the front end getting ready to shell out some serious cash, and it’s intimidating.  I also know that the last thing you are looking for when getting into PPC is another online service that is going to cost you money, but if you take into consideration that by investing in a service such as this it can actually save you money in the long run, or allow you to get the most bang from your investment, it really makes a lot of sense.

Managing PPC campaigns is a service that my partners and I have offered for a number of years now, and the sheer amount of buys that we have made on our clients behalf over the years is amazing, and the management fees that we have made from our clients for providing this service is substantial, so trust me when I tell you I would not recommend using anything that I didn’t believe in because honestly I would just assume to sell you our management services, but I know that in a lot of cases clients don’t have the budget to do PPC and to pay a company like ours to manage it for them, and I hate to see our neccessary management fees cut into what the client could be investing into PPC buys.  But this program works, I have seen it in action and I can say that ShoeMoney know’s his stuff.  Here are just a few of the features that come along w/ ShoeMoney Internet Marketing Tools that you should consider:

Generate Ads – Ever wonder if your competitors’ ads are working better than yours? With the PPC Ad Generator, simply input your keyword, display URL and click URL. Click the Generate Ads button and receive sample ad copy for that keyword. This ad copy comes directly from actual competing ads currently displayed on major search engines. Select the ads you like and save them for your future campaigns.

Manage Ads – Increase your efficiency by managing all of your PPC ads from one location. Use the PPC Ad Manager to create, edit and delete your saved ad copy. You can then export your ads to Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter.

Manage Keywords – Easily manage all of your keywords from one place! After using the ShoeMoney Keyword Generator, Grabber and Suggestion tools, use the PPC Keyword Manager to create, edit and delete your saved keyword lists.

Generate Keywords – Are you looking for great keyword ideas? Type a niche keyword into the Keyword Generator and create a list of possible PPC keywords. Once you’ve edited your keyword list, you can simply save it to your ShoeMoney Tools account.

Get Your Competitors Keywords – What if you could get your competitors’ keywords? Now, you can! Other people have tried to imitate this tool, but none with our accuracy. Use the Keyword Grabber to reveal all of the keywords being bid on for a particular domain.

Get Keyword Suggestions – You can get quality keyword suggestions from various search engines. But where else can you get keyword suggestions from multiple search engines all in one place? With the Keyword Suggestions tool, simply enter a base keyword and the tool will expand upon the keyword using five different databases including Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Ask and Cuil.

Build PPC Campaigns Instantly – Maximize your efficiency with the Instant PPC Campaign tool. After you have generated quality keyword and ad lists in your ShoeMoney Tools account, choose the lists you would like to use, name your campaign and determine your maximum cost per click (CPC). Ad files for your Google AdWords, Microsoft adCenter, and Yahoo Search Marketing advertising accounts are then instantly generated! Start earning more PPC cash now.

Build Local PPC Campaigns – Pay per click marketing on the local level is like shooting fish in a barrel! When people search locally, they typically use the keyword mixed with a zip code, city, state, or a combination. Input your keyword, zip code, and the radius you would like to target. With the Local Keyword tool, you can then develop a solid, local keyword list targeted towards specific geographic areas – perfect for local PPC marketing!

Find Local Keyword Competitors – Often times when people search for local businesses and services, they do so by searching for specific brands, stores, companies or professionals. By using ShoeMoney Tools’ Local Brand tool, you can find the names of local competitors to add to your PPC keyword list. When you’re done editing your list, simply save it to your ShoeMoney account.

Build Google AdWords Campaigns – Maximize your PPC profitability in four simple steps! With the Google AdWords Campaign Builder tool, you can instantly build a PPC campaign that gives you great, competitive results. First, select your campaign name and bidding options. Next, choose your keywords and keyword mixing options. Third, determine your display and click-through URLS. Finally, input your ad copy and click the Build PPC Campaigns button. Upload your campaign directly to your Google AdWords account and within minutes, you can start generating cash!

 

ShoeMoney Internet Marketing Tools

Filed Under: Monetization, Search Engines Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Tools for Managing SEO…

June 1, 2009 By 1 Comment

One of the popular services we offer our clients at Pleth is SEO, or search engine optimization.  I know that lately I have made profound statements saying things like SEO has taken a backseat to social saturation, etc., but honestly SEO is still something that your company should take a look at and track pretty closely.  One of the worst things that can happen for your online presence is for your search engine rankings to deteriorate, especially after all of the time and effort you have put into your rankings.

As I mentioned earlier, my partners and I manage SEO for our clients, and it’s something that keeps evolving over time.  For example, things that we used to do a year or two ago to help our clients outrank their competition have changed dramatically in only a short period of time.  But, for the most part there are things that remain constant also, these elements are somewhat easy to track.  If you are a do it yourself SEO person, I have one set of tools that I recommend, and that’s it.  These tools are provided by ShoeMoney.  Here are a few of the high points included with the tools if you are interested:

Analyze Your Backlinks – More links equal higher search engine rankings! It’s that simple. The Backlink Analyzer tool allows you to see first-hand where your competitors are gaining links from and the exact anchor text being used in the links. Now you can use their same tactics! With this tool, you can also find out how people are linking to you and increase your rankings by contacting those sites that have misspelled your link.

Buy Valuable Backlinked Domains – Want to give your domain a boost in the search engine rankings? At the ShoeMoney Tools Domain Marketplace, you can find thousands of currently unregistered sites – each one with a valuable amount of powerful links pointing to them (including .edu, .gov., .mil, and .org). Purchase and redirect 5 to 6 of these domains to a site you already have in a particular niche for a ranking boost.

Find Backlinks – Want to see if a site is worth pursuing? Want to find some quality places to purchase links? Want to view your competitor’s backlinks? With the Backlinks Finder tool, simply type in a keyword for any niche. You will then be able to view the top 10 Google results for that keyword as well as each site’s backlinks along with corresponding PR and Alexa data.

Find Out Your Keyword Density – See how your competitors are using keywords and compare it to your current strategy. The Keyword Density tool allows you to compare one keyword and one domain against the top 10 Google competitors. The tool analyzes the keyword density of on-page text and also whether or not the keyword is in the title tag, meta tags and even heading tags. Improve your keyword strategy today.

Find Most Linked to Pages – Analyze any domain to see which pages are the strongest, or the ones with the most "link juice" from incoming links. With this tool, you can view the top 10 most linked to pages for a specified domain. Now you can see what sort of content is working for your site and others when it comes to gaining links.

Optimize Your Text – Ever wondered if your website copy was keyword rich? Most well ranking pages have at least 11 to 20 repetitions of a keyword. With the Text Optimizer tool, simply paste copy into the text box. Then input the keyword for which you would like to optimize the text. Within seconds, the tool analyzes any page or article text for that particular keyword’s density. Optimize your text today!

Find Your Outgoing Links – Before approaching a website about a potential link exchange or purchasing a link on the site, it’s good to see what other sites they have already linked to. With the Outgoing Links tool, enter a specific domain and you will instantly see all the websites this domain is linking to.

Track Your Keywords – Enter the domain that you would like to track keyword rankings for. After you have entered the domain you would like to track, enter the keywords you would like to track for that domain. The system will then determine what URLs rank for those keywords.

 

ShoeMoney Internet Marketing Tools

Filed Under: Search Engines Tagged With: , , , ,

Google Set To Change Algorithm

April 22, 2009 By 1 Comment

google-logo1 It looks like blackhat seo spammers have finally forced Google’s hand and they are in the process now of making adjustments to their ranking algorithms to counteract the manipulations.

For the record, few people outside of Google, if any, are going to really know right off the bat how this algorithm change is going to affect Google’s overall search product until the changes actually go into affect.

My advice, just keep writing good content and do what is recommended by Google and the other Search Engines for getting good search engine positions and don’t try to fool or break the system, it just doesn’t pay off in the end.  Be patient…

Google is set to make changes to its search ranking algorithm to combat the spate of links leading to malicious web pages appearing at the top of Google’s search results, according to an inside source.

Over the past few months, cybercriminals have been using blackhat SEO techniques to manipulate search rankings. When it first began, they were marginally successful at following Google Trends to find buzzy search queries and elevating a newly created targeted webpage.

But after a short period of time, these same gangs appear to have become disturbingly effective. Last week, when researching a news story, I found the top five results all led to fake scareware pages.

Obviously if Google fails to do something about this manipulation, users will lose trust and the good ole days of Google will be over fast. A Googler speaking on condition of anonymity told WebProNews a ranking change is pending that tackles spam of this kind. Once the change goes live, users shouldn’t see it “nearly as often.”

A report from security company PandaLabs identified over a million links targeting malicious webpages ranking for auto part searches. Google noted that many of the phrases mentioned in the report were rare. A phrase like [1989 Nissan Pickup Truck Engine Check Light Troubleshooting], for example, only appears on attack sites set up by spammers, which explains why Google brought back so many attack sites in response to it and similar queries.

Google’s response seems also an admission of how difficult it is to provide fresh, timely search results while simultaneously combating spammers. Part of the appeal of Twitter to many people is the platform’s ability to provide real-time information; the live Web works remarkably well there so far because Twitter’s set up isn’t very conducive to spam (yet). At least Twitter has to some extent control over accounts.

Google, on the other hand, cannot control for content appearing on the Web at large, and historically its famous algorithm performed better than any other at weeding out spammy webpages and malicious results. Unfortunately, that was a version of the Web that was more static. The live Web presents entirely new challenges manifesting as the first major weakness the search engine has faced.

The company naturally didn’t have a comment on the recently pondered “link velocity” ranking factor. Search engine optimization experts have identified the speed at which organic links appear as a possible important influence.

Link velocity therefore aids in explaining how blackhatters were able to manipulate search results by dropping enormous amounts of link spam into comment and discussion areas of social sites. The freshness or buzzy nature of a query also aided in this pursuit, and cybercriminals merely have to follow Google Trends and Google News to know which keywords and phrases to target.

Google Set To Change Ranking Algorithm | WebProNews

Filed Under: Search Engines Tagged With: ,

Stephan Spencer on SEO

January 8, 2009 By 1 Comment

I just watched a great interview with Stephan Spencer from this years Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago on the webpronews video blog. 

Stephan is pretty high on WordPress as a CMS, most of the speakers that I have seen from this years conference were, which was good to hear. He also recommends a few other platforms that he likes for SEO.  Here is a link to his interview…

We’ve talked many times about the advantages of blogging. One area that we haven’t touched on a lot however is the SEO benefits of blogging. In this video, Stephan Spencer discusses the SEO friendly blogging platforms and the non-SEO friendly blogging platforms.

First of all, Stephan debunks the theory that simply having a blog makes it search engine friendly. While there is a bit of truth to the theory, there are many other benefits that people are missing. For instance, PageRank isn’t always accurate and tag pages and tag clouds aren’t used to their full potential.

Stephan highly recommends WordPress as a blogging platform. The great thing about many of these blogging platforms including WordPress, is that a blog doesn’t have to look like a typical blog. WordPress can be used as a content management system (CMS) and is very search friendly. Stephan’s company site, Netconcepts.com, is a perfect example of this. If he hadn’t told us, no would ever know that the site was running as a WordPress blog.

Another blogging platform Stephan recommends is b2evolution. It brings SEO improvements that aren’t available in other blogging platforms. This platform is also free and runs on your own domain or website.

Lastly, Stephan does not recommend Blogger. His main arguments against it are its limitations. According to Stephan, Blogger users cannot set up 301 redirects and cannot incorporate tag clouds.

Now that you have a couple of recommendations to work with, go out there and utilize these blogging platforms!

Video: Stephan Spencer on SEO Perks in Blogging

Filed Under: Search Engines, Wordpress™ Tagged With: ,

Add your URL to Google

November 20, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I had an old friend ask me today how to submit his website to Google, the short answer was to send him a link to: Add your URL to Google, but I went ahead and elaborated as to how I approach Google submissions.  The first thing that I do is to submit an XML sitemap, preferably a dynamic sitemap that changes when new pages or posts are added to your website.  There are several plugins for doing this with some of the cms solutions that are out there, I know of at least two for WordPress.  Once you have your XML sitemap location, usually something like http://website.com/sitemap.xml then you will want to submit it through Google’s Webmaster tools section.

Once I have submitted the website xml sitemap to Google I will also take it a step further and verify the domain on my clients behalf.  This can be handled two ways, one way is via meta tag.  This meta-tag can be generated inside the Google Webmaster Tools panel and is simply added to the head of your pages and then verified inside the Webmaster Tools control panel.  Another method that is sometimes easier unless you are doing a lot of Apache redirection is simply uploading an html file.  The filename for this file is also generated somewhat randomly inside the Google Webmaster Tools section.  Once this is uploaded and in place, you simply click to have Google verify that this file is in place and then you are all done.

While this is not all that I do for a client project upon it’s launch, it does cover a lot of the seo for Google that I do directly.  Indirectly I have some other strategies that I do not care to divulge for free! Another recommendation that I have for do it yourself web people is to go ahead and put Google Analytics in place on your website prior to launch.  This usually entails adding a piece of javascript to the footer of your site files that will interact with Google’s Analytical tools.  Hope that you find this helpful.  (…And Marvin, if we can help you guys out with your project just let us know! :-) )

Filed Under: Search Engines Tagged With: ,

Explaining Google (PR) PageRank

September 10, 2008 By 3 Comments

At Pleth we tend to keep a close eye on our clients search engine rankings, I personally devote about an hour each day to just Google Hacking to see where we stand on things. This week, I have had 2 separate unrelated clients ask me about Google PR, or PageRank so I am going to attempt to explain it here as best as I possibly can without getting too technical. 

Google explains PR as the following:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.

What this means is that a PageRank results from a “ballot” among all the other pages on the World Wide Web about how important a page is. A hyperlink to a page counts as a vote of support. The PageRank of a page is defined recursively and depends on the number and PageRank metric of all pages that link to it (“incoming links”). A page that is linked to by many pages with high PageRank receives a high rank itself. If there are no links to a web page there is no support for that page.

Google assigns a numeric weighting from 0-10 for each webpage on the Internet; this PageRank denotes a site’s importance in the eyes of Google. The PageRank is derived from a theoretical probability value on a logarithmic scale like the Richter Scale. The PageRank of a particular page is roughly based upon the quantity of inbound links as well as the PageRank of the pages providing the links. It is known that other factors, e.g. relevance of search words on the page and actual visits to the page reported by the Google toolbar also influence the PageRank. In order to prevent manipulation, spoofing and spamdexing, Google provides no specific details about how other factors influence PageRank. This information exists inside of Google’s “top secret algorithm”, and that is something that I will not try to go into on this blog post, those of you who have taken advanced mathematic courses will understand why, ha.

Hopefully this helps to explain PageRank. Here’s something interesting that I did not know until the other day, PageRank is a licensed and trademarked term but not by Google, it’s actually trademarked to Stanford University.  I thought that this was interesting because it was actually Google who brought this terminology to the forefront of our industry.

To answer the ever so popular question, “Why did my website lose Google PR?”, here are a few possibilities:

  • There are fewer websites (of value) linking to you.
  • Websites that are linking to you have been devalued.
  • Google’s PR Algorithm (top secret) may have been tweaked.
  • Websites that are linking to you aren’t crawled by Google’s Bots.

Hopefully this helps…

Filed Under: Search Engines Tagged With: ,
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