Posted on 4th June 2009 by iansheldon in Search Engine Optimisation
Google, Link Building, Page Rank, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO
As someone who is interested in Search Engine Optimisation, you have probably heard how important back links are as part of your SEO Campaign. When a search user enters their criteria into the search engine the search engine has to be able to return the best results to gain the trust of the user. It does this by evaluating which pages relate to that query and which are most important.
Importance is determined by ‘votes’ and each link back to a page is seen for a vote for that page. However, links do not just ‘come’ to sites. You have to publish great content that people want to link to, so you need to shout about it (try using social media channels such as Digg and Twitter to start with).
One thing to consider is that you get links from relevant web pages. Dont just go buying links from ‘link farms’. Carefully source your web sites / pages and if possible get them from pages with relevant content to your own. Naturally, links are valuable so dont expect people to just give them away!
Moving forward, each link to your page, or vote, passes a part of the page rank of the origin. So if you get a link back from a web page with a high page rank (and few links) you will get a higher slice of the source ranking. If your source page is cluttered with links then you will get a smaller slice of the pie.
However, if only it was as simple as just getting a slice of the pie. There are now two other factors that Google has thrown into the mix.
However, it has gotten more complicated by the introduction of 2 new factors:
1. Relevance. If the link comes from a site that is on the same topic as the publisher’s site (or a closely related topic), that link is worth more than a links that comes from a site with an unrelated topic.
2. Authority. It is generally accepted that search engines attempt to measure how much they trust a site. If a site is highly trusted, its vote will count for more than if it is not that trusted.
These factors are the two single most important items you need to consider when building your back links. Back links from bad neighbourhoods may provide you with a quick fix, but it wont be long until you find your site sliding down the listings.
So why does link building matter? Done correctly, It helps your site gain page rank, and most importantly trust from the right neighbourhoods.
Posted on 4th June 2009 by iansheldon in Search Engine Optimisation
Google, Page Rank, PR Sculpting, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO
After doing some searhes on our clients keywords over the last couple of days I have noticed that Google seems to be returning some strange results. On initial inspection it does seem like results from the US are getting mixed up with results from the UK. This is having a negative effect on some of our sites but positive effect on others.
I have read numerous blog posts over the last couple of days that tell us that Google have made some changes to the way that back links with the nofollow tag affect Page Rank. Not only have changes been made, but Google have not been forthcoming with any real communication or response to the changes.
- A large number of people queried the head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts, about the issue. Responses ranged from “no comment” to “the PR team would like me to stay away from that.”
- Another member of Google’s team noted that PageRank Sculpting on unimportant pages like “register,” “login,” “privacy policy,” etc. is OK and shouldn’t hurt your site.
- A great many webmasters and SEOs are still shocked by the announcement because as recently as the last few days, they’ve still been seeing positive effects when employing the tactic.
So why have changes been made?
Im summary Google is getting pretty fed up with Page Rank sculpting (creative distribution of page rank around the pages of your web site). Basically Google wants non-advanced web site owners to stop screwing around with their link graph and stay away from excessively using nofollow in ways that hurt indexing and relevance.
Have you seen changes to your SERP or Page Rank in the last week?
Posted on 27th May 2009 by iansheldon in Search Engine Optimisation
Backlinks, Keywords, Page Rank, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO, SEO Company, UK SEO Company
Google Page Rank (PR) is a measurement of relevance / popularity. Each page in your web site will have its own ranking.
The scale of Page Rank goes from 1-10, although it is possible that your pages could have no ranking at all. Generally this means that they havent been indexed yet.
So how do you improve your Page Rank?
The simple answer is to get good back links to your site from pages that already have a good page rank. Each time Google links out from a page with a good PR it passes a peice of that Page Rank to the destination page. Due to this it may be better for you to get a back link from a page with a PR of 4 that has 10 back links on it, than to get a backlink from a page with a PR of 6 with 70 back links on it. This is because the PR is distributed across the outgoing links equally.
Building back links is an important part of any Search Engine Optimisation Campaign. If you need help or advice on building up back links then please get in touch with UK Search Engine Optimisation Company, eSoftware Solutions
Posted on 2nd April 2009 by iansheldon in Search Engine Optimisation
Google Page Rank, Page Rank, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO
This blog, now 4 months old has just picked up its first page rank – a whopping 2 out of 10.
Not bad really, considering that some sites I know don’t have anything, nothing, zip, after 12 months of being online. So what is the key to getting a good page rank quickly?
Well, I guess the main reason is publicising your posts. Don’t just blog aimlessly and expect people to find the content. Write things that are interesting, and then promote the articles on social media sites such as digg, twitter and Sphin. Once you start to make posts public via social bookmarking you will find that links start to increase by themselves, especially if the content is interesting.
Blogs are great tools and can help to promote your products and services and an excellent catalyst to help any search engine optimisation campaign, but don’t expect them to do everything for you. Give them a little helping hand now and then and most importantly keep them up to date with fresh and interesting content.
Posted on 2nd February 2009 by iansheldon in SEO Q&A
Domain Names, Google Results, Page Rank, Search Engine Ranking, SEO
It’s been believed that the age or maturity of a domain name can have an effect on the search placement of your site, however we are let to believe that in the majority of cases it doesn’t really matter.
Google wants to return the best information, not just information that has been around for yours.
Of course, older domains have usually been attached to web sites for a long time and therefore the sites can have built up significant numbers of back links over the years which will help with its ranking.
Posted on 31st January 2009 by iansheldon in Search Engine Optimisation
Backlinks, Deep Links, Google, Google Results, Page Rank, SEO Company
Link Building is a popular and rewarding activity in the world of Search Engine Optimisation. Deep Links are often given a higher value than home page links. Here is why:
- You can target the specific keyword. Usually your deeper pages will be more specific about the content you are communicating to your site visitor. If Google knows about this page it will be able to give it a higher relevance.
- It is easier to push up your internal pages than a whole site. If you are promoting many products or services then its easier to push single pages than the whole site under the umbrella of the home page.
- Overcrowding the home page with links isn’t good practice. It looks ugly as well.
- Site Visitors get to your home page by typing in your publicised URL. Let them find deeper content through Google’s search. It’s quicker for them and they don’t have to wear their mouse buttons out doing so.
- The inner pages are usually more relevant so point people at them from external sources.
With any link building process anchor text is key for both internal and external links. Make sure that the anchor text is relevant.
So, on your next link building campaign, why not consider linking back to the deeper pages on your site. You will see a difference.
Posted on 29th January 2009 by admin in Search Engine Optimisation
Google, Page Rank, Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Ranking, SEO
Page Rank plays an important part in Search Engine Optimsation.
Firstly, let me explain what Google PageRank is. It’s an algorithm by which Google measures the relative importance of individual web pages. Most people probably know of Page Rank as the little green bar in the web browser which is part of the Google Toolbar pack.
Page ranking is scored on a scale of 0-10, with zero being the lowest and 10 being top of the class. Very, very few pages actually achieve a 10. The score on the Google Toolbar isn’t the actual ranking of the page – no one but Google knows the exact algorithm used to calculate page rank but it is thought that it updates page rank information every 3 months. It is widely said that the ranking gauge on the Google Toolbar does not show current data.
The aim of the search engines is to provide relevant content to their users. For this reason alone they keep their ranking methods close to their chests and make frequent changes.
I have read many times over that people become obsessed with Page rank. Infact, they probably become more obsessed with the toolbar pagerank that the actual position of their pages in the search results. For this reason alone many people believe that the Google Toolbar version of page rank is simply a gimmick. One that has created a lot of fuss and speculation.
Not only do people get obsessed with page rank but it also creates sense of pride, envy and increased prices for sales of links. As daft as it sounds, those same two things that pay you more money for having “good pagerank”, can just as easily cause your pagerank to decrease.
Google tries to discourage the sale of links to increase page rank by penalising people of sell links. If you buy a text link on a page with good PageRank, and use a keyword rich anchor text for the link, it boosts the web page you are advertising for that keyword phrase. This is an obvious manipulation of the search results – which is why Google is discouraging and penalising sites who participate in such activity.
However, all this being said, Google Page Rank is still a real world ranking criteria that determines search engine results. However, this is Google’s real Page Rank, and not the Toolbar Page Rank.
