Apparently, Google cares about page rank. And, so do the other search engines. A lot of bloggers care, too. I don’t. Maybe, I should…
Today’s Lesson
What is page rank? According to Wikipedia,
PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set.
That’s a mouthful.
If you take the time to read all of the matrix behind gaining a high page rank, the most important, is getting high ranking sites, to link to your site. And you want many high ranking sites, linking to your site. The more, the better. This apparently “shows” Google and the other search engines, that your site is one of high authority. After all, why would a high ranking site link to your site, if it wasn’t? Right? Not necessarily.
Links can be bought. Links can be traded (reciprocal linking).
Page rank ranges from 0/10 to 10/10. I would guess, it’s next to impossible to get a 10/10 page rank rating.
When the page rank of a site begins to increase, oftentimes, the author of the site will stop linking to lower page ranked sites. Why? It could drop their page rank. BooHoo!
It doesn’t matter if low page ranked sites links to a high page ranked site, as that is beyond the control of the author. However, those outgoing links, are controllable by the author, so oftentimes, they won’t link.
Let’s look at this. My page rank is 0/10…or in other words. I am not even ranked yet. Now if I have this figured out right, my ranking can only go up. Right? (UPDATE: My page rank on the home page of this blog, is now 1/10.) So, why worry about page rank. After all, I have a blog to be concerned about. My readers are counting on me. And, I don’t believe my loyal readers really care about my page rank.
Today’s Assignment
Since we are talking about page rank, let it be known that, page rank is something that takes time to acquire. But, having a high page rank is not the only way to get your blog discovered.
1) Write posts, using unpopular keywords. You may not get a lot of traffic, but you should get some. Try to get your post indexed within the first three pages of a search.
2) Submit you own posts to Digg. Digg has a high page rank. If you submit your post to Digg, remember to include your keywords in your description of the post. Do not submit every post to Digg. Submit the ones you think are “news worthy”. Your post may get indexed higher, through the Digg website.
3) Submit your posts to De.lici.ous, Stumble Upon and Technorati, and other social networks. This could help.
4) Leave meaningful comments on other blogs.
5) Post, post, post, and continue to get your blog crawled.
6) Submit your posts to blog carnivals. One of the popular ones is BlogCarnival.com
7) Submit your blog to blog directories. There are many free ones online. Submit only to those that would pertain to your blogging subject.
8.) Submit your posts to online “articles” sites, such as Ezine. Most will let you include a link back to your site.
9.) Insert your URL in your emails, and company or personal correspondence, as well as on your business cards.
My thought on page rank………..,if blogging comes to worrying about page rank, count me out.
Earlier I wrote another post about page rank, it can be found here.
Barbara – I still don’t have a page rank yet and I’m past caring too. It’s so artificial with all those paid for links. And people not linking to other blogs just incase they lose their page rank should not be what blogging is about.
Did you try blog carnivals yet? I don’t really understand them.
Hi Catherine,
Glad to see someone else feels the same way I do.
I have tried blog carnivals. So far, I have submitted two posts. I got a little bit of traffic, and maybe a little name recognition. My problem is the time it takes away from my other responsibilities. Although it was only taking 15 to 30 minutes, that was time I needed elsewhere.
With Blog Carnival.com, you first find the category that fits your post, then submit a link to the article. When the carnival “ends”, your post goes online with the others who submitted posts, as well. That’s when you may start seeing some traffic from your submission.
Give me a little bit of time, and I will do a more informative post about submitting to blog carnivals.
Hello Barbara,
I am wondering if I can get your perspectives of what are the meaningful comments. As a social person, I can not help commenting everywhere, and am wondering if I am polluting these great sites like yours… Any tips for how people should comment would be really helpful.
I actually enjoy reading comments, and learn from them as well. I am noticing that more popular blogs have less interesting comments, or is it just my impressionist opinion again?
Hi Asako,
Meaningful comments, to me, are comments that add value to the post on which you are commenting. Maybe it’s your perspective, maybe you disagree with the author, or maybe, what the author wrote, gave you valuable information you can use, and you want to say thank you.
Very short comments, at times, is all that’s needed, but if you want to “have your say”, write more.
I, too, love reading the comments on other blogs. They do teach you more, and give you an insight on the comment author, as well.
Does commenting frequently on a blog, pollute it? I don’t think so. To me, it shows you are a loyal reader of that blog. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Yes, I do notice the less interesting comments on popular blogs too, but I wonder if some of those uninspiring comments are being written, just to have a “link” to that site, or the commenters are shy, or don’t know how to comment……….
Asako, you have given me inspiration to write more about commenting….Stay tuned, and I will write what I know, in a future post.
Thank you, Barbara, that would be very helpful. I heard these days academics are picking up the topics like blogs and researching the difference of participation levels on different approaches.
Your very loyal reader
Folks,
We need to really think about this!
I will be shot down as naive or stupid, but in many respects I think nature will take its course.
There will always be rules to follow and first or early adopter methods which will help stuff like recognition and page rank.
And Barbara’s list seems sensible to me. Especially not giving a stuff about page rank.
It’s a bit like selling your soul.
Would you sacrifice it for page rank? As desirable as it may seem to many, you lose a chunk of yourself each time you follow a fad.
The Internet, blogs, sites, social networking are becoming the niche-itised TV channels of the present and future. We are choosing which “channel” to tune into and when we want to.
TV will and is changing to reflect this choice we have.
And the funny thing is, and this is referring back to one of Barbara’s topics on “niche”, the choice is about the individuals we all choose.
People buy people. And long-term they buy people they trust. Not transient personalities who have a fleeting moment in the limelight.
The eventual winners are the people who are firstly true to themselves. And if that person is an authority who sticks to their true self, then they become the TV channel.
Once they sell out completely or are completely influenced by the blue-chips who want to “buy” exposure, then the channel shuts down.
Not gradually as audience is lost over a period. But increasingly over-night.
So don’t sell your soul. Be true to you. We’ll all be happier for it.
P.S. I may be talking out of my back-side – I really ain’t qualified for such verbose nonsense about stuff I can only speculate about with 3-4 months limited experience. Over to the real experts…
Well put, Ian,
What you say, not only holds true for internet sites, but for any type of business.
Success in life, is being true to yourself, and being able to look in the mirror every morning, proud in the fact, you have treated others fairly, with integrity, and honesty.
With blogging, if all you are interested in is page rank, start searching, and I’m sure there are many sites that will take your money and send links your way. But….keep in mind, page rank can go down, just as it went up. Best have a thick wallet.
I think that PageRank was a good idea in theory, until people figured out they could manipulate it. Some people don’t care about it at all, some people care but don’t obsess about it, and some people think it means everything. I take the middle of the road on this one.
For people who don’t have the Google toolbar installed, you can check the PageRank of a site here: http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php
Note that Wikipedia is “only” an 8, despite getting 10,000 – 35,000 page requests per second! I guess people don’t link to it, they just type it in their browser address bar. And keep in mind that since the average PageRank is 1, that means the vast majority of sites are a 0 to make up for all the 2-10s.
One other thing–PageRanks are actually assigned for each individual page, not for a whole site. In some cases, the page on a site with the highest PageRank is not the home page. However, it’s easier to think of PageRanks as being per site, as in “Google is a PageRank 10.”
Welcome Back, SpicePuppy,
Isn’t that sad, that a good system is put into place, only to have it abused? It ruins it for the folks who try to follow the correct procedures.
I’m glad you mentioned about individual pages having different page ranks, based on popularity of the pages. I failed to mention that in my post. I appreciate you including that in your comment.
Ironic that Google has a 10….does that surprise anyone?
Thank you for supplying the link for checking page ranks. Even though I have that installed, I seldom pay attention to it.
Hi Natural
LOL. I like your comment. I’m guessing your boss doesn’t mind if you’re online at work, once you have all of your work caught up.
Page rank is very important to some, but many great blogs get found with a page rank of 0/10.
i really don’t care about my page rank. it’s nice to be found, but no stressing over it. again, i have nothing to sell. maybe when i get fired for reading blogs at work i’ll care a little more. i’ll have a lot to sell then.
Natural’s last blog post..No Money, No Problem
Hi Jeremy – How interesting. I wonder how that happened.
Thought I would throw out there that Google has a pagerank of 7 now. 😉
Cheers,
Jeremy
Jeremy Day´s last blog post..11 Little Steps to Better Health