PR Juice

 **UPDATED Nov 2014**

Google PR is far less relevant than it once was. Instead of focusing your efforts on creating high PR links, it is far more beneficial to your ranking efforts to focus on the categorization of the pages linking to your content. See http://www.deehoseo.com/search_engine_optimization/backlink-category-relevance.php for more information.

Having said that, Google PR is still a metric that has an influence, and is an overall indicator of the authority of the links pointing to the page. The higher PR relevant category pages you can build links on the better.

There is a lot spoken about PR Juice, how to get it, what it does and how it can help you, not all of it is useful information though.

The most important aspect of PR is that it is a tool used by Google to establish the value of a link from your site. Yes, it is a measure of your sites worth in the eyes of Google, but it alone will not improve your ranking. A PR 1 page can out rank a PR 7, but I would rather have the link from the PR 7 any day.

PR Juice is the effect that PR sites that link to you can have on your site. If you can get lots of PR 6 sites to link to you then you will gain from their PR Juice. This is for the simple reason that Google will see your site as being "recommended" by many "authority" sites. If you continue to collect links from established high value PR sites such as these, you too will become an "authority" site in the eyes of Google and that my friend is the power of PR Juice.

PR from a page is shared between the pages it links to, so a PR 7 with one external link passes most of that PR to the linked page, however, a PR 7 with 100 external links divides the PR7 between the 100 linked sites, severely reducing the influence the page has.

Paid Links....

 ** UPDATED Nov 2014**

Further to previous comments made here, Google seems to be concentrating its efforts on protecting the integrity of it organic listings. The best way for it to do this is to prevent larger organisations from buying their way to the top via paid links.

Google even encourages webmasters to report paid links!!

The tightrope currently being walked is tricky to get right, for in effect Google is a seller of paid ads themselves. In actuality they are a publisher who displays dutch auction ads on their pages, and not much more..... but the sum of the parts quite frequently adds up to more than the individual components.

When is a paid ad a banner? Are all banner ads going to be penalised? In which event many Google adsense campaigns would surely fall foul?

I get the feeling that it is more the case of being seen to be doing something rather than actually doing something that is the important issue here.

There is no doubt that many sites that rank highly in Google for very competitive keywords have paid links pointing to them.

Is a paid directory classed as a paid link?...... only it seems if it is a low quality directory! High quality directories are ok by Google.

Online Reputation Management

I'm back from my travels in the far east and yes it is indeed far.

I have been drawn to the latest seo bolt on service, namely Online Reputation Management or to put it another way, the art of making sure that bad news gets buried and lots of lovely good news rises to the top and masks the bad.

This prctice is increasingly being used not only my the rich and famous, but by the not so rich and the not so famous. It is increasingly normal these days to "Google" a new partner, business associate, colleague etc and as such if you are not careful you can soon find your reputation tainted through no fault of your own. In these inlightened times, the net is alive with information and with the rise in popularity of the blogging, facebook etc it is now easier than ever for any disgruntled client, customer, lover, journalist to paint a less that savoury picture of you.

This is where the top SEO companies such as ourselves come in. We can in some cases remove some of the unflattering material (although this is very difficult to do) and then we bombard your name with more suitable content, blogs, websites articles etc and then promote them into the top listings. This has the effect of pushing the unwanted material down the rankings onto the second or third page where it will do less harm to your reputation.

A search in Google for Kate Moss will show that she has recently had her name cleaned. As in the listings all of the more selatious stories about her are on the second and third pages and the top ten results are filled with only positive listings. In light of her recent news worthiness this would not be the case if the results were ranking completely naturally.

Google works in much the same way as the rest of the world in that bad news travels further than good news.

Directory Submission

A lot is made of Directory Submission and Search Engine Submission in chat rooms and within various seo related forums. I am quite concerned for any unsuspecting customer who could quite easily get taken in by one of the thousands of sites that offers to sign you up to thousands of directories every month for a few pounds. It is often claimed that using such a "service" will promote the target site within the major search engine......... which is highly debateable.

Two main reasons prevent this service from being as much use as it appears;

1/. If your site was actually added to thousands of directories every month then your site would be removed from the main search engines as you would have tripped the main link volume filter operated but the majors.

2/. The shear volume of links they claim they will add implies that it is nothing more than a piece of software they will be using to submit your site automatically. The standard and quality of the links will be either very poor or terrible.

Ask yourselves this question " If this service works so well in promoting a website and moving it up the rankings in the major search engines.... where are the vendors ranking in Google?"

If they are in the top ten then have a look at exactly how they have achieved it. Just because a site is there today, don't immediately assume that they have been there for years or will be there in a years time. Some unscrupulous "Black Hat" seo's will happily cloak site after site in order to maintain a "permanent" presence even though it is with different sites. A cloaked site will not last very long at the top of competitive searches, The search engines will remove them as soon as they are found.... permanently. That will happen to your site too if you use their services, except that you wil have already paid them and they will be impossible to find.

Take time to choose your seo company carefully and you will be rewarded with long term growth, increased sales and a top ranking to be proud of.

How should you lay out your site? part 4

The next part of your page to concentrate upon is your footer. The reason for this is that when a search engine looks at your page, if it sees that the beginning of the page relates to a subject, the content relates to a subject, the images and logos relate to a subject and finally the footer relates to a subject then it stands to reason that the page it is looking at is all dedicated to that one subject....... and what does Google want to provide for its vast network of searchers??? High quality topic specific websites that provide the information that the searcher needs.

I will discuss the page content in the next section

How should you lay out your site? part 3

The content of your page should be fresh and original. In addition you should try to include your keywords where you can in order that the text is searchable for your topic. The optimum keyword density is important to how well the site ranks, you want to include your keyword 6 - 8 times on the page including in the h1 and h2 tags, for maximum effect.

As you work your way down the page you will need to make sure that your images and graphics have suitable alt text attached to them. If you use your keywords as the alt text, followed by image 1, image 2 etc then you will help your page to rank as well as possible.

How should you lay out your site? part 2

After the logo that you have already located in the top left you can continue your header across the page. If you want to add some flast this is a good place to put it, but remember that Goole and the other SE's will see no more than a white square.

You also need to add some navigation to your site. The simpler the navigation is the better. Google will struggle to follow java script links or clickable images and will also not know what the links "subject" is. If you use text then the links can be read and understood and the pages that you link to will benefit.

Once you have the navigation in place it is time to concentrate on the content for the site. Start with Heading tags. H1 to H6 are important tags and so you should use them whenever you can. You can adjust the size etc using your css style sheet so they do not need to be huge headings on the page. Make the heading tags your prime keywords so that they rank as well as they can.

How should you lay out your site?

If you are at the planning stage then you have the ideal opportunity to create a site that will be easy to optimize and that will rank as well as it can.

Of course if you are working with an existing site then you will be somewhat stuck with the design that you have. As long as the index page of the site isn't just a pretty flash entry page you will have something to work with.

However if you have a blank page but want some interaction on your site how can you lay it out so that you will still rank well?

Firstly you want to have either an image or logo in the top left corner. This is the first thing that the SE's spider will look at and although it can't see the image or logo it can read the alt text that you can put behind it.

How to analyse a niche part 4

Another good indicator when deciding upon a niche is to run a short term Adwords campaign. This will help in several ways as it will give you the main traffic keywords and highlight the ones that are a waste of time in the real world.

You will also get a feel for how competitive a keyword is. As a basic rule of thumb, the more adwords ads there are for a keyword, the more expensive it will be to rank on the front page. It follows that the organic listings will mirror this and it will be harder for your site to rank in the top ten the more ads show, and the higher the per click costs are.

If you take an hour to dig deep before you commit to a niche then you will save yourself many wasted hours in the long run.

How to analyse a niche part 3

Detailed analysis is vital if you are to succeed in your quest of top rankings. You can formulate a plan for anything if you know what you are competing against.

The best indication of success is keyword frequency...... if the site that you wish to surpass has used its' url in the majority of its' links then you have the opportunity to make your links more valuable by using the right link text on the right pages.

How to analyse a niche part 2

Once you have selected a keyword how do you go about analysing the top ranked sites?

The can be done in stages, firstly have a look at their PR rank. This will give you an idea as to the value Google places on the site.

Second, have a look at the quantity of backlinks. The is best done currently using Yahoo here;
http://uk.siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/siteexplorer which will show you every link Yahoo is aware of, and also how many pages are currently spidered for the site. This is not an exact figure and every search engine returns different data, but in the main it is the best yard stick. Google for example will only show a few backlinks even though in reality the site may have thousands. This is in part due to the workings of its algorithm, however Google analytics provides accurate data for your own sites, sadly this data is not available for your competitors sites.

Thirdly it is a good idea to have a look at the link text of your competitors links to see if it is an area that you can improve upon. I use SEO Elite for this purpose as it will return detailed results on link PR, page title, link text, as well as alexa rank, etc

If you have a look at the top four or five sites in your niche, not forgetting to also have a look at the main url if an individual page is ranking then you will soon get to grips with how achievable your goals are.

How to analyse a niche part 1

Before you attack a keyword armed with nothing more than enthusiasm and guts it is well worth having a good look at the competition that you are going to face. Top rankings in any niche are achievable if you do more than anyone else has done. The problem arises when you realise that the site that you want to beat is a PR 8, has 100,000 links, is in Dmoz, has existed since 1995 and has the dot com url that is perfect for the niche.............. how do you go about competing with such a site?......

The short answer is to pick battles that you can win...... and for the time being you can't win that one....... but if you work as hard as they did then in five years time your site may well be a worthy adversary to their crown.

If that example was the case for your niche then I would advise initially chasing traffic that you can realistically attain. It is important to walk before you can run, but while still keeping your eyes on the big picture.

Quality over Quantity links

I can't stress enough how important it is to focus your efforts on fewer high quality links rather that lots of low or no value links.

Remember a link is for life, not just for christmas.

A little bit of extra effort to attract the best links that you can will pay dividends in due course.

Creating good linking habits is something worth doing.

Less can often be more.