Table of contents for PageRank and Site Value
- Help Me Raise My PageRank
- Google Says to Not Bother With PageRank
- Why My Blog Has a Visible PageRank of Zero
Before I start, you should know I’m a little bitter toward PageRank. There are only vague answers available at Google and on the internet. Here’s a little of my PageRank journey I’ll share with you:
First off Google Defines PageRank as such:
“When a user enters a query, our machines search the index for matching pages and return the results we believe are the most relevant to the user. Relevancy is determined by over 200 factors, one of which is the PageRank for a given page. PageRank is the measure of the importance of a page based on the incoming links from other pages. In simple terms, each link to a page on your site from another site adds to your site’s PageRank. Not all links are equal: Google works hard to improve the user experience by identifying spam links and other practices that negatively impact search results. The best types of links are those that are given based on the quality of your content.” Source
Ok. Well let’s examine the quality of my content, one of my popular blogs with a Page Rank 0, and compare it to a PageRank 6 page:
My site on health and mental health PR0:
http://www.postcardsfromthefunnyfarm.com/
Ok folks, now (drumroll please) AN IMPORTANT PAGE! The Firefox Start Page PR6:
http://www.google.com/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
Let me repeat part of Google’s explanation of PageRank:
“The best types of links are those that are given based on the quality of your content.”
If this is true (which I don’t believe it is), then I assume the people who link to Firefox “Start” find it to be of quality content. Who are these people? Here are the 11 words on the Firefox Start page, in total:
“Advanced Search, Help make the Internet better. Support Mozilla. About Mozilla”
This is the content of the Google homepage more or less. Then there is the content to compare on my PR0 blog: To avoid listing thousands of words, suffice it to say My blog index has relevant posts that have to do with a specific topic and are accessed every day multiple times by Google users. Many of my pages rank #1 in keyword searches. According to Yahoo last count my blog has 10,000 backlinks.
Yet my blogs remain a PR0.
Ok, so we’ve compared a Firefox splash page with a blog of content and found a 6 point difference in ranking. How about a personal blog that ranks higher? Not too hard to find. Just go to blogger.co., Google own social media type of blogging platform. This blog is a PR4 which is pretty high for a personal blog:
http://otherendofsunset.blogspot.com/
I don’t know this guy and I apologize for using his blog as an example. This is apparently the sort of blog that gets rewarded by Google. It has no ads, no networking or outlinking of any kind and it is considered “important.” I like the writing though, and again … I hope the author will forgive me that his blog came up #1 in a search of these terms: “Blogger personal blog.” That’s the only reason I mentioned him here.
Lucky for me, one of my blogs, Dynamite Lesson Blog, seems to be holding after a year at a solid PR3. I am hopeful that it’s niche content and those who link to it will keep it as a PR3. But I am slamming PageRank … so why would I care?
Simple: The bank my friends.
Like it or not, advertisers use PageRank as their #1 criteria of whether to give your blog their ad work. I have faith that in time they will come around and see how wrong they are to value it so highly. I hope that day will come soon.
For now, I make over 50% of my monthly income on my PR3 blog. My psychology blog used to be a PR4 as well, then they knocked it to a PR2 when nothing had changed and backlinks had only gotten more quality and numerous (This is why I say Google lies about the quality and number of backlinks dictating PageRank). The advertisers who I used to work with on 2 of my other blogs emailed me they would not continue to work with me until my blogs had PR. Ridiculous. The fact of the matter is that these two blogs:
http://www.damienriley.com/
-and-
http://www.postcardsfromthefunnyfarm.com/
Have more traffic than they ever have had (300 visits a day and up)
Have more “relevant to niche” backlinks than they ever have had.
I’m on the verge of hiring someone who can guarantee me a PR1. If you can do this or know someone who can, contact me. I have advertisers emailing me all the time asking me why my sites have no PageRank. They want to hire me for sponsored posts, for link placement, for affiliate marketing. Unfortunately their bosses won’t let them take me on without at least a PR1. I need someone who knows the “secrets” of Google PageRank because trust me … in 2 solid hard-researching years I have tried everything they make public about PageRank. To my fellow bloggers this is an FYI that your Google PageRank is not justice. Run your blog and your site the way you see as valuable. Try as best you can to play by their rules though because PageRank really does matter when you make money blogging. I plan to re-start my PageRank learning quest. It should be an adventure and I hope you’ll tag along for the ride. I promise you if I learn valuable stuff on this topic, I will post it here. Meanwhile, if you have any resources please share. I will link back to you as a way of saying thanks.
Related posts:
5 Comments
Damien, it is all strange. I checked my main blog, which I have taken a hiatus from – and it is a 2.
Is it possible it has anything to do with the number of paid posts you do vs regular posts? That is the only thing I could think of, not that I pretend to really understand it. I pay no attention to it, I only downloaded the Google toolbar after reading this post out of curiosity.
@Marcia: Thank you for that comment. All I can think of to say to that is this:
Why is Google the only website allowed to make money online?
There are lots of other points I could bring up but it really all reduces down to that. Once we answer that, then the question becomes: why are those blogs who don’t get paid for their writing more “important.” Based on that logic alone, Google is an immoral company that shouldn’t be trusted. They make billions through Adsense every day.
So … I hope you are incorrect that my PR is zero because I do sponsored posts. But if that is the case, I’ll stick with the PR0. My PayPal card is much better to have in a trade off.
By the way, many blogs who do sponsored posts have PR. Even my Dynamite Lesson Plan, a PR3, has week after week of sponsored posts that have been published with full disclosure.
I really hope someone will read this and give me some clue.
Well, there went that theory! I hope someone can explain it so we all understand, especially since it is important to you.
Thanks Marcia. The only reason I care is because all the pay to blog companies put so much emphasis on Google PageRank. I make a lot of money from PayU2Blog on my PR0’s but for reviews and such, I just can’t get work unless my PR rises. It’s perverse.
A word of advice when link building, I was hoping to hit a pagerank 4 when google refreshed the rankings not so long ago with a site that I had been working on for a few months. I managed to get a 1 but one of the deep pages on the site also had a pr1.
I feel if I had focused my efforts on linking to the homepage totally rather than spreading it around I would have had a little more success and its worth thinking if an advertiser will pay you more for a link off a page that has no pr that lives on a high pr domain or if they want the actual page to rank highly.
Personally I just run my site as a hobby so I dont have to worry about how much advertisers pay me (I dont make anything from the site or sell advertising) but I can see where you are coming from.
My link building efforts were really just bringing the content that I had created to the attention to people who I thought would be interested and some of them linked to me which was nice. Discussing topics of the moment (like the trademark issue around bidding on competitor keywords in google) usually gets a little more of a buzz and you can often draw some attention to your site from social media but I would hazard a guess that you already know that.
I can also tell from your post above that you know that googles importance of a page is calculated mainly on incoming links so thats definitly worth exploring, I am going to put up what I think is one of the best written guides to building links ethically in the next few days so thought that was worth a mention if you are interested in having a read then check the site at the weekend by which time the first part of the post will definitly be live.
Good luck with this!