The understanding, or misunderstanding depending on how you see it, of how the Google PageRank system works has caused a lot of people to make a major misstep as they try to build up PageRank & traffic for their blogs. Let me give you a little background before I get to the misstep. Google PageRank is a numerical score assigned to your blog/site by Google that determines how important Google feels your site is on the Internet. Their algorithm primarily looks at three things. It looks at- The number of pages you have on your siteThe number of backlinks to your siteThe quality/relevance for your niche that those backlinks have for your siteThe actual PageRank of the sites that link back to you
Many people will also say that the age of your blog/site is examined as well, however, I have proven that you can get a new blog PageRanked very quickly. The key is your timing. Google doesn't update PageRank everyday for the general public (although it is maintained on their servers). That means that when the PageRank daddy comes around with lollipops, you have to make sure that you are in the right place to get yours. If you start your blog a month before the updates come out AND you build up quality backlinks to your blog AND you have a large number of pages, you will get a PageRank if you haven't done anything that Google doesn't like with your site. It's that simple. Don't let people fool you into thinking that a new blog can't get a PageRank. It can, things just have to be in order for it to happen.
As an example of backlinks versus pages versus PageRank versus search engine placement, you can look at the search term 'dating tips' using Google . I am working on a dating tips niche website that I will be revealing soon and in my research on dating tips, I discovered two sites that hold positions 1 and 2 on Google for dating tips. The first site has a tremendous number of backlinks that are, for the most part, very relevant to dating. The second site has taken a completely opposite strategy. They have a more than tremendous amount of pages on their sites and only 164 backlinks. As you can see, Google places a higher value on quality backlinks, however, you can get an extremely good position just by generating an enormous amount of pages on your site. Here are the exact figures.
Current #1 for 'dating tips' on Google - http://www.topdatingtips.com Page Rank 4 Yahoo Site Explorer Pages - Pages (143) | Inlinks (1,335)
Current #2 for 'dating tips' on Google - http://www.datingtips.com Page Rank 3 Yahoo Site Explorer Pages - Pages (11,504) | Inlinks (164)
Notice the MASSIVE amount of pages that datingtips.com has in relation to the number of backlinks to their site. You can view this information for any blog, including your own, using Yahoo Site Explorer.
Back to our subject. Since the algorithm looks primarily at the four things I mentioned earlier, it should be clear to you that you can manipulate the rank somewhat by the following techniques.
- Having a tremendous number of pages
- Having a tremendous number of backlinks
This is where the problem begins. A lot of people will try to build their backlinks by having sites with good PR linking back to them. Sometimes those sites may offer link love pages - like the PureBlogic link love page that you can add your blog/site to :-)! Sometimes those sites do a blogroll and will link to a lesser ranked sites. The problem is that some people become so consumed with the idea of PageRank that they ignore the truth. PageRank by itself WILL NOT bring you traffic! Let me repeat. PageRank alone will not bring you traffic.
When you are trying to build PageRank, you have to ask yourself what is it really going to mean for your blog/site. Since I've just shown you that PageRank CAN be manipulated to some degree, you should understand that PageRank doesn't necessarily mean traffic. There are sites with NO PageRank and a lot of traffic and sites with a PageRank that have minimal traffic. So what does this mean? Well, here is the misstep I was talking about. Many people will not try to build link love for themselves from sites with no PageRank. Instead, they will only link to sites that allow them to get PageRank. This is a bad way to build PageRank. Why? Because PageRank does not equal traffic. Here is an example of the problem.
- Site A has a lot of traffic (10,000K per month) but no PageRank because they started their site right after Google gave out PageRank updates.
- Site B is new and has no PageRank.
- Site C has a PageRank of 2, however, Site C has very little traffic (1,000K per month). Their PageRank was built through using backlink building techniques.
- Site A invites Site B to add their site so they can get a backlink.
- Site B refuses because Site A has no traffic.
- Site C invites Site B to add their site so they can get a backlink.
- Site B accepts and gets a backlink from Site C!
Do you see what just happened here? Site B turned down the opportunity to be seen by 9,000 more people per month just because Site C had the better PageRank! What a huge mistake! Now Site B has a link from Site C that may give it a small boost in the Google algorithm, but, they are linked to a site with FAR less traffic. A better approach for Site B would have been to have backlinks from Site A AND Site C or if you had to pick one Site A. It is obvious that the link on Site A is going to be seen by far more people.
Realize this. It is not hard to build backlinks to your blog. I have a list of 122 social networks on PureBlogic that you can use to build backlinks all day long. This will mean absolutely nothing to you if you don't have traffic. Period! You must look to get relationships, traffic and PageRank - IN THAT ORDER! A personal relationship with another blogger can result in faves on Technorati, following on Twitter, an I like it! on Stumble, something dugg on Digg, a review that generates Traffic, a link on a blogroll, a mention and link in an article. Can PageRank do all of that for you? No, no and no!
When someone offers to link to your site, if their site isn't in your niche, but is a QUALITY site, you should go for it. Those people are likely asking a lot of other people and that could mean more traffic for you. Never be so focused on building PageRank that you miss out on building traffic.
Posted By Kila Morton
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