Update on Backlinks and SEO Value
After reporting earlier this month about the uproar from some website owners over their PageRank adjustment by Google, I realized another aspect of the big drop deserves more attention. My small business owner web design clients may want to review the previous post Google PR Update and Owner Protests, also.
Natural backlinks to your site add SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, value to your PageRank because each link TO your site is like a vote. Natural links that relate directly to your site's overall theme add more value. Repeating another rule, any deceptive means of promoting your site will backfire. Do NOT engage in buying or selling links!
A large number, perhaps millions of website owners, were severely punished in 2007 for promoting paid linking schemes to add two-way or three-way links between sites for a fee. Here is an explanation citing an email "offer" that I received just last week that violates the rules of natural linking:
(Identifiable names and the writer's website address have been omitted intentionally.)
Any email that begins "Dear Sirs" or "Dear Webmaster" should be deleted immediately. The person who wrote the email to me last week talks about "selling/buying links", "ready to pay" for a review of their site, and "tell us the price of the review". These tactics are blantantly deceptive because they do not add value to the internet community, so I decided to investigate their site status more closely.
Did they get caught already? YES. Were they punished? YES. Here is the evidence as taken from URLTrends.com with points numbered 1 through 5 which I added in yellow circles for illustration purposes. The rest of the graphic was taken from URLTrends.
Point 1: URL of offending website covered intentionally
Point 2: Title of graphic for Google PageRank™
Point 3: Trend graph showing PR going from zero to minus 1 twice
Point 4: Date range tracked and reported by URL Trends
Point 5: The orange line from April to August goes up to PR5 and back to PR minus 1
The temporary boost to PageRank 5 and then the ultimate fall proves my warning about using deceptive means of optimizing the SEO value of your website because "You will be caught. You will be punished." The email last week further proves this site owner did not learn their lesson including the dangers of short term value using deceptive means.
A PR Zero means your site is unranked. Positive numbers for any small business website may never exceed PR2 or PR3 simply because your impact on the overall 6 billions sites online is minimal. Most site owners are unaware that minus PageRank values exist, so if PageRank is Google's way of ranking "the importance of a website", a minus site is likely wallowing in the sewer.
Do not agonize over your PR number. Most small business owners are unaware that the PageRank number system only displays whole numbers after rounding off a more precise PR down to the smaller whole number. You could have a PR2.999 (very close to PR3) that only shows PR2, so stay focused on adding value with original quality content often and the rewards will follow.
TAGS: advice small business advice seo search engine optimization pagerank
Natural backlinks to your site add SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, value to your PageRank because each link TO your site is like a vote. Natural links that relate directly to your site's overall theme add more value. Repeating another rule, any deceptive means of promoting your site will backfire. Do NOT engage in buying or selling links!
A large number, perhaps millions of website owners, were severely punished in 2007 for promoting paid linking schemes to add two-way or three-way links between sites for a fee. Here is an explanation citing an email "offer" that I received just last week that violates the rules of natural linking:
(Identifiable names and the writer's website address have been omitted intentionally.)
Any email that begins "Dear Sirs" or "Dear Webmaster" should be deleted immediately. The person who wrote the email to me last week talks about "selling/buying links", "ready to pay" for a review of their site, and "tell us the price of the review". These tactics are blantantly deceptive because they do not add value to the internet community, so I decided to investigate their site status more closely.
Did they get caught already? YES. Were they punished? YES. Here is the evidence as taken from URLTrends.com with points numbered 1 through 5 which I added in yellow circles for illustration purposes. The rest of the graphic was taken from URLTrends.
Point 1: URL of offending website covered intentionally
Point 2: Title of graphic for Google PageRank™
Point 3: Trend graph showing PR going from zero to minus 1 twice
Point 4: Date range tracked and reported by URL Trends
Point 5: The orange line from April to August goes up to PR5 and back to PR minus 1
The temporary boost to PageRank 5 and then the ultimate fall proves my warning about using deceptive means of optimizing the SEO value of your website because "You will be caught. You will be punished." The email last week further proves this site owner did not learn their lesson including the dangers of short term value using deceptive means.
A PR Zero means your site is unranked. Positive numbers for any small business website may never exceed PR2 or PR3 simply because your impact on the overall 6 billions sites online is minimal. Most site owners are unaware that minus PageRank values exist, so if PageRank is Google's way of ranking "the importance of a website", a minus site is likely wallowing in the sewer.
Do not agonize over your PR number. Most small business owners are unaware that the PageRank number system only displays whole numbers after rounding off a more precise PR down to the smaller whole number. You could have a PR2.999 (very close to PR3) that only shows PR2, so stay focused on adding value with original quality content often and the rewards will follow.
TAGS: advice small business advice seo search engine optimization pagerank
Jim Degerstrom 
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Return to Blog Home