13 Mar 09 How Google Calculates Page Rank – Link Building Part 3

Some webmasters constantly debate, Page Rank is very important, some argue otherwise. For me, Page Rank is not my type of tea to brag about it. But yes, you can definitely make good income with higher Page Rank, that is no doubt about it. However, SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) are not directly related but relevant with PR although I personally believe higher PR has brought some unique traffic to the site.

How does Google calculate?

The truth is, there are many variables and terms. You can actually view Google’s technology overview here. So, let’s break down a little bit about Page Rank.

PR History: Larry Page started it, hence the Page Rank, LOL. The project started in 1995 and led to a functional prototype, named Google, in 1998. Shortly after, Page and Brin founded Google Inc., the company behind the Google search engine. While just one of many factors which determine the ranking of Google search results, PageRank continues to provide the basis for all of Google’s web search tools. (Reference: Google)

PR definition: PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”. (Reference directly from Google Inc.)

PR how it calculates: Google assigns a numeric weighting from 0-10 for each web page; Therefore,  PageRank denotes a site’s importance in the eyes of Google (of course, many search engines are more or less very similar actually). PageRank is derived from a theoretical probability value on a logarithmic scale. Here’s the graphical analysis of Page Rank.

“Mathematical PageRanks (out of 100) for a simple network (PageRanks reported by Google are rescaled logarithmically). Page C has a higher PageRank than Page E, even though it has fewer links to it: the link it has is much higher valued. A web surfer who chooses a random link on every page (but with 15% likelihood jumps to a random page on the whole web) is going to be on Page E for 8.1% of the time. (The 15% likelihood of jumping to an arbitrary page corresponds to a damping factor of 85%.) Without damping, all web surfers would eventually end up on Pages A, B, or C, and all other pages would have PageRank zero. Page A is assumed to link to all pages in the web, because it has no outgoing links.”

Above PageRank is directly quoted from Wiki so that I do not make mistakes with explanation and wanted to avoid plagiarism.

okay, The $$$ part.., the most important SEO ideas about PR are…

1. The page rank of the linking page, especially backlinks
2. Relevant linkage – if your site is about home loans and backlinks, outgoing and incoming links are about home loans, you get more votes.
3. Quality of incoming links connected at the website of outgoing links
4. The number and quality of outgoing links on the page – if you put one URL 1 million time on one page, it will not only discount as a spam, also count as no quality link.
5. Get different sources of traffic - such as organic search, direct visits, referral visits. To be honest, direct visits to sub-pages many times will help you rise in PR especially with social bookmarking sites such as digg, reddit, etc. Because the subpage will also contribute the rank of the domain (Overall PageRank).
6. Have more original and unique content so that you will have more page added to your domain consequently creating more votes to your internal linkage. (if you can follow timely manner, it is the best, for example, 1 new page every week or 1 new page a day).
7. Have less dangling links (no internal or outgoing links), in other words, dead end page.
8. Don’t worry about sub-directory, worry about correct internal links.
9. Submit free to article directories (of course high PR ones) and put the direct link to your website.
10. Exchange the link with higher PR sites

There you have excellent 10 tips to build up your PageRank for your SEO jobs, Others will charge you hundreds of dollars for these. If you do it yourself when you have some sparetime, it can be achieved. Please keep in mind that easy ways such as buying links, submitting to no-follow sites, submitting to most of the directories, or spamdexing (spamming on indexing) will not only discount your PageRank, but also have a chance of being penalized. So, do the right way, your PageRank will be up consistently whenever Google updates PR.

Tags: bookmark, digg, infomm, link building, pagerank, reddit, search engine, SERP, SERPs, social bookmarking, tools, unique content, webmaster, Website

17 Feb 09 Viral Traffic Generation Methods

Previously, I have posted about viral marketing for online advertising. Now, I want to share a little bit further more about viral marketing and why should we use it in order to drive massive traffic to our websites.

So, cut to the chase, WHY do we use viral marketing techniques?

1. quick to drive traffic (once it’s starting to spread, there’s basically no limit, the message will pick up the speed faster and to the bigger audience)
2. cost effective (once again, no limit, easy to start and cheap to expect the traffic, make sure your site has some to offer for your visitors to become regular)
3. niche gathering (you will eventually find where your niche is headed and your target audience in no time as long as you offer unique content that are original, photographer offers photoblog whereas geek-blog offers all technology news)

Bottom Line, traffic means money, relevant niche means more money, cost effective mean more money. So, what else shall I say?

So, this comes the question, WHAT are the techniques?

1. I am going to repeat this again, provide quality content, products or services. (provide something which is unique for your visitors)
2. Give something away (I would recommend gmail service to my friends because they basically gave away free service for e-mail, don’t they? you gotta offer something so that will create buzz).
3. Recommendation or referral on your site. (something like share this post, email to a friend, etc etc, that will create more buzz because I would really recommend to my friend if a particular website offer something nice)
4. Have some video clips, or free e-book to give away or have a personal blog about your interest on the site (that will also give some kind of expose to your visitors and yes it does really attract traffic)
5. Social bookmarking icons and links (They are basically helping you to bookmark or submit to the sites, either way, they are good for traffic, easy for search engine to index, my personal favorites regarding SEO are reddit, technorati and digg)
6. Use RSS feed or any sort of Feed (Some of my audience like RSS feed because they are firefox fans, some of them love email feed as well, so feedburner or similar service sites can offer, I use feedburner of course, you can set up either RSS feed or email subscription)
7. Do what others do not generally offer (It’s very simple but sometimes it is easily overlooked in many cases, for example, I enabled “do-follow” plugin in my wordpress, which default is “no-follow” for commenters, so I would get more visitors who will want to have do-follow link on my site and will write more comments as well.
8. Run on-site competitions (Many internet gurus are still using this method, and that’s how they get massive traffic and regular visitors)
9. Build a community and relationship with your visitors (Communication is the key to success, if you interact with your visitors, you will build the better relationship between you and your visitors that is very good for long term)

Ok, There are main 9 methods I have tested and experimented in the past and they have created impressive traffic for me.

So, start right now because what I have suggested will cost next to nothing. You can basically start with no-investment methods such as adding referal scripts, RSS setup, email subscriptions and some fabulous content first.

Thanks for reading. Now, I will go back to build my viral marketing for another site

Tags: advertising, audience, blog, bookmark, comment, comments, content, digg, e-book, example, free, google, infomm, mak, massive traffic, more, News, niche, online, pet, ping, plugin, reddit, referral, search, search engine, SEO, social bookmarking, success, unique, viral marketing, web, Website, wordpress

20 Dec 08 All about Google – Easy, Simple and Effective Part 1

Sometimes, People wanted to know so much and can find so little information, I keep asking myself why because I have faced this kind of situation quite often. But today is a new day and I have got something to share because someone has done a great job especially to those who are new or vaguely understood about Google before.

I have recently posted about the sources of knowledge and some websites I find it very interesting for webmasters, SEO and online marketing worlds. One of these sites is DigitalPoint forum, which I visit frequently past a couple of months. I have met an awesome person from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia and here’s what he shares all about google. I can only say 3 words.

Easy, Simple and Effective.. I will divide into two parts because this is going to be covered in a lot of Google related topics.  So, Thanks to MGTGamer whose profile is M3rC shares this fantastic information for all of you. This article is published with the content & consent of M3rC and his original post.

Google Search Engine Related

Q: My site/blog doesn’t show up on Google! Why?

A: This, I think is one of the most widely asked questions not only here at DP, but any SEO Forum for that matter. Well, let’s see the answer to this question depend on many, many variables. As you read through this thread, perhaps you might come across information that will help you understand the algorithm behind the Big G (no-one really has a 100% insight on it, but we can all try) However, for the purpose of the thread, let’s work out a few? If you type “site:[your domain here]” on Google and no results are found, you should try the following processes: 

1) Write some decent UNIQUE Content
2) Fine-Tune your H1 & H1 Tags and have a well written Title, Description & Keywords.
2) Submit your articles to Social Bookmarking sites such as Facebook, Yahoo! Buzz,  Stumble Upon, Google Bookmarks, Digg, Reddit & Others.
3) Submit your site to Directories (You can find heaps of recommended ones, just search the DPForums)
4) Make sure your SiteMap is up to date and in working order
5) Submit your site to the “Google URL Submitter”
6) Register a Google Webmaster’s account, and submit your site details <- IMPORTANT!
Trust me, this works all the time! I usually get indexed after 5-8 HOURS after I follow those six steps (in order)! It works. Perfectly.

Q: Should I submit to Yahoo/MSN/Google?

A: Why not all three? It wouldn’t hurt. Now it is true that the algorithms behind these big engines are different, in fact I personally conclude that they are matching opposites. I have personally experience websites moving up on the Google Results (due to WHITE hat SEO techniques) and in return the site was falling on Yahoo results. So, I guess it’s fair to come to that assumption? I recommend you submit to all engines, but select one and work on getting good results on that. Don’t try to kill all three engines with one stone, cause your stone will never be big enough.

Q: How to get #1 Position for keyword “ABCDE”

A: If the answer to this question can be answer via a thread post, Search Engines wouldn’t exist because everyone “would be #1″. To gain number one status, is hard and it’s even harder to maintain that position. In fact it’s near impossible you pick a keyword and search it once a week, You would see that there’s at least some slight change in the order of websites. It will take time, effort and perseverance to get to #1. If you stick around long enough and stay true to your ambition you will get there! Only time will tell if you do.

Google Adsense Related

Q: I’m not earning “X” amount! Why?

A: Don’t quit your day job just yet, hand on for a second buddy. Google Adsense pays you PER CLICK. That’s right you might get lucky and get $1+ for a click, but that won’t be for ever unless you done your homework, and found the ultimate niche (this is possible) anyways, most of us publishers, earn around 10-40cents a click, and those are the lucky ones. You won’t get rich overnight with a new site, so give it time. Traffic is the key, not only traffic but targeted traffic. Junk Traffic that you can buy for $1/100,000 hits is the biggest waste of a dollar! Targeted traffic means that your visitors have an interested in your topic, so if they see an advertisement that catch their attention they will hopefully click on it. Surfers that get paid 2 cents to view your page for 10seconds isn’t going to get you any clicks, guaranteed. Traffic ultimately is the key to success in Adsense, so stick around learn as much as you can – and one day you can reap the benefits.

Q: What can I legally display?

A: There’s been a few threads about warez and adult sites having Adsense on it, well to answer all those questions – get rid of it! Google cannot be cheated, we’ll you can but not for long. They will find you out and eventually destroy your ability to use their tools once and for all, let alone earn money. If your still concerned about your niche you can always try other incentive sites, or even better read theGoogle Adsense TOS first. If they don’t say you can’t do it, that means you can <- just a handy pointer.

Q: OMG! I “accidentally” clicked my ad! What now?

A: Don’t panic, just notify Google using this and just one measly “accidental” click won’t do you harm unless someone has a repulsive disorder, repeating the same accident over and over…

Q: Google banned me, do I have hope?

A: Save your time, and don’t bother. Google has many publishers as they need, if not want too. So, if you really want to you can file a complaint and fight and near unwinnable battle. Or else you can be smarter and invest that time in working with other incentive programs like Adbrite or YahooPublisher.

Q: I’m getting “X,XXX” clicks but only “$YYYY“! What’s going on?

A: If your impressions, clicks and payout doesn’t match out then either you are overlooking something really important your Googles wrong, and the likely hood of that happening is 99% and 1% respectively! Target your keywords better, revise your traffic and visitor behave by using Google Analytics then re-revise your advert layout and colors and positions as these three are the biggest reasons why your Adsense might not be performing. If all three seems in shape, post here @ DPForums, I’m sure we can help you out!

Google PageRank/Traffic Related

Q: Whens the next PR Update?

A: Digg a hole, and bury yourself and we’ll call you up when the next updates coming. Seriously, who cares? PageRank is just a visual representation of how much GOOGLE THINKS that your site is of value to the community, you could easily have a low PR site with significant amount of visitors. PageRank is important but isn’t the only SERP factor! For crying out loud don’t worry about this, it happens every 2-4months and if you can’t stick around that long – do you really think web developments for you?

Q: Do-Follow? No-Follow? Who-Follow? 

A: Your probably wondering what it is, well it’s simple. Google allows webmasters to set which sites should get the “link juice” from the originating webpage. What does that mean? Well say I have a PR4 page and I link to your page, and I set you as “Do-Follow” then when the little incy-wincy Google spider comes crawling my site and comes across your link, it will identify the Do-Follow tag and pass on some of that PR4 Link Juice on to your page! That’s why “DO-Follow Commenting” is such a good way of getting good, healthy and quick backlinks for your site! Obviously, the term “nofollow” will negate this instance.

Q: Buying links for Higher PR and better back links?

A: This gets a bit grey, let me put it this way. You can do it, but if Google finds out that you are – you will be penalized and most likely loose the effect of that bought link. In other words, if they catch you – you’ll go down the SERPs and they are likely to backlist you (this is an educated guess).

Q: I just started a website, how can I get more traffic?

A: This is one of the most frequently asked questions by new web developers, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Except maybe the fact the answer has no limits. You can generate traffic from telling your friend to visit it, to ordering a Cessna plane to leave a URL on the skies of a sunny morning and everything in between the two! There’s unlimited ways you can get traffic but here are few that’s been narrowed down to “online marketing”:
~Submit to Social Bookmarking Sites
~Participate in Forums, Online Discussions and become a niche-related community activist (other words talk to people)
~Don’t Spam! “If what you have to say, isn’t something you want to hear yourself – don’t say it”
~Write often, the more content you write the more times your visitors will come back to read it
~Perfect your theme, layout and optimize your site visually <- this has so many advantages, so just do it.
~Be creative and think outside the box, look at what others are doing and try to beat it with something out of the ordinary. People get amused by new and exciting things.
~Optimize your tags, keywords and images for Search Engines this will indirectly turn into traffic.
~Aviod keyword spamming
Google SiteMaps Related

Q: Should I have a Sitemap?

A: Do you want to be ranked high in search engines? The answer to these two questions will be the same.

Q: Google hasn’t accepted my Sitemap yet?

A: It will take a while, if you have submitted your sitemap to Google Webmasters, just give it a few days and personally visit your sitemap URL to see if it’s in working and accessible order.

Ok, pretty long enough for part 1. Part 2 can be read here.

Thanks for reading.

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Tags: adbrite, adsense, australia, blog, digg, digital point, effective online marketing, facebook, forums, google, h1, h2, melbourne, pagerank, reddit, SEO, sitemap, social bookmarking, stumble upon, tags, tools, traffic, unique content, url submitter, victoria, webmaster, yahoo buzz, yahoo publisher