4 Rules for Making More Money with PageRank

dmiller90

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Rule #1: Make More Pages.

You can forget worrying about that little green PageRank bar in your toolbar ever again - it's time to focus on what REALLY matters.

Links do NOT create PageRank (no matter WHAT you may have heard otherwise). The only thing that creates and holds PageRank is a web page.

See, there's only a finite amount of PageRank available to share among all the pages in Google's search index. Think of Google's index as a apple pie. (I like apple, but you can think of your own flavor…)
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Every single new page that gets added to the index is like cutting the pie into one more slice. Now with billions of webpages, we're talking about some really tiny pieces of pie - but all the slices of the pie still only equal one pie when you add them up.

This is important, because more pages in the index means a bigger chunk of that PageRank Pie is yours to control and profit from.

Rule #2: Your competition dictates how much PageRank you need.

Research your competition - see how many pages they have in the search indexes by using "site:" searches for their domains on both Google and Yahoo.

Going to Yahoo may seem strange since we're trying to rank better on Google, but Google's page-count numbers are known to show as much lower than what the true number of pages Google has indexed.

Yahoo shows a much higher (and more accurate) estimation for the number of pages it has indexed from a particular site.

You can use that to "guesstimate" how many Google has, because chances are, if Yahoo has indexed a page, Google has as well.

Once you know how many pages your competition has, you have a target to aim for. It's time to get to work, and the goal is: MORE. Generally speaking, you want to try for more pages than any of your competitors.

But only as many more as you need to beat them - There's no special prize for winning by a mile. 1st place is the best you can do, so aim just above whoever is there now so you don't overwork yourself for no return.

ADVICE: Put some effort into these pages - there's no point in putting trash pages into the index just to have "more" - you want the content on these pages to be WORTH linking to, and WORTH finding in the search engines.

Rule #3: Improve links between your pages

WARNING: This is NOT about getting external one-way links to your pages. That's great and all, and WILL improve your PageRank, but we want to focus on pages you actually control: your own.

So we know that every page in Google has a little bit of PageRank assigned to it just by existing. But the real MAGIC of Google is that any page's PageRank score can be manipulated using links.

To use that "pie" example again, incoming links will make a page's "slice" of the pie bigger, but any outgoing links will make the "slice" smaller.

(Ok, the way it really works is a bit more complicated than slices of pie, but the metaphor will make you money, even if it won't get you a PhD.)

The bigger a slice is, the better it will rank in the index, and the more links coming into any given page, the bigger that page's slice of the PageRank pie will become.

That's why we wanted to make so many pages in Rule #1. Once we have all these slices in the big pie, we can actually manipulate the size of each slice by controlling how we link between them.

Here's the right way to do it:

Internally, we make sure that all our least important pages ALWAYS link to our most important, money-making pages. But ALSO make sure that your most important pages NEVER link to your least important pages.

In this way we "sacrifice" the PageRank on unimportant pages only to boost the PageRank where it matters. Once we "fatten up" a page with all that sacrificed PageRank, we want to keep it there.

By now, some of you may be thinking that building a website with all these crazy link structures and limitations might be hard. After all, how is a customer supposed to find your stuff if you link to some stuff and not others?

For example, SOME non-money pages should obviously still be LINKED to, but really shouldn't get any of your precious PageRank. Pages like "About Us" and "Contact Us" come to mind in the Health Insurance Website.

Obviously, you want every single page on your site to link to those for customer usability. But how can you do that without also "leaking" precious PageRank juice?

This is really easy. You simply use the rel="nofollow" method in the "a" tag on any link that you don't want passing PageRank.

Ex. http://www.YourSite.com" rel="nofollow">Click here

That HTML would allow both human visitors and search spiders to follow it to YourSite.com, however none of the PageRank from the linking page would be passed on to the linked page. Once you've closed the gap, then you can worry about optimizing your links to tweak your PageRanks and funnel it to your best pages.

Remember, we want to work smart here.

Running an online business can be a lot of work already, so there's REALLY no sense in wasting effort on something that won't return maximum benefit, right?

Have a Great Weekend!!
 
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Nice summary, some really good info here.


Matt Cutts recently said that this does not work any more. He claimed that if you have five links on a page and you nofollow one of them, then that link juice is simply wasted, and not redirected to the other outgoing links.

This was reported here Google Loses “Backwards Compatibility” On Paid Link Blocking & PageRank Sculpting
and dicussed extensively in the seo world in the past week... SEOmoz | Google (Maybe) Changes How the PageRank Algorithm Handles Nofollow

Dave, what are your thoughts?

I have read the same article you just posted. Thier is a difference of people trying to sculpt thier sites or honestly keeping useless information out of the index. Whole different ballgame and scenerio of Page Rank Sculpting. I dont think we have the whole story from Google. Matt Cutts also never went into complete detail, Wonder Why?

This is straight from the Article you referenced.


I have to say, I'm a little skeptical that this is an accurate and fully honest description of what Google's changed. It's certainly possible, and historically, their representatives at conferences haven't been known to issue directly dishonest statements, but at the same time, this is a massive shift in how PageRank is calculated and seems unlikely to me to have a positive impact on search quality.

I suspect the change is because many people have been abusing nofollow internally to attempt to game Google as well as abusing it in the sense that they've actually hurt their site's relevance and quality in the results (this latter seems more likely to me).

Basically, PR sculpting is useful on large domains, with thousands of pages and issues getting those deep pages enough link juice (PageRank) to stay in Google's main web index and appear for long tail search queries. Historically, in our consulting business, we've experienced terrific results sculpting the flow of PR to deep pages and growing the indexation rates of those sites. If Google has made this shift, we should expect those positive results to reverse themselves, but to date there's been no outcry of lost rankings and traffic to deep pages from the sites we've worked with. Of course, finding correlation in the web environment is nearly impossible due to the lack of a static landscape, but still....


The funny thing about all this to my mind is that if Google really has changed to treat nofollows as link "sinks" that consume PageRank but don't flow it, they're really only screwing over the sites that are only semi-familiar or semi-serious about SEO. Savvy SEOs are just going to go back to the old method of PageRank sculpting that existed long before nofollow - creating links that robots can't see or follow (in Flash, in external Javascript calls that are blocked, in plug-in content, etc.) to get around the issue. It's sad, too, because it rewards those paranoid SEOs who didn't listen/believe Google's acceptance of PR sculpting with nofollow and kept doing it the old fashioned way, and casts doubts on whether we can trust future messaging around SEO best practices, too.
I've got to say this is one of the more bizarrely counter-intuitive moves I've seen from Google, but I still think we don't have the whole story. Let's see what the follow-up questions and answers bring before we make any drastic decisions.
 
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You say: "Links do NOT create PageRank (no matter WHAT you may have heard otherwise)"

The you say: "WARNING: This is NOT about getting external one-way links to your pages. That's great and all, and WILL improve your PageRank,"

Which is it?
 
You say: "Links do NOT create PageRank (no matter WHAT you may have heard otherwise)"

The you say: "WARNING: This is NOT about getting external one-way links to your pages. That's great and all, and WILL improve your PageRank,"

Which is it?

And your credit card number is what?
 
I am simply asking you to clarify since there seems to be some conflicting information in your original post. I don't need an SEO. Thanks anyway just looking for clarification since you are the "SEO God"

Your comment seems like quite to cop out
 
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I am simply asking you to clarify since there seems to be some conflicting information in your original post. I don't need an SEO. Thanks anyway just looking for clarification since you are the "SEO God"

Your comment seems like quite to cop out

Why do you feel that I owe you an explanation? Just because "You" think there is conflicting statements? Who Are You? No you wanted to play games and wanted to call me out, Good Luck on that one~!


You say: "Links do NOT create PageRank

Links Don't create Page Rank--Web Pages and Content create Page Rank.

The you say: "WARNING: This is NOT about getting external one-way links to your pages. That's great and all, and WILL improve your PageRank,"

Still Fact: I said Improve your Page Rank (Over 200 Factors that Determine True PR)

When you obtain relevant links from Authority Sites with unique content on the keyword Phrase that you are targeting.

By having the correct anchor text in your hyperlink that leads the customer and Google to the relevant web page based on the Keyword Searched.

Doing this correctly Confirms to Google that your telling the "Whole Truth" "Confirmation" which builds Authority for that web page. Which Increases (Improves) your Page Rank.

Pretty Simple, Same stuff I said last time. Far From God of Anything.:no:
 
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Although the things that you do to increase your PR (page rank) are very important, your PR # alone does not have any real benefit to your site.

Focus on building quality backlinks to your site and posting relevant content. Let your PR take care of itself and don't worry about it.
 
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