Page rank can be something of an obsession with internet marketers of all shapes and sizes. It’s easy to understand why, because the search engine ranking of your site will strongly influence how well you do in the results whenever someone looks up a keyword or phrase which links to your website.
How Important is my PR?
While it is important to keep an eye on it to see how well your site is performing, it shouldn’t turn into something you end up checking twice a day every day. Your search engine ranking changes over time (hopefully for the better) and it does so as a result of what you do to change and develop your site – not as a result of you watching it like you would watch a plant that is starting to grow.
It’s good to develop routines when you start any new internet business, as routines help you to develop good habits and ensure that nothing important gets missed as part of your day-to- day progress. You can check various parts of your business and see how they are doing, and where some extra effort is required you can then look into how best to do that.
Website Development – An Ongoing Effort
As you develop your business and learn more about keywords and SEO and how to make sure that people (and the robots and spiders that Google, Yahoo and others use) find your site, you should find that your website naturally starts to perform better. You’ll also learn tips and tricks along this journey. It takes time for any website to start figuring in the search engine rankings at all, let alone to perform well. No website gets to the coveted number one spot overnight, so be sure you don’t ask for too much when it comes to monitoring the progress of your site. It’s important to realise as well that once you’ve achieved the results you’re hoping for, you’ll have to work to keep yourself from being dethroned.
They say the best things in life are worth working for, and achieving a higher search engine ranking is a learning process that will bear plenty of fruit.
About Sean Rasmussen
I agree Sean but I have no idea how I got a PR3 for my site. Maybe the content I added google likes. Good to see another Aussie.
cheers
Nigel
Brisbane
Hi Sean,
PageRank is like the Holy Grail for Internet Marketers. I feel like I’m constantly chasing good quality backlinks that will help me with my PR. I guess that’s because I’m supposed to.
Sean, do you have any thoughts on how long it takes to progress through the rankings? How long should it take me to get a PR 0 site to a PR 1? Does it have anything to do with the number of backlinks? I’m guessing that it doesn’t because of the varying PR of the sites that link to me? Just wondering….
Hi Jazz
PageRank is mainly determined by the amount and quality of links pointing back to your site. I would imagine that within 6 or 9 months of starting a blog and building links it could be possible to get a PR1 or 2. If you are constantly building backlinks, you should see some PR in the not too distant future.
Hi Sean,
That’s great news. This gives me something to look forward to. I was analyzing a site just recently and it had about 5000 backlinks for a PR 2. Does this seem right?
Yes that can be right Jazz. You have to take the quality of the links into consideration. One high quality PR 7or8 backlink can equal hundreds or thousands of low quality PR0 links.
Very practical advice Sean. All things being equal, it seems like it is much more productive to spend our time to getting links from high PR websites that Google considers to be credible. For a given amount of effort, the benefits (and linkjuice) would seem to be much greater.
This also ties in nicely about what you were saying in your Capitalising on Comments webinar about taking the time to comment on the blogs which are the experts in a given field. It is definitely important to build rapport with the blogs we post on, but if we can build rapport with people that Google already likes, then so much the better.
And social media will be a key part of that
I haven’t read any real credible evidence that all Social Media will help out in Page Rank Gee, especially the Social Media sites that employ NF links.
Social Media is great for traffic generation and promotion so is definitely a must do.
Hi Cemil
Your right, it doesn’t apply to all social media but it covers a wide range. Web 2.0 properties in particular and some bookmarking sites.
It’s good idea to check your PR once in awhile but it’s not something to obsess over.
One excellent piece of Sean’s advice in this article is as follows:
“It’s good to develop routines when you start any new internet business, as routines help you to develop good habits and ensure that nothing important gets missed as part of your day-to- day progress.”
A checklist to follow is one way to make the routines become habitual. Give it a try.
Oh, and don’t forget to check those page ranks once in awhile.
You can’t do everything at once and the process is organic. There are many factors also which do rely on time and aging of what you have set up.
I must say though that I was shocked to see the amount of backlinks which some websites have – in the millions! (I thought the 10 I had worked for were fantastic!) – well, yes they are fantastic as they are the start for my millions – have to start somewhere!