“Page Rank does not help with rankings”

Earlier today I was doing the usual, searching for articles on Search Engine Marketing. I ran into some very odd replies to someone asking how long does it take for Google Page Rank to update. Here are some some of the replies below.

Anonymous poster 1“There’s no point in worrying about PR anyway. It’s a minor ranking factor at best.”

Me “Page Rank is part of a multi-part solution called SEO. You cannot just focus on Page rank or not look at page rank. Regardless page rank happens if you do everything you are supposed to using white hat seo ”

Anonymous poster 2 ” Search results are not ordered by page rank. People always say this, But none of them have bothered to check, They just assume that it must be this way.”

Me “Of course not, but the rankings are part of a much larger equation and Page Rank is part of it. You will find a lot of websites with very high page rank show up for keywords that you are working tirelessly to rank for. These websites are not really targeting these keywords and they only have toput a couple keywords in their text and they rank fairly quickly and highly for your keyword. Why? Because they are trusted by other users who found it valuable enough to link to.”

Why is page rank important for SEO

As we all know, everyone looks at page rank, some more than others. Sites like Facebook and NYtimes have some awesome page rank. Why? Because they are some of the most popular websites on the internet. A lot of the top news portals, blogs, forums talk about these sites and send links there way. Why? Because they provide legit services, content and media.

Before I get carried away, lets talk about why Google added “page rank” to their algorithm. From all of my experience and research I found that the Google’s “counter spammer unit” led by the seasoned operative Matt Cutts created Page Rank.

Spammers number one goal is to make money by getting more hits, selling a product or maliciously hurting you pocket book. If these spammers could simply create a website and have every other word be their top performing keyword and show up number one, they would probably sink their hooks into the majority of search engine users pocket books in one way or another. In turn, Google would not be such a great tool for finding quality websites, answers and information. And these spammers would get rich and create more websites which would drain Google of any search authority it has left.

So Google wants to trust your website and that is through the Page Rank factor. Your job as a website owner is to get popularity votes (links) pointing to your website from other trusted and popular websites. This is where it gets complicated and I will try to keep it short. Google does not only look at how many website are pointing to your website, they look at the quality of those websites by checking how much page rank is on the site which is linking to yours. Which means, they are also looking at which websites are pointing to that and so forth. Which turns into a massive linking pyramid of websites and page rank calculations.

This means, you cannot just go out and get a million links and expect your page rank or trust relationship with Google to grow. Several years ago I worked with a company in Houston that provided Search Engine Optimization for its clients. They got half of the SEO right, they would optimize a websites code, content, images, alt tags, title tags, meta descriptions and so forth. Next they would submit your website to hundreds of directories over the course of several months hoping for your rankings and page rank to increase. I was mainly an Ecommerce and web development guy at the time. Being new to SEO at the time I had my Ecommerce website put into this service for free and years later it has a page rank of zero. Actually, four months after they submitted me to hundreds of directories my page rank fell from 2 to 1 and then a few months later it dropped to zero. I speak nothing but the truth. I have learned my lesson.

What probably happened was, they submitted me to directories which had poor page rank. Which means, my website was not having quality back links and in turn they decided that the site should not be shown on the search results as high as it used to for keywords that I used to rank for on the first three pages. Makes sense right, who wants to buy something from a store that is being linked from sites that are not getting any real popularity votes on the web.

Linkbuildling through directory submissions is not all bad.

Right now I have an excel file filled with about 100 paid & non-paid directories which have high PR and are industry relevant. These directories review submissions and make sure the websites they are putting in their directory are not spam sites. Included is the fact that these industry relevant directories are content and keyword relative to the content on your website. This means, Google see’s that you are a “Houston Attorney” having a link from a directory of Legal Professionals in a category with other Houston Attorneys. Yes, this is beneficial and a great link to obtain.

Natural Linkbuildling

If you provide a good product or service backed by a real effort to please your customers, you should have zero problems getting some quality backlinks for your website. It can take time and patience but it will happen. You will get links from review sites, blogs, forums, friends, business associates and so forth. Or hire a Search Engine Optimization agency.

Have you ever gone to a Blog and seen comments where some mentally deranged chap decides to post a link to his favorite “Viagra” website in the middle of a Political debate of comments? I know you have. These guys are trying to get links to their website in order to rank higher for keywords. But you will rarely find these websites, they get blacklisted and thrown on the millionth page of the search results. All due to Page Rank factor and of course other spam deterrent features Google has put into its algorithm.

Page rank does matter when you are trying to optimize your website for keywords

Allot of factors are taken into account when doing Search Engine Optimization. Page rank falls in the middle somewhere and is part of a multi-part solution rather than the only solution. You need to first focus on the “on page seo” of your website by choosing the right keywords, title tags, quality content, inter linking and much more. You also need to focus on “off page seo” by getting some contextual links with anchor text from blogs, pr sites, news sites and other community or article type of websites. If your website is trusted by Google, then you will get closer to being put in front of searchers when they type in keywords which are relevant to your website.

This takes allot of work, start by building a strong foundation, researching keywords and competition. Or hire a Search Marketing Company and let them do the work.

Link Buildling for the DIY Internet Marketer

I have worked with quite a few small businesses and other professionals and this is a skill that many have yet to master. Basic HTML skills can help you do some of your own internet marketing. Furthermore, this will save you money and time by not having to call your webmaster every time you need to modify your website or blog.

Lets say you have a blog and a company website, both reside on the same domain. Your Blog address might be www.mycompany.com/blog and your website might be www.mycompany.com. If you write a blog post and link it to a more informative page located somewhere on www.mycompany.com then you are performing Interlinking. This plays many benefits when your trying to marketing & optimize your website for the search engines. First it will point Google to the pages which are important on your website. Second it will help your pages get indexed faster. Next it will create an SEO benefit by showing Google pages which are relative to the keyword you linked from your blog post.

Second Scenario would be that you have a blog located at lets say www.mycompany.blogspot.com and you have a company website located at www.mycompany.com. You are now getting into link builiding using anchor text. This is even more beneficial for optimizing your website. Lets say your blog post has some great original content. You update it quite a bit and you are using keywords on that blog which relate to your businesses products or services.

First, a couple words of advice. Don’t go overboard with keyword spamming and linking. A normal sized blog post should only cover one to two topics at most. Which means, you should only be linking one or two keywords back to your website, preferably different pages. If you can do this, you are well on your way in helping your website rank higher for keywords and gain some better page rank. This does not happen over night so be patient. Sooner or later you will see a rise in rankings and most probably your Page Rank.

The rest of this article covers how you can link keywords using Basic HTML. You do not have to be an expert or have any experience using HTML. If you can read and follow the steps below, then you are good to go.

HTML Linking a keyword to a web address (hyper linking)

Instead of just typing out your address in your content or a blog post you can link a keyword in your content to a specific page without having to show the actual address on the page. This saves allot of time and benefits your website by linking relative keywords to it. Here is an example. Lets say i am writing a blog post (which i am).

“Clicked Solutions helps local businesses connect with potential customers through Search Engine Marketing, contact us for a free quote here www.clickedsolutions.com”

Instead I would hyper link the keyword “Search Engine Marketing” to the web address and remove “contact us for a free quote here ……”.

Below is how you would do this using basic HTML

The next line is exactly how you will add a link to your content. Choose a keyword carefully, don’t go over board and choose only 1-4 phrase keywords. Replace the “clickedsolutions.com” domain name with your website domain name and make sure your keyword is between the > and < below.

The code above would go after the words “potential customer through” below.

“Clicked Solutions helps local businesses connect with potential customers through Search Engine Marketing“

Now you are only seeing the word “search engine marketing” and it will most likely be underlined which shows the reader it is a link. This link will lead to the page stated.

If you want to get more advanced keep reading.

HTML HYPER LINK TITLE TAGS.

Have you ever gone to a website and hovered over a link and a small piece of text pops up. Well, this is excellent for SEO, this tells search engines what your link is about. If the page you are linking to is relevant, you have just scored one point for your website. A rule of thumb is to link your keywords to relevant pages on your website. Otherwise you are not scoring any points at all and Google’s spiders can decipher this type of linking.

Go ahead and hover over this link Search Engine Marketing. Yes it says “houston seo services”. Below is how you would accomplish this.

This can go before or after the URL just make sure it stays within the first set of greater than and less than brackets.

Ok now that you understand the HTML part of back linking , lets talk about WYSIWYG editors, short for ‘what you see is what you get”. Most editors have a tool bar and lets use WordPress as an example. When writing a post you will see a bunch of icons at the top which resemble Microsoft Word’s Tool Bar. To the Right you will see two buttons called “Visual” and “HTML”. In order to do the HTML portion discussed earlier, you will need to click on “HTML”.

If your blogging software has a WYSIWYG editor then first high light the keyword you want to link. Next look for the link icon on the tool bar, which is usually an image representing a chain link like the image below.

Once you receive the pop up window you want to fill in the link and title. Make sure you use a descriptive title and the link is correct. After saving your post I would suggest clicking on the link to make sure it works.

If you have any questions or comments please email us using the contact us box above, we have disabled comments.

Joomla SEO DIY Guide to SH404SEF

Confused and don’t know which Joomla component/module you need to use for Joomla? This topic will cover search engine optimizing a Joomla 1.5 website.

If you build it they will not come!

The web or shall we say Google is filled with billions of results. These results are based on search engine algorithms which take into account, title tags, content, back linking, typography tags and more.

If you have not enabled any type of SEO on your joomla installation you are probably getting really weird URLs like this. http://yourwebsite.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=16&Itemid=10

If you have enabled the native Joomla SEF URLs option then the above URL is probably the following. http://yourwebsite.com/announcements/general-news/5251-major-events.html

A few points Joomla SEO out of the box is lacking below:

No Title Tag Support – You cannot customize your title.
You cannot customize the Meta Description per page
You cannot point duplicate urls to one url
URL’s cannot be customized
Sitemaps are not built in
NON Existent built in 404 pages.

And tons more options that are needed to optimize your joomla site.

Requirements for Joomla SEO

Joomla 1.5 installed in a Linux environment
Ftp Client we suggest Filezilla (its free)
Sh404 component (not free but a must for anybody trying to do seo)

After you have completed these tasks you will need to log into your joomla admin panel and follow these steps below.

Enabling Joomla SEO

Click the top left menu icon labeled “site”
choose “global configuration”
On the right hand side you will see three options
Select yes for “search engine friendly URLs”
Select yes for “use apache mod_rewrite”
Leave “add suffix to URLs” at no
Next open up Filezilla
At the top of Filezilla you will see a menu item called “file”. Click on file and you will see a link called “Sitemanager”
Once in Sitemanager click “new site”. Your host will be your domain name (ours would be clickedsolutions.com without the www.)
From the drop down labeled “logontype” choose “normal”.
Put in your username and password. You can get this from your hosting company if you do not know what it is. If you have cpanel or plesk then try and use the username you use to log into your web hosting account. Next you will hit connect.
Once connected you will browse into the root of your hosting account or where you installed Joomla (“public_html” and sometimes “/html”). You will know you are in the right place when you see folders labeled “includes, administrator, images, media,libraries,componenets”.
Look below the folders and you will see a filed labeled “htaccess.txt” you need to right click this file and click “rename”. Rename this file so it reads “.htaccess”. Yes put a period in front of the word “htaccess” so it reads “.htaccess” and hit enter. If you are on a windows hosting solution then you will have to keep reading to find your solution.

Congratulations out of the box Joomla SEO is complete.

Installing The SH404SEF Component

The configuration options below are for a contextual type of joomla website. We will be posting more for eocmmerce and other sties like jomsocial, magaizne and news websites.

Log into your back end administration panel
Go to the menu item labeled “extensios”and click on “install/uninstall”
Click browse and search for the zipped sh404 componenet file you downloaded from the web
Choose that file and hit “upload file & install”
This is the basic install and you are ready to start configuring the component

Configuring the SH404SEF Component

Go to the menu item labeled “components” and click on the SH404sef component
Below you will see buttons, click on “sh404sef configuration”
ON this page you will see quite a few options and we are going to cover a basic joomla install seo setup
Choose yes on the radio button labeled “Enabled”
Next scroll down and make sure file suffix is “.html”
below that choose “index.html” as your default index file
Choose a 404 page on the next row. You might want to go back and create a error page in your articles manager. This is usefull for when someone lands on your website and the page is no longer available, they will still be able to find their way around your websitee

Plugins Tab

Go back up and choose the tab labeled plugin’s
You have allot of options here and we are only focusing on SEO for your content. Every option has a question mark next to it, please read each one. Some of these options you might want to set to yes depending upon the type of site you are setting up
“Use Title Alias” should be set to no
“Use category alias” should be set to no
“Use section alias” should be set to no
“Use menu alias” should be set to no
“Show Section” should be set to no
“Show Category” should be set to no but can be set to yes if you would like to have the categorey displayed as a folder previous to the url. FOr example www.yourwebsite.com/categorey/filename.html
“Insert content table name” should be set to no
“Default table views name” should read Table
“Insert blog view name” click the question mark and act accordingly
“Activate multipage article smart titles” should be set to no unless your articles have multiple pages.
Back up top, if you are having multiple languages on your website then you will need to click on the “languages tab” and read the info question marks.

Advanced Tab

Activate Url Cache should be set to yes and will help with page load times
Leave the cachce size where it is
Now onto the more advanced features of SH404SEF. This is how your urls will be written. If you are using Linux and you did the basic out of the box joomla seo setup, then you should choose the drop down labeled “with .htaccess (mod_rewrite)
If you are on a windows platform then you will need to choose one of the other two. Test either one out until it works right. I cant say for sure unless I know exactly what type of configuration your host has for the IIS env.
Next choose yes for the “301 redirect from non-sef to sef URL” this option is pretty much a safe guard against duplicate content and it makes sure your URLs are all re-written
Choose yes for “301 redirect from JOOMLA SEF to sh404SEF” Same explanation as the last point except this will convert the ‘OUT OF THE BOX JOOMLA SEF URLs” to SH404SEF URLs. Did i confuse you?
Choose yes for “301 redirect www/non-www”. This is very important. Go to google and type site:domainname.com and look at your sites URL’s. If they are all “www.yourdomain.com” then you are good to go. If they are “yourdomain.com” then choose no. If you get a little bit of both then you need to create a “google web master tools account” and follow the instructions here to change your “preferred domain”.
Choose yes for “record duplicated URL” this will be good for identifying what URL’s are being duplicated.
Choose yes for “log 404 errors”
The rest of these options are optional and you should read the info question marks.

Skip to the Meta/SEO Tab

“Activate Meta management” set this to yes.
Remove Joomla Generator tag set this to yes
Use table-less output set this to yes
Insert h1 tags set this to yes. Unless you have already setup your template to have only 1 “h1″ tag on all of your Joomla pages.
Change multiple h1 in h2 should be set to yes. Having one h1 tag on each of your pages is a best practice. Multiple H1s is kinda like spamming.
Insert title in Read more should be set to yes. This will add keywords to the “read more” link when you hover your mouse over it. This is good for seo and keyword density on your page.
Insert outbound links symbol should be set to no unless you want symbols on your internla pages that show links going outbound. This is normally used if multiple novice users are adding contnet to your website, you can in turn click through their articles and remove links that go to other websites or add “no follow” tags to the links.
Outbound links color should be set depending on your template color. Black should go on white and vice versa.
Insert before page title – we do not use this, you want each of your page titles to be unique and different.
append to page title is where you can do your localization or branding of each page title. For instance i might append “houston,tx” to the end of each page title for SEO Purposes. Or a brand name / tagline can be added.

404 Page tab

Create a 404 page and go back to the main tab and choose the drop downlabeled “default 404 page”

Our next post will cover the rest of configuring your Joomla website.