Optimizing our site

[realestate]

i

[rockyracoon]

First off, why the subfolder? It looks like you have a splash page which is bad news. It has a PR5 but there is not content for Google to pick up so it's just a waste. Move the "UC" folder to the domain so it gets the PR.

[realestate]

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[realestate]

ok.

[r2d2]

Try not to worry so much about PR. Its only a minor SERPs factor of one search engine.

Plus you will probably want to have PR on your subpages. This is where most traffic will probably come to.

[rockyracoon]

Try not to worry so much about PR. Its only a minor SERPs factor of one search engine.

Plus you will probably want to have PR on your subpages. This is where most traffic will probably come to.

PageRank, link popularity, whatever you want to call it. All search engines use it, so it is best to keep it in mind. However, if you want to get technical AltaVista doesen't like subfolders much anyways. Splash pages in gneral are a bad idea too. There are more reasons to move it than just PageRank.

[disgust]

no, pagerank itself means VERY, VERY little.

what matters is the anchor text.

PR is "blind" to anchor text. you could have one site linking to you for "frogs," another for "coke" and another for "hoola hoops" and it'd all be the same for the PR.

however they're very, very different for the SERPs.

PR is only really important if you're trying to resell text links, or impress sites and do link exchanges. the impact it has on the serps directly is virtually zero right now.

[ferret77]

"Try not to worry so much about PR. Its only a minor SERPs factor of one search engine.

Plus you will probably want to have PR on your subpages. This is where most traffic will probably come to."

are you serious , or are one of the many seo people who uses forums to mis-inform people

The actual greenbar on the google toolbar might not mean anything, but the link popularity is by far the big factor in search engine rankings in the search engines which actually mean something

google, yahoo. msn

[aspen]

no, pagerank itself means VERY, VERY little.

what matters is the anchor text.

PR is "blind" to anchor text. you could have one site linking to you for "frogs," another for "coke" and another for "hoola hoops" and it'd all be the same for the PR.

however they're very, very different for the SERPs.

PR is only really important if you're trying to resell text links, or impress sites and do link exchanges. the impact it has on the serps directly is virtually zero right now.

Of course the PR your homepage gets for "hoola hoops" can be passed to your subpages using whatever keyword rich phrase you like, which can then be passed back to your homepage using another keyword rich phrase.

No PageRank is worthless unless you have a poorly optimized internal linking structure.

[disgust]

Pagerank determines the importance of the page, which google uses to judge, among other things, how deep it should be crawled and how often it should be crawled.

the pagerank of a page does NOT have any signifant impact on how important the anchor text on a given page matters for the SERPs.

Pagerank matters in some situations, but quite a few, it's practically irrelevant. as long as the page is in google, the right anchor text is going to help you.

[aspen]

Alright... I don't think we're on the same page. I thought you understood how it works.

Raw anchor text matters no more than raw number of incoming links. What matters is the weight, PageRank. The value of a link to your SERP position is a factor both weight and context.

You can have all the keyword rich incoming links you want and if they're from pages with 0 PageRank they aren't doing anything for you.

So, getting any PageRank to your homepage will help your subpages assuming you have keyword rich internal links. And any PageRank to your subpages will help your homepage assuming the same thing.

[disgust]

I do understand how it works, I assure you.

the PR doesn't have much at all to do with the "weight" given to the anchor text bonus- if you want to rank #1 for "widgets," 1,000 PR4 links on seperate domains with the anchor text "widgets" is going to get you a lot, lot further than a single link from a PR9 page with the text "widgets."

yes, you'll get a PR bonus from getting linked to from a PR9 site, but this is NOT the same as an anchor text bonus. having a high pagerank but not targetting a specific phrase (or set of phrases) won't get you very far (except under bizarre circumstances- ie, reselling text links based on your PR).

Most people don't realize this. They're completely swept away by the whole PR hyper, and in most situations- as long as the pages aren't really deep, and have a moderately decent pagerank- the specific pagerank matters very, very little.

[aspen]

I do understand how it works, I assure you.

No, you don't.

What follows is a very dumbed down explanation. I'm trying to make it as simple to understand as possible.

Page A (PR 4) links to Page X with the word "widgets"

Page B (PR 5) links to Page X with the word "sprockets"

Page C (PR 2) links to Page X with the word "pancakes"

Page X ends up with 4 points for widgets, 5 points for sprockets, and 2 points for pancakes.

You following me?

Now in reality the weight is found by a more complicated formula. You need to take the number of links on the page and the dampening factor into account. However this example illustrates how things work.

The problem as I see it is that hating PageRank is a popular sport right about now. People with no understanding of Google post how it doesn't work or it isn't useful. Basically because they see low PR sites ranking well or things like this.

These gripes have always existed because PageRank has always been just a component of Google's ranking algorithm. For instance someone with a PR 5 site with horrible anchor text might rank worse than someone with a PR 4 site and great anchor text. So the PR 5 site person thinks PR doesn't matter and gets all upset. When in reality PR does matter, they're just not using it right within their internal links and they're not getting the right anchor text for their external incoming links.

Now fast forward a little bit and you have Google making changes. They have likely implemented a localrank type change where even more context filtering is done and they may have implemented filters discounting links from similar IP address. So now you have the same issue as before where people aren't ranking as well as they think they should and they chalk it up to PR (and by definition incoming links) being meaningless.

So people post this stuff on forums. PR does nothing. No proof, no backup, no examples. It gets reused and recycled.

Suddenly someone reads about anchor text and they make the incorrect conclusion that Google is now using anchor text instead of PageRank or some such nonsense. The fact is Google has always used anchor text in conjuction with PageRank to rank sites. From the very beginning they did this. Anyone who says PageRank is worthless because Google now uses Anchor text obviously doesn't know that Google always used anchor text.

I'll try explain without using the word PageRank since there are so many misconceptions about it.

Here is how Google works:

1. The weight of your incoming links is what is used to figure out the weight of your outgoing links. This happens on a page by page basis.

2. The weight of your incoming links modified by the anchor text of your incoming links is what will help or hurt you in the search results. Good links are ones from weighty pages with keyword rich anchor text. Bad links are ones from low weight pages with no keywords in the anchor text.

3. This value, the weight of your incoming links coupled with their context, is then used in conjunction with on page ranking factors such as your text and title tag to create your actual rank.

4. Google may be using localrank, where after the initial search results the results are reranked and only links from within the initial search result set are counted. Meaning that you need incoming links from pages that also rank well on the keywords you are targetting.

Is one PR 9 better than 1000 PR 4s? Assuming its a perfect 4 and a perfect 9 and assuming they use the same anchor text and have the same number of links on a page (basically all things being equal). Then, if Google's log base of the PR scale as shown in the toolbar is a 5, which all empirical evidence points to it being, then 1000 PR 4 links are equal to 0.32 PR 9 links.

The full scale is 1000 PR4 = 200 PR5 = 40 PR6 = 8 PR7 = 1.6 PR8 = 0.32 PR9

[disgust]

you don't need to post a "dumbed down" version of how pagerank works for me. I understand how pagerank passes, and I'm not disputing that. I'm also not disputing that a link from a PR9 will most likely do more for your PR than 1,000 seperate PR4 links.

the problem isn't that I don't understand you; the problem is I don't agree with you.

what I am debating is that a single link- even from a high PR page- does little for anchor text bonuses.

if you want real live examples, I can try to find them for you.

SERPs placements are NOT dominated by the quality (read: PR) of incoming links' anchor text, they're determined by quantity.

search for any competitive term. look at the backlinks. they show #1 for that term because they have the right anchor text on hundreds and hundreds- quite often even thousands- of different domains, all pointing to them with the phrase they're trying to rank for.

you don't end up ranking #1 for a competitive term because you purchased a single PR9 link and used the right anchor text. that doesn't happen, it never did, and that's a good thing.

[aspen]

Do you know what localrank is? It would explain why you're not seeing the benefit you expect from bought links.

But to sum up, your opinion is that Google looks at total number of backlinks from unique domains rather than total weight of backlinks?

[dcallan]

there is not enough space for keywords on the site, so we need to find a solution to this too.

This is bad design I feel, these days SEO elements have to be implemented into the design from the onset. Search engines could make or break a site particularly in those dark early days.

I believe others have mentioned this earlier in the thread but a direct solution for this is keyword rich backlinks. That is links that point to your site with the actual hyperlink as your keywords. I have used this strategy very effective for my SEO campaign, I myself believe that keyword rich backlinks are the most important aspect if ranking well in GOOGLE and now Yahoo. Basically you want to ask others in your industry or with sites related to your industry (but not competing) for links with the keywords 'real estate' or whatever. Here's a thread from my forum (you will see backlinks are at the top - http://www.akamarketing.com/webmaste...t=ST;f=12;t=28

I reckon sites which use links manager are a great target for getting backlinsk from and improving your rankings really quickly, they allow a webmaster to submit links with specified data such as title (anchor text)

[disgust]

Do you know what localrank is? It would explain why you're not seeing the benefit you expect from bought links.

But to sum up, your opinion is that Google looks at total number of backlinks from unique domains rather than total weight of backlinks?

I've heard explanations of localrank, but none were exactly satisfactory; they seemed quite vague and offered little practical insight in real-word examples. If you want to try, though, be my guest.

If all you're trying to get to with the localrank bit is that there may be a "network filter," then yes, I understand that and I agree 100%. If you're saying something more than that then you'll have to explain yourself.

I'm not saying that Google looks at total number of backlinks from unique domains to generate Pagerank- if Pagerank is what you're worried about, then you need links from high Pagerank sites.

But getting a site with a high PR has little usefulness if a keyword or keyphrase isn't targetted. If what you're saying was the case, then high PR sites would ALWAYS dominate the serps.

Pagerank does have some importance, but it's not nearly as much of an influence on the everyday serps as people seem to think.

You mentioned people correlating things that aren't related, and I think you may be doing the same. Just because some high PR sites show up when you search doesn't mean that the high PR is the exact cause of the high placement; if they have the right anchor text campaign going, they're going to have a decent PR automatically. If they have a decent site that gets inbounds with appropriate anchor text just because it exists, it's going to have a high PR.

The PR isn't WHY it's listed high in the serps, though. and people should stop assuming that it is.

The bottom line of what I'm saying:

if you want to rank for widgets, getting 1,000 different inbounds with the anchor text "widgets" from 1,000 different domains is going to do a lot more for you in the serps than a single link from a PR9 site with the anchor text "widgets."

Despite the fact that the PR9 link may do more for your actual Pagerank.

[r2d2]

are you serious , or are one of the many seo people who uses forums to mis-inform people

Really just meant to say to this guy to not worry about it too much - I got hung up about it when I first started getting into PR, worrying about every link.

Take a little time, read some articles about PR. Aspen has a link to a great one, I cant find it for now.

If you build your site properly, PR should be distributed well.

aspen - I think disgust is thinking of a combination of anchor text and PR rather than pure PR. I've often wondered whether things like 3 or 4 PR4 links with 'widget' anchor text would be better than 1 PR5 link with 'widget' anchor text? Obviously the second would provide more PR, but the first would provide more link text 'points'.

[aspen]

But getting a site with a high PR has little usefulness if a keyword or keyphrase isn't targetted. If what you're saying was the case, then high PR sites would ALWAYS dominate the serps.

Pagerank does have some importance, but it's not nearly as much of an influence on the everyday serps as people seem to think.

You mentioned people correlating things that aren't related, and I think you may be doing the same. Just because some high PR sites show up when you search doesn't mean that the high PR is the exact cause of the high placement; if they have the right anchor text campaign going, they're going to have a decent PR automatically. If they have a decent site that gets inbounds with appropriate anchor text just because it exists, it's going to have a high PR.

The PR isn't WHY it's listed high in the serps, though. and people should stop assuming that it is.

I don't think you've understood me. People have been posting for years "Why is such and such a site ranked better than me when I have more PR?" and for years I have been answering "because your anchor text likely isn't as good."

It was the #1 myth in this article.

But you see, you're the other side of the spectrum. PageRank doesn't matter? Nothing could be further from the truth.

Your ranking could be expressed as

(Pagerank X Anchor text)

If either side of the equation is 0, you don't rank well. The best anchor text in the world will not help you if the links are on low PR sites, and the highest PR sites in the world won't directly help you unless the links use good anchor text (indirectly though they do help since you can send that PR through the rest of your site using better anchor text).

The raw PageRank of a page doesn't really matter, other than to determine what kind of weight it passes on. But the PageRank of the sites linking to you (and hence the weight of your incoming links) certainly matters.

As for PR4 v. PR9 thing. Like I illustrated above a PR9 is greater than 1000 PR4s unless Google is giving unique domain bonuses (which remains to be seen). I can say that I've gotten to #1 on an extremely competitive phrase in the SERPs before by giving a page only 1 incoming link (that carried a PR7 weight) with good anchor text. The page had only 1 incoming link, was a PR7, and was #1 on a competitive phrase. The incoming link was an internal link too.

[disgust]

well obviously it can be represented that way, because every page in google's index has a Pagerank. if it's got a zero Pagerank, of course it won't help you, because it's not in google's index to begin with.

mind giving us the link (and the phrase you rank/ed for) where a single inbound from a high PR caused you to rank well for a competitive term? and how long ago was this?

see, I flat out don't agree that the anchor text bonus gets exponentially bigger along with the Pagerank. this would be way, way too easily to manipulate the serps with.

the traditional flow of PR still exists, but that flow is only used directly, in the same way, to calculate PR flow. not "anchor text flow."

again, the problem isn't that I don't understand what you're saying, I simply don't agree with you. you can explain how you stand on the issue all you want, but if you're not going to explain why you think that, we aren't going to get very far.

[aspen]

mind giving us the link (and the phrase you rank/ed for) where a single inbound from a high PR caused you to rank well for a competitive term? and how long ago was this?

The phrase was Dell coupons, the page itself (meaning the exact url) no longer exists since I redid the URL structure and got a new domain. It would have been early last year that I did it with one incoming link, then later in the year I maintained #1 (until nov) but I had multiple incoming links.

the problem isn't that I don't understand what you're saying,

I think you do finally understand, but your previous post you seemed to think I was saying that raw PR is enough to get you ranked well on any term and nothing to be further from the truth.

[blackdog]

well obviously it can be represented that way, because every page in google's index has a Pagerank. if it's got a zero Pagerank, of course it won't help you, because it's not in google's index to begin with.

you can have 0 page rank and still be in the google index. but the only way you'll end up in the serps is if you search for you domain

[disgust]

you can have 0 page rank and still be in the google index. but the only way you'll end up in the serps is if you search for you domain

you can't "actually" have a PR of 0. two things can be happening:

1) you have a PR less than 1 and more than 0, but it's rounding it off.

2) the PR has been calculated internally but hasn't yet been updated to display to the public yet

when the page hasn't been cached yet it's possible that it's on some sort of "internal queue" and is waiting to have the PR calculated. if this is the case then outbound links from this page wouldn't (yet) have any impact on the serps. it wouldn't have a PR (which is quite different from having a PR0) because google hasn't calculated it yet.

I think you do finally understand, but your previous post you seemed to think I was saying that raw PR is enough to get you ranked well on any term and nothing to be further from the truth.

what you seemed to be saying that I disagreed with was that the "weight" of anchor text gets exponentially stronger in the same way PR flow does depending on the PR of the page the link appears on.

I don't believe the traditional PR flow works for the same for anchor text as it does for pure anchor text; I agree and understand completely that PR isn't linear, and a link from a PR9 page is going to pass a PR value exponentially larger than a link from a PR1 page.

what I'm saying is that this same sort of flow doesn't apply to anchor text. let's say a link from a PR9 page is 10,000 times stronger (for pure PR purposes) than a link from a PR1 page: I don't believe the same is true for anchor text flow. even though the PR9 may do more for your actual PR, I don't think it would really take 10,000 separate inbound links from PR1 pages to "beat" that anchor text bonus.

I'm sure PR is entered into the value of the incoming anchor text somewhere, but I don't think PR is anywhere near as important as it is if you're concerned with "pure PR" flow.

does that make where I stand more clear?

all I'm saying is that the equations to calculate PR don't work in the same way to calculate anchor text bonuses.

[blackdog]

all I'm saying is that the equations to calculate PR don't work in the same way to calculate anchor text bonuses.

i don't think anyone will dispute the fact that the benefits from the PR of the page and anchor text don't work the same. Its like comparing apples to oranges... of course its different. But thats not what you said before. Before you said:

no, pagerank itself means VERY, VERY little.

what matters is the anchor text.

You went from saying that the benefits from PR is negligable, to saying that the benefits from PR don't work the same was as the benefits from anchor text.

And about the PR0, if the PR is really .0005, what aspen said still holds true (If either side of the equation is 0, you don't rank well. The best anchor text in the world will not help you if the links are on low PR sites)

and .0005 is close enough to zero for me. lets not be nitpicky

[fatnewt]

all I'm saying is that the equations to calculate PR don't work in the same way to calculate anchor text bonuses.

I don't think it's accurate to call the benefit of anchor text a "bonus". It's not an additional award for the Web site - it's an important part of the entire ranking system.

Anyways, I haven't run any tests on this myself.... but I'd like to suggest that it would make sense for the exponential nature of passing PR to also apply to determining relevanc with anchor text.

Consider: why does a PR9 site have more ability to pass PR? Because the PR9 site is more popular (at least to other Web site owners) and, as far as Google can assume, more credible in terms of ranking other pages. That's why you get more value if Sitepoint, or Amazon links to your page than if Bob Nobody does from his free homepage.

So, would it not make sense, then, that Amazon or Sitepoint would be more credible than Bob when explaining what the site their sending their visitors to is about?

It's the same concept as with sending PR along.