So I run a pretty large and established content site. My main form of monetization is text link ads. But over the years, my PageRank has declined from 6 to now a 2. I’ve had success selling a lot of text links, but that success backfired because I had too many outbound links on the site. I think I’m being penalized by Google for that. My question is what should I do to get my PR back? I’m not getting many new advertisers since my PR is lower. But I have to keep the links up my current clients have bought. I feel like I’m in between a rock and hard place. Google is the reason for my success … but they are also the reason I am struggling. Would removing all text link ads allow Google to re-rank my site? How long generally does that take? Yes, I know Google frowns on text link ads, but that’s what I rely on. Let me know your advice.
[FONT=Verdana]PageRank is a pointless metric to use. It tells you nothing about your traffic levels at all, it doesn’t even say anything about your position in the search results! Far better to sell your site as receiving however many visitors a month, or being in the top #3 in Google for whatever phrases.
As any paid links are marked as “nofollow” (you do do that, right?), it doesn’t matter two hoots to your advertisers what your PageRank is because they aren’t getting a single atom of googlejuice from you, all they are getting are potential clickthroughs from visitors.[/FONT]
External Link –> Nofollow
Increase Backlink Building. (High Quality Backlink)
Don’t use blackhat seo.
A quick check, does your site make any link to WebSpam? e.g. porn, escort site, casino?
#10 - Pages that Link to WebSpam May Devalue the Other Links they Host
Would removing all text link ads allow Google to re-rank my site? How long generally does that take?
I cant give a very accurate answer. But Usually high PR site have great natural backlink, content, traffic, search impression, CTR, and less outbound link. Does your site fulfill this requirement to recover ranking?
Each time you update a new content or sharing in social media, it attract search engine to crawl a site. Crawl is the process to judge a site performance.
I know that PageRank doesn’t matter anymore, but there are still people out there that use this as some sort of an “identification” of whether a site is reputable or not. To be honest, I wouldn’t care about the PageRank, just like what Stevie D said. patrick0001 has already given one of the probable reasons why your site’s home PageRank has decreased. Another thing that you might want to check the backlinks pointing to your site. Although Google has been saying that they’ve made it hard for your competitors to harm you, there’s still that small chance that they might have been able to harm you.
There’s a difference between “harm” and “not help”. If your site’s PR was built on links from dodgy sites then when Google does an update, there’s a good chance that your site will lose PR and possibly rankings. That doesn’t mean that the dodgy site has harmed you, it just means that your site is back where it should always have been and is no longer getting an undeserved boost from links from a dodgy site.
Is your site still in the same place in the Search Engines? PR is virtually meaningless, if your rankings are holding up thats all that matters