It looks like we are going through another PageRank update. I’ve seen some blogs and websites move up in PR just in the last couple of days. SEOJ is now a PageRank 5 - woo hoo!

Brick Marketing has gone up to a PR 4. But what does it all mean?

Well, just a little bit of info for you on PageRank, if you are not all that familiar. Having a PR4 really is not anything super duper to be proud of. If you do everything right in the SEO department, you can reach a PageRank of 4 within 1 year, no problems. You really don’t start getting the recognition you deserve until you hit PageRank 5 and beyond. But for every step in PR you take up the ladder, the more difficult it becomes to get to the next one. I think there are two reasons for that.

No. 1, it gets more competitive as you move higher up in PageRank. But, you also have to do more to convince the search engines that you are a trustworthy source. You don’t really have to work harder. What I mean is, once you’ve got thousands of inbound links from authority sources, getting more of them is a little more difficult to come by. You really have to be a trustworthy authority; you can’t fake it. Faking it in the lower ranks is easier, in other words.

But keep in mind that whatever your PageRank is today is not your real PageRank. Google updates its PR about three to four months behind when it actually goes up. So it isn’t real time. Since SEOJ went up to PR5 just in the last couple of days, that means we were at a PR5 three months ago. Assuming that we are still on the incline with our PageRank, I’m likely between a PageRank 5 and PageRank 6 - something like a PR 5.4.

Google PageRank is ever evolving. It goes up and down on a daily basis depending on what you are doing on your website. If you get plugged with negative algorithmic karma then your PR will go down. If you do the good stuff then it goes up, but you’ll never see it in real time.

Many SEOs don’t put a lot of stock in it any more. I still think there is some value in PageRank, but it isn’t what it used to be. It is a good measure to watch to determine if you are doing all the right things and making the search engines happy. If you see your PR go down, look back over the last three months to see what you might have done to influence that.

It seems there has been another PageRank update over the last 24 hours with the usual chorus of ooh’s, aaah’s and oh-no’s. In the meantime search engine optimization consultants are busy calming their clients.

Generally speaking, PageRank is not worth worrying about except perhaps when a new update is released. For many, it validates their search engine optimization strategies. There is nothing like getting a little numeric pat on the back every now and then.

Where PageRank updates do deliver a valid message is when your PageRank drops. Then you need to seriously reconsider your search engine optimization strategies along with any other activities that be considered a little gray, unethical or downright black hat.

If you have been in the search engine optimization business for any length of time then you will know that PageRank is fluid, it is constantly on the move and a toolbar update is only an indication of your placement recorded at some stage in the past. It is however a clear signal as to the direction of your strategies and the increase in the authority for your pages.

If your page rank as gone up - yipee, now get on with the real work of improving your pages rankings even further. If your page has stayed the same, tough luck, keep working at it, perhaps review any doubtful activities. If your rank has gone down, oh dear, you may have been naughty. Either that or others have worked harder on their search engine optimization strategies have simply out gunned you. Treat is as a report card that says - ‘could try harder‘.

PageRank, where is yours sitting? Are your search engine optimization strategies delivering the goods? Take the pat on the back if you get one, then get on with the real work of reaching number one in search engine results pages - after all, that is the real goal of search engine optimization.

PageRank is often maligned as been useless, out of date and not a true reflection of a pages real value. This is in the main quite true. However, there must be some value to PageRank and if there is, can it assist you in your search engine optimization strategies.

My simple response is no, yes and yes. Hang on, I hear you say, there are only two queries in that last sentence? True. PageRank on your site has little value. So the answer is NO, PageRank has no value. However, PageRank on another site is a different matter - so YES, PageRank does matter and YES it can help with your search engine optimization strategies.

Now I have got you totally confused, let me clarify and start by explaining what PageRank does tell you. PageRank whilst out of date, has important historical value. If a page that you are looking at has a PR of say 4, then you know that this page has had some good search engine optimization strategies applied.

A PR of 4 would have some quality links coming in, a good use of keywords and, most importantly, has some value when it comes to search engine recognition. It also says that the page and web site has probably not engaged in any spammy activities that search engines would could penalize a site for. In other words, when PageRanks were calculated, this page had adhered to all search engine optimization strategies appropriately and had some authority.

Okay, you say, we now know that this site has some authority when it comes to search engine recognition. How do I use that in my search engine optimization program? You can probably guess what I am going to say. This site has good PageRank therefore it has some authority. If I am looking for sites to link from (or even link to), then this is one site (or page) that is worth working on.

Obtaining links from a site with an authority PageRank like this could help boost your sites rankings. You could visit and leave regular comments (if enabled) or you could approach the website owner to see if a one way or two link program could be put in place. As knowing someone else’s PageRank could be very handy.

One of the biggest Search Engine Optimization myths is that, by undertaking search engine optimization, you are trying to manipulate PageRank. There is an over reliance and over emphasis on PageRank, particularly as it is displayed in tool bars. My advice to everyone, turn off your PageRank display, or, at the very least, learn to ignore it.

First, a quick view of PageRank as it is displayed on your toolbar. The number you see is a result of where that page was on a particular day at a single point in time, generally published every three months - although that is unreliable in itself. Any search engine optimization strategies undertaken after that point in time will have no effect until the next release.

PageRank is actually a mystical ranking that is forever in flux, never still, never the same. More importantly, the ranking you see may be a score from three or more months ago so it is totally unreliable. If it is unreliable; it has no value; if it has not value, turn it off.

Search engine optimization is all about improving that page in a wide variety of areas. PageRank after all is only a Google assessment. SEO strategies need to take into account Yahoo!, MSN and other search engines. In fact, the main strategy in optimizing your pages is in the final SERP placement for that page and how high you can get your page listed on each of the search engines.

No professional Search Engine Optimization expert will ever look PageRank as a factor in their work. To get a real indication of your search engine optimization strategies, undertake your own search on each of the search engines using your keywords or key phrases. Irrespective of PageRank, you will find that at different times using the same keywords, your place in the results will often change.

PageRank is an unreliable side result of search engine optimization strategies. Side result? Yes. It is not an end result. End results are reflected by your placement in the search results and ultimately, by the number of visitors you receive through those search engines. SEO and PageRank - forget the PageRank and concentrate on what is important, getting those visitors onto your site.

What is more important, search engine optimization or Page Rank? Can they be separated? After a careful analysis of several web site pages I believe they can be separated and that one is more important than the other. However, look at some of the factors and you decide.

It should be remembered that web sites are not ranked, only the individual pages within a web site. You will often find that different pages will have totally different Page Rank scores and that newer pages will have a ranking of either zero or ‘unranked’. How is it then that a new page with a Page Rank of ‘unranked’ can appear at the top of the search engine results page? The answer of course is through search engine optimization.

The difficulty for many web site owners is that search engines rate pages based on importance. However the importance is measured using many factors and a web page can appear at the top of the search results for one keyword or key phrase and yet that same page can appear on page ten if an another keyword or key phrase is used.

The reality is that each page is ranked based on keywords more than anything else. Search engine optimization is used to promote pages and this is done by promoting keywords. When seeking inbound links the preferred link is through a keyword or key phrase. When developing internal links we use keywords and key phrases. It is how well each of these keywords are optimized that will determine the placement on a search engine results page.

Obviously, Page Rank is linked to search engine optimization. However Page Rank is only an indication of where that particular page is placed at one particular time. The reality is the true Page Rank is a floating number that can be very different based on the keyword used.

Search engine optimization is now important not on a site wide basis, but on a page wide basis. Each individual page needs to be treated as a single entity and optimized for the keywords relevant to that page, not to the site. By using page based search engine optimization techniques you can dramatically improve that pages placement within the search engine search results pages.

One of the best blog posts I’ve seen in a long time addressing anchor text links and alt tags is on Aaron Wall’s SEO Book. Quite frankly, I don’t like Aaron’s new tagline. It doesn’t really say much. The “Rank” and “Dominate” are clear enough. It’s the “Learn” part that really bothers me. But it’s his tagline. I think the blog post has a lot to offer and because it’s Aaron Wall, I’m willing to give him the benefit of a doubt:

One of my hobby sites has a fairly flat file structure, and some of the internal pages are somewhat linkworthy. The site was not marketed aggressively and the only sitewide link to the homepage was the logo, which I forgot to put an image alt tag on. Google ranked 2 pages on the site well for the core keyword, but neither of those pages were the homepage. I noticed the lacking image alt tag, fixed it, and within a week my homepage was outranking the other pages.

According to SEOmoz’s Search Engine Ranking factors, alt tags rank moderately high in importance for ranking factors. I agree with that since search engines don’t crawl images. The alt tag is almost the only clue search engines have for ranking images. They do look at surrounding text on the page and page quality factors, etc. But what is missing in the study is the importance of the link title attribute. I went looking for it and couldn’t find it.

That said, I do believe that the title attribute is of some importance, though probably not as important as the image alt tag. An image hot linked to a website with a strong alt tag will likely draw much more mojo than the the title attribute on an anchor text link. However, I don’t see how the hot linked image, no matter how strong the alt tag is, can even come close to strong anchor text, with or without the title attribute. I think the reason the title attribute isn’t as important as the anchor text itself is because the anchor text is so important that the title attribute pales in comparison. Still, I would include the title attribute in every link possible.

According to the same SEOmoz study, bold text with keyword usage is only slightly less important than the alt tag. I disagree with this somewhat. When it comes to search engine optimization, I think bold and italics indicates importance to the page content writer, but that doesn’t always equate to search engine importance, although it may. It depends on the other on-page qualities. Nevertheless, if we use the .3 difference between alt tag importance and bold text importance as a benchmark, I think the difference in importance between alt tags and title attributes is only slightly more than that - maybe a .5 or .6. What that says to me is that, given two web pages that are equivalent in all factors except that one uses an image alt tag with a missing title attribute on the page and the other includes a title attribute but misses the image alt tag then the page that has the alt tag is going to win out, only by a nudge. I don’t know if Aaron would agree with that, but it makes sense to me.

It’s been three months since the last PageRank update and already Google has started exporting PageRank information. I’ve seen a few sites with increases in PageRank, but I haven’t seen changes in all of them so they may not be done yet. But keep your eyes on the PageRank of your websites and blogs because it may very well be coming.

Of course, PageRanks can go down or up so if you notice a decline in PageRank then you might want to do some investigating to find out why you went down. If you are selling links or it even appears as if you are selling links then you might want to do something about that. One website owner I know had a page - a single page - on his website drop down to gray, which is an indication of no PageRank data and not necessarily a “0″ as if so often stated, from a PageRank of 1. It is likely that he went gray because his page is a list of publications and at the bottom of the page he has a link with an application for other publications to “get more information” about being listed. While he doesn’t have sales information on the page it could be an appearance issue with Google that has caused the drop. Either that, or someone reported him for selling links.

In other words, consider this a warning and a reminder. Selling links isn’t necessarily bad. If it makes you money you just have to weigh the benefit with the penalty. But keep in mind that PageRank can go up or down and if yours goes down this time around you’ll have to look into it to find out why.

You’ve seen ‘em. The scraper sites that are stealing your content. They’re a big pain in the you-know-what. You know it, I know it, they know it. But does it matter?

It might.

Scraper sites exist to make money. But how do they make money off of your content? It depends.

Some scraper sites will steal your content and place AdSense ads on those pages to gain the revenue from people clicking on those ads. Other scraper sites will sell advertising. But how do they get your content?

How Content Scrapers Operate
There are bots that will crawl your site looking for specific keywords. When they find them they scrape that content and place it on the blog or website of the person who programmed the bot. This is called content theft and it’s a big, big problem. Just visit some forums and you’ll see webmasters cursing up a storm about this stolen content. But what can you do about it?

Some of those scraper sites are banking on bloggers clicking through from their admin areas to see who is linking to them. They may not have any PR or clout at all and exist only to get the traffic from the people whose sites they are scraping from. These scrapers aren’t really the problem. They’re a nuisance, but if you don’t click their ads then they likely aren’t making any money.

Identifying The Real Problem Scrapers
The problem sites are the scrapers who have a high PR. A high PageRank indicates credibility. Therefore, it’s possible that the search engines will crawl those sites before they crawl yours and they’ll be credited with original content even though they stole it from you. If that is the case then you have something to worry about.

You’ll have to download the Google toolbar in order to see what the PR of those sites are. I recommend that you visit every content scraper site you find that has your content on it without your approval. Send them a letter asking them to remove your content. If they do not do so then find out who their ISP is and report them. You should also report to the search engines that someone is scraping your content and give them an URL.

How To Fix The Scraping Problem
Those high PR sites scraping your content may have other content that you can’t see. They could have a blog or article directory in a folder on that site that isn’t linked to the scraped content. It’s invisible to human eyes, but the search engines can see it. That content could cause their site to be crawled more often than yours, in which case, if they get crawled before you do, they’ll get credited for original content and you’ll be dinged for duplicate content. That’s your real problem. And to fix that you have to communicate with the search engines to let them know that your site is the originator of the content. Be patient, though. You can rectify the situation with the search engines, but it doesn’t happen in two hours.

Just when you thought that what could be said about PageRank has already been said, along comes Janet Meiners to prove you wrong.

Awhile back, you might have remember Aaron Wall making comments about how Google isn’t fair because they penalized one of his sites. He told the story of how he had bought a domain name and then lost his PageRank and, I believe, his inbound links as well. You should know that if you are buying domain names then that could happen.

Janet Meiners offers some great suggestions for people considering buying a domain name:

* Be sure the domain has not expired. While you may get PageRank temporarily, it may not last.
* You can buy a domain for some traffic (which many black hat marketers do, to run ads on the site) but the links won’t help you as far as search engine rankings.
* If you want PageRank don’t buy a domain name that has been marked for deletion. During a hold phase the original domain owner has 45 days to re-claim their domain.
* If you do buy an expired domain, keep the heritage content or theme. If you completely change the content you’re guaranteed to lose PageRank and credit for the backlinks.

Personally, I know why Google would lump domain name buying into the category of black hat practices. No doubt, many black hat SEOs buy domain names for the purpose of using their existing PageRank and link reputation to boost their other sites. It makes sense that penalties would arise for those who do this. But does the mere purchase of a domain name automatically make someone a black hat SEO? No, of course.

What if someone is buying a domain name along with the business? In other words, they have no intention of changing the content on the website with that domain name or of using it to network with their other sites. I don’t see any reason why Google would penalize that. But if they do, it would be evidence that Google looks at Whois data and considers it in their reputation and relevance algorithms.

Buying a domain name?
Do your keyword research.

TechCrunch has lost its PageRank. Duncan Riley explains why.

What it all boils down to is Google doesn’t like sponsored posts at all. Even if you don’t take money for your sponsored posts, Google could penalize you by taking away your PageRank just for saying that a post is sponsored. There are two ways to prevent this from happening.

The first way is to make your statement of adoration toward your sponsors a .jpg file. At this time, none of the search engines can crawl images so it will be safe for awhile. But there is no guarantee that this won’t change in the future.

A better way to protect your PageRank is to include the “nofollow” tag in all of your sponsored links. If you must mention that your blog posts are sponsored, even if you don’t take money for them directly, then be smart about it and put the “nofollow” tag in place. Otherwise, just don’t mention that your blog posts are sponsored. Just don’t mention it.

Google had a PageRank update this week. Most of us have been sitting with anticipation for months looking for it. It finally happened.

Well, I’ve got to say that I fared pretty well across the board. Almost all of my websites went up in PageRank. Some other people, however, didn’t fare so well. John Chow comes to mind:

Well you know what? PageRank is caught in the 90’s, and that’s why I’m going to go out on a limb and claim PageRank… stuff it… BackRub, to be dead. Dead as a Dodo. Dead as an Alexa rating. Dead!

Why John Chow Is Angry About PageRank
Is this just an angry rant or does John Chow have a point? Is PageRank dead?

I say it’s the proverbial Yes and No. Yes, it’s dead, but not in the sense that John Chow thinks.

PageRank has always been a measure of a website trust. It was invented back in the day when not many people were selling links, but then there weren’t that many websites on the Web either. So what do you do when, as John Chow says, most of the websites online are in business to make money and not just provide free information? Do you penalize them for making money from their links?

Should We Trust PageRank?
I partly see Google’s point. If I buy a link from Website XYZ in order to affect my PageRank then I, in essence, am buying, or attempting to influence, trust with monetary units. Isn’t that a lot like buying votes in a political election? Guyshttp://www.johnchow.com/the-pagerank-ripple-pagerank-is-dead/ like John Chow argue that because we’re in business to make money then we should be allowed to do as we please and charge for links, pay for links, buy links, and influence trust with money. I’m not so sure he’s right.

You see, at the end of it all is trust. And if everyone were buying and selling links then at the end of the day I wouldn’t know who to trust. How would I know whether that PageRank 8 website achieved its PR due to buying links or due to actually earning trust - the hard way? As a consumer, I wouldn’t know. I couldn’t know. And this is where Google comes in as the cosmic police force. Their job is to help searchers find the information they are looking for and if that means penalizing websites that engage in behavior meant to deceive searchers into believing they are trustworthy then that’s the way the game is played.

PageRank: The Only System We’ve Got
Of course, one could argue, as some people do, that PageRank is dead in quite another sense. That is, it cannot be trusted to be a good and fair judge.

I admit, there’s no perfectly fair system. Someone is always going to take it on the chin. The only question is who, and that person will undoubtedly always shout “Unfair!” But thinking it’s so doesn’t make it so. Someone has to judge the good and the bad and who better qualified to do that than the company that created the playing field in the first place? Agree or disagree, but it’s the only system we’ve got and so far it’s done a pretty decent job.