Google PageRank Update November 2012

So, Google PageRank has been updated again this week, just as expected. And so far, the update does not seem to be a major one - but then again, give it some time. The last update took place in August 2012, and the one before that on May 2012. So it's pretty obvious that Google is now rolling out these updates quarterly, i.e. after every three months. So the next update is expected in the first 10 days of February 2013. We congratulate everyone whose PR didn't drop. And for those whose did, there's a few things you can do which we will mention. And again, keep in mind that Google PR should not a priority for you - read on to see why.

What does PageRank do?

As most of you might already know, PageRank is Google's way of assigning a grade to a website from 0 to 10. Google rates itself at PR 9, so that drops the ceiling somewhat. And for blogs with little or no investment (such as this one), the maximum PR achieved yet is 6. Blogs such as TechCrunch, Mashable, Search Engine Land etc are corporate websites, run by an organization. They have multiple authors, as well as marketers and managers who manage and promote the website at the back-end - all of which requires investment. So for a low-investment blog, the target should be 6.

As to the question of what PR actually does, well it's just a way of rating websites. Website with a high PR get crawled and indexed more frequently. For example, a PR 7 website might get crawled several times in a minute, whereas a PR 4 or 5 website might be crawled just once per minute.

PR is also one of the factors advertisers look for in a blog, but is by no means the ONLY factor. There are a lot of other factors they look at first.

What to do?

Has your PR dropped? Don't worry. You can pick it up still. Lots of people think hundreds of backlinks is the way to go. That couldn't be further from the truth. Instead of having hundreds of backlinks, it's better to just concentrate on having just a few very high quality backlinks (PR 4 or higher). So stop wasting your time commenting on low PR blogs for backlinks. Rather, write a good guest post on a high PR blog. Adopt this practice, and you'll see your PR increase in the next update.

Besides that, you should concentrate on the quality of your page, as well as some of the basic SEO, so that Google recognizes your efforts. Here is a list of some of the best SEO tips you should follow.

What should your priority be?

As mentioned earlier, PR is just ONE of the factors advertisers look for in a blog. But there are other more important factors as well. The first thing they look for is your readership, i.e. whether you have an active community of followers who participate on your blog. Then comes social media fan following, and even though such stats could be inflated (by buying likes), it is the activity about your blog that counts.

Top Ways To Choose Keywords For Your Website Or Blog - SEO Tips

Introduction to keywords

A part of successful search engine optimization of web pages is working out what keywords your prospective visitors might type in to a search engine to find your site. Some are more competitive than others - try searching for 'Seo Tips' in Google, there are millions of results! For smaller, optimizing web sites it is better to target less popular keywords and phrases to begin with and aim for success with those.

Each page on your site should have one to three related keyword phrases that are site-specific. For example,say you have a page all about Seo Tips. Good phrases to target on this page would be Search Engine Optimization, seo Techniques, or Best Seo Tips. See what I mean? They're all related, and they're all pointing at the same general content on the page.

Why choose keywords at all?

A good web page contains information that people are looking for. When you write the page you need to take a step back and think about what search terms or keywords people would enter to find it. Once you have determined those keywords, you need to narrow them down to 3 to 5 main words. Then you can start to write the page, keeping these words in mind while you develop the content.

While writing the web page, you can use search engine optimization techniques to make sure you use your keywords in the right places for search engine success.

How to research keywords

Unfortunately there are no shortcuts - good research will pay off with good results. By entering a search phrase in Google you can see what sort of competition you are up against. The blue bar at the top of the results page might say something like 'Results 1 - 10 of about 4,160,000'. That tells you that the search phrase is fairly competitive.

Also, you will learn a lot about how the search engines work by entering different phrases and seeing where they rank. Try and find combinations of keywords that return pages with poor information. If you can write a solid page of content using those keywords you should be able to rank highly in searches provided you follow the basics of search engine optimisation.

The other major source of research for keywords are your server log files. When a visitor finds your site using a search page, the words they used to find you are entered in your server log files. By looking at this information you can find:

1. keywords to target
2. phrases to target
3. ideas for new pages

As an example, we noticed that people found our site by typing in 'writing email newsletters'. The information we had on the subject was very limited though. We wrote a new page about writing email newsletters, uploaded it to our site and now it pulls in a good number of visitors on its own every day. Keep finding those keywords and keep building new web content around them.

For Choosing the perfect and more beneficial keywords you can use Google Ad-words Tool.