How do I improve the Google Pagerank of my site?

Google pagerank and no links from Google to site

• My website's homepage, household-helper.com dropped from pagerank 7 to 6 a few months ago. I would like to take it back to a 7 or even higher. What is the best and saftest way to do this? I did a link popularity search on marketleap.com and do not show any links to the site through Google. Can anyone explain why? Thanks, Adam Jackson www.household-helper.com

• Answer:

  Hello aj20 ~ This is just a reminder that Google Answers Researchers are independent contractors. We are not privy to any 'insider information' about Google's search algorithms, so I couldn't answer why your PageRank (PR) went from a 7 to a 6. However, I can give you Google's explanation of occurrences you may have noticed and have done so below: =================== Google's PageRank =================== Google offers an explanation about changes in a site's PageRank in its "Changes From One Index To The Next": "Each time we update our database of web page (about once a month), our index shifts: we find new sites, we lose some sites, and site rankings change ... You may want to check and see if the number of other sites linking to your URL has decreased. This is the single biggest factor in determining what sites are indexed by Google, as we find most pages when our robots crawl the web and jump from page to page via hyperlinks. To find out who links to your site, use Google's link: tool. It's also possible your rank decreased because other sites were found and assigned a higher rank. You can be assured that no one at Google has hand adjusted the results to boost the ranking of a site. Google's order of results is auto- matically determined by several factors, including our PageRank algorithm. Please check out our "Why Use Google" page for more information on how this works." - ://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html#B1 Google's PageRank - "PageRank Explained" - can be found here: - ://www.google.com/technology/index.html As you can see from the explanations - the more 'important' pages linking to yours, the higher your own PageRank, and it is thought that some links from pages with a PageRank of 7 or higher to your own may help your own PageRank increase. The changes of both PageRank and Search Engine Results Placement (SERPs) is heavily discussed in Webmaster World's "Google News" discussion forum, which you can find here: - http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/ and an example thread for you to peruse can be found here: - http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/17360.htm If you perform a search on the Webmaster World website, you will find any number of discussions about the vagueries of PageRank since some obvious changes to Google's algorithms in May and June. It may not be much consolation, but you are not alone. Remember, though, that trying to make changes for a higher PageRank is like aiming blindly at a moving target - because just about the you think you've figured out what's happening, the algorithms will change and you're back to square one. =========================== About Household-Helper.com =========================== You have a respectable PR of 6 at the present time. There are some who would *love* to have a PR6! Using Google's link: tool - that is, typing "link:www.household-helper.com" (without the quotation marks and with no space between the colon (:) and the www.) in Google's search bar - we get 47 returns. Typing "link: www.household-helper.com" returns 513 results. (Again without the quotation marks and WITH a space between the colon and the www. And typing link: http://www.household-helper.com produces 438 results. By now I'm sure you're wondering why the difference. Part of it is the use of the full URL (http://www.household-helper.com) and the "meaning and scope" of the searches with or without the space after the colon. Another factor may be the datacenter your search gets routed to in the interests of load balance. The differences from one of Google's datacenters to another can be found in its "Multiple Indices": "If you happen to enter the same query repeatedly while we are in the process of posting the index at our various data centers around the country, it might seem like you are seeing inconsistent results from Google. What is actually happening is that you are seeing a result from an 'old' version of our index one time and a result from a 'new' version the next. Due to the size of our index, we can not simultaneously post a new index at all of our data centers, which may result in this behavior for a short period of time." - ://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html#B3 To get a better picture of what is going on, enter "www.household-helper.com" (without the quotation marks) in Google's search bar. At 12:47 AM PDT - October 4, 2003, I got the following return when I did so. "Welcome Search for: ... Description: A site dedicated to helping the average person get answers to common household problems. Free email... Category: Home > Home Improvement Google can show you the following information for this URL: * Show Google's cache of www.household-helper.com * Find web pages that are similar to www.household-helper.com * Find web pages that link to www.household-helper.com * Find web pages that contain the term "www.household-helper.com"" The first portion, beginning with "Welcome" is the link to your site. The Search for: is taken directly from your site, it appears that is the first portion of your site that Google's search engine finds to index. I cannot determine where the description comes from, as your site is not listed with the Open Source Directory, and it doesn't show up on Google's Directory, either. I was a bit surprised you have such a high PageRank with all the repetitions within the header tags (which I'll address below), but text within the "description" portion does not appear on your home page. To continue, clicking on "Find web pages that link to ..." returns 47 results and clicking on "Find web pages that contain the term ..." returns 1,140 results. The difference between "link to" and "contain the term" has to do with use of the full url and the PageRank of those pages. If a link uses your FULL URL (http://www.household-helper.com) and has a PageRank of at least 4, it will be listed in the "link to" section If a site uses a shortened url (such as www.household-helper) and has a PageRank of less than 4, it will be among the "contain the term" portion of the returns. If a site is not listed in Google's index at all, it will not be listed in either. While it may be easier to type in the shortened URL, it is to your benefit to have links to your site use the full URL. ====================== Market Leap ====================== You Please note Marketleap's explanation of its services: "Marketleap is a trusted source for the Web's most popular Search Engine Paid Inclusion (PI) Programs. Our innovative technology, industry relationships and intellectual capital provide the foundation for successful search engine marketing strategies." - http://marketleap.com/ While you didn't indicate whether or not you have paid for inclusion on Inktomi or Yahoo!, it is important to note that Google does not charge for inclusion in its index, so any Google results would NOT be included in Marketleap. If you want to be included in Marketleap, you can pay for inclusion with Inktomi or Yahoo! and then I am sure your site will be listed there. =========================================== What can you do to increase your PageRank and placement results in Google's Index =========================================== Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that you want Household-Helper to be found using the keywords you have chosen: "fix, DIY, home repair, house repair, fix it yourself, do it yourself, plumbing, electrical, automotive, gardening, garden, auto, automotive, swimming pool, lawn, small engine, lawnmower, cleaning, find a handyman, tune up, household helper, handyman" Now ... think about what your visitors will "really" enter in that search bar. My first guess is you're not sure, but I rather doubt that anyone would merely enter the term 'fix'. They might enter the term 'DIY fix', and for that term, your site doesn't show up at all in the first five pages of results. Let's take it a step further - we'll search for "fix, DIY, home repair, house repair" (always without the quotation marks). Your site still doesn't show up in the first five pages of results. In both cases above, there are sites with a lot less PageRank than your site has (PR2, PR3 - for instance http://www.onthehouse.com/wp/19990111) which come in ahead of Household-Helper.com. Why is this? Off the bat, and without doing a lot of digging into the other site, I'd say it has a lot to do with 1.) Google-friendly web design; 2.) Google ignores keywords; and 3.) Their page contains rich content that actually uses those terms. My suggestion is to spend a day at Wordtracker - http://www.highrankings.com/wordtracker - to seek out all the related phrases you can, then write your copy based around the best, most relevant ones. Includes those words in your Title tags and within the content of your website accoringly. About that HTML ~ ================== Another suggestion which does really matter is to clean up your HTML ... For instance, you have 16 sets of <title></title> tags within your header tags. That is 15 too many. You need to clean those tags up. Shari Thurow, one of the leading authorities in web design and search engine optimization (and author of the book "Search Engine Visibility"), recently made the following observation with regard to the basics of HTML: "Clean HTML is absolutely imperative for search engine indexing. Browsers are extremely forgiving when it comes to displaying pages with "unclean" HTML (unclosed tags, no quotation marks, etc.). Search engine spiders are not so forgiving. Even something as simple as a missing quotation mark on the <.a href="page.html"> can cause a spider to not index text or a link." (See: Link Exchange Digest, July 3, 2003, "Clean HTML") - http://list.audettemedia.com/SCRIPTS/WA.EXE?A2=ind0307&L=led&D=1&T=0&H=1&O=D&F=&S=&P=282 She explained how errors in HTML can affect your ability to be indexed, and ultimately, ranked. Make it easy to for the search engines to get to the heart of your site and index it with relevant text. Put those title tags and alt tags to work for you. Google recommends: "* Create a useful, information-rich site and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content. * Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it. * Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images. * Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate. * Check for broken links and correct HTML." [From Google's Webmaster Guidelines] - ://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html A high PageRank is nice, but as you can see, it's not helping YOU get placement where you apparently want to be. By paying attention to Google's Webmaster Information and Content Guidelines, along with your already respectable PR of 6 - you can show up where you *should* be and that will no doubt increase your PageRank. There is a genuine effort for all search engines to produce RELEVANT results. The difference is that Google explains how to go about doing it in the way that will increase your position when someone searches for the terms you want to be found under. Following those basics WILL increase your PageRank (because others will want to link to your page) and will help the searchers actually find your page. Search technologies used - I used your URL, Google's link: tool, and Google's toolbar to gather information about your site. In addition, I searched for other relevant sites, using your keyword metatags, and searched for information about Marketleap.com. Lastly, I relied on bookmarks and resources, such as http://webmasterworld.com and http://www.searchenginewatch.com and Jill Whalen's http://www.highrankings.com to gather information to help with placement and PageRank. Good luck with better placement - AND better PageRank! Regards, Serenata