Elder Care Marketing: Page Rank Truths!

I get these questions from clients a lot, so I thought I’d post this straight from the experts- Page Rank Truths.

From our friends at www..StomperNet.com

7 Deadly SEO Mistakes, Part 7:

Believing the “Myths” that masquerade as “Truths” in many SEO Spaces

MISTAKE 7: Believing the “Myths” that masquerade as “Truths” in many SEO Spaces

 Myth #1: PageRank doesn’t matter anymore

The REAL Truth: PageRank is how Google orders the web internally.  It is what allows them to search 50 billion pages for millions of searchers every day and return results in just a quarter of a second.

When Google was small, the number of relevant results for any query was small.  Not anymore.  Now the results that could qualify as good results far exceed what anyone wants, so they have to find ways to be even more selective.

As the web continues to grow at a mind-bending rate, you can expect PageRank to actually grow in importance as it is currently the best means to choose among millions of relevant results.

Myth #2: The Google Toolbar PageRank is just for entertainment

The REAL Truth: Back in “the old days” PageRank was computed all at once and updated about every six weeks in what we all called “the dance”.  Today the web is more than 20 times bigger, so Google does it differently.

The Toolbar number is now just one part of a far more rapidly changing computation that Google has decided not to describe in detail but we do know generally how it works.

PageRank is now computed in two parts, one “globally” across the entire index and the other “locally” using a millions of overlapping groups of pages.  The local  value is computed rapidly and often and combined with the global values to create what number Google uses internally to rank pages. (Which is a number they don’t show us. )

Our best guess is that the toolbar number is the infrequently updated global value so it truly is no longer entirely accurate, but it is also not completely without merit either.

Big differences in toolbar PageRank are still big differences and increases in PageRank are harder to gain today than in any time in the past.  It is the smaller differences in PageRank where the toolbar is unreliable, say +/- 1 or 2 points, because the rapidly updated local measures that are kept secret may have already changed these numbers.

Myth #3: PageRank is a Value Based on the Number of Incoming Links to Your Site

The REAL Truth: PageRank is a complex mathematical computation that considers not only the number of links but also the PageRank of the pages where those links come from.

PageRank optimization of websites is one of the most complex areas of SEO.  Of course, for larger sites, it is also potentially one of the most beneficial.

Myth #4: Being Listed in the Open Directory or Yahoo! Directory Gives you a Special PageRank Bonus

 

The REAL Truth: There is not a “special” bonus for being listed in the ODP, Yahoo! or any other directory for that matter.

PageRank from these directories is passed the same as it is from any other page. No special treatment is given.

Myth #5: Buying placement in Google Adwords will help your organic placement

The REAL Truth: Nothing could be further from the truth!

There’s this little group in Washington D.C. called the Federal Trade Commission that is charged with protecting consumers from fraud and to keep companies from engaging in unfair trade practices.  These are the same people that successfully stopped Microsoft from using operating system dominance to take over the web browser market.

For Google to allow Adwords to aid in organic placement would not only be a lie to consumers, but would also serve to extort money from web businesses.

Of course, I’m not a lawyer, but there are some Google board members who are!

Myth #6: Google is spying on you using your Google Analytics data

The REAL Truth: Google does not use this data in any identified way.  See the terms of use for details.  Again, to do otherwise would create such a breach of trust with Webmasters and consumers they would likely never recover.

And another thing … you’re just not that important!    No one at Google is spying on you because, frankly, they don’t care.  You are one Webmaster in millions and control a few hundred or a thousand pages out of the 50 billion they have indexed.

Myth #7: Google Will Not Index “Dynamic” Pages

The REAL Truth: This myth, like many, was originally true to an extent, but we’ve since forgotten when and why it applied.  Older search engines and even earlier versions of Google were resistant to indexing complex URLs — strings of query parameters and such — that were, and are, common with large, dynamic, websites.  But dynamic or static doesn’t really matter: it’s the URLs!

Long ugly URLs will still sometimes create an indexing problem but Google has gotten far better at indexing query string URLs over the last couple years so it really is less of a problem than it once was.

Query strings are still not my favorite and if I had a time machine I would get them erased from time, but until then Google does index dynamic content quite regularly.

Myth #8: Searching for Links on Google Using “link:” Will Show You all Your Back Links (or all the links they are counting)

The REAL Truth: Google only shows you a small number of the links they know about and they have publicly stated the links they show you may not all be counted towards PageRank nor that they are all the links that are counted for PageRank purposes.

Instead, use Yahoo! Site Explorer to gauge your link progress, or log into your Google Webmaster account for a more complete list of incoming links (but still  ultimately incomplete).

The bottom line is that there is not one single source where you can find either (1) all of your links or (2) all of the links counted by a given engine.  Links are simply too numerous and too important to ranking for the search engines to be willing to provide that data.

Instead of fretting over measurement — get to work getting more links!

Myth #9: Google Will Not List Your Site, or may Penalize it, if you use Popups

The REAL Truth: Google does not view pop-ups as an indexing problem. However, if the popups are abusive, you could be manually reviewed and penalized or de-indexed.

Myth #10: Google will Penalize you if You’re Linked to by a Link Farm

The Real Truth: While Google has stated you cannot be penalized because of something that is not in your direct control, they do have systems in place to determine if you are participating in programs which are against their terms of use.

These systems are known to be far from perfect and are therefore augmented by human review, but your real concern should not be penalties but efficacy.

Long before you would be penalized for a link, Google would have removed the positive effects of the link, so what you should be looking at is the quality of the link source instead of the danger of using it.

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