How I (in theory) increased my Google Pagerank
A few weeks ago, I noticed that my most popular article The Profesional Designer’s Guide to using Black had a Google Pagerank of 3. All well-and-good, however the Pagerank of my AndrewKelsall.com homepage had a PR of just 2. Huh? I thought. How could this be?
I took a look at the code on all the links within the sidebars of my homepage—and discovered that none of them were “no follow” links. Now, I know some basic SEO, like all blogger’s do, so I had a theory based on a previous article I had read, that I was sharing my homepage PR to such an extent, that it lobbed-off an entire level of pagerank.
Of course, this was just a theory, but I deduced that if I changed said-links to “no follow” tags, eventually, the PR’s would reverse—giving my homepage PR3, whilst said-article, PR2. Four weeks later, this was exactly the case!
I’m writing the results of this experiment for two reasons: as to help to anyone in a similar situation—and if anyone could possibly shed some light on whether or not my conclusion was right. What do you thinks of this. Did my “no follow” theory work, or just coincidence?
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25 Thoughtful Comments, Comment or Ping
lpkb
Not sure about the validity of that theory, but another possibility (or part of the puzzle) is simply that the most popular article had the most inbound links from external sites, giving it a higher ranking.
I’m working on an SEO series at work that you may find interesting: http://www.cedc.org/tag/seo-search-engine-optimization
–
lpkb
http://twitter.com/kragtbakker
lpkbs last blog post..Good 50×70 short list (2009)
Jun 8th, 2009
David Airey
I’d say it had something to do with it, Andrew I’d not go as far as you have.
When you gain some more backlinks, a search term for “Andrew Kelsall” with show sitelinks in the result (as it does for “David Airey”) and the pages you’ll want to show up include “contact”, “hire me”, and “portfolio”.
Three important pages that it’s best to give some juice.
But hey, I’m no SEO expert.
David Aireys last blog post..Blogs, Mad about Design
Jun 8th, 2009
Rob Cubbon
Hello Andrew, I too get strangely interested in these little quirks. Also, I had the same funny thing occurring where I had a page that was one PageRank higher than my homepage. However, there was no difference between the nature of the two pages’ outgoing links so I haven’t solved the mystery as you have.
Many people say PageRank isn’t important and isn’t calculated with the degree of accuracy that it should. But I look at it all the time. In the absence of anything else what else do we have to judge the importance of pages?
There’s four PageRank updates every year usually, I think. Last one happened the first week of May, I think.
Rob Cubbons last blog post..What rates should a graphic designer charge?
Jun 9th, 2009
Andrew Kelsall
@lpkb → Yeah, I think the mentioned article may have had the most inbound links from external sites, but I think it may make sense that now I’ve made links no-follow, it’s PR2. I may be wrong, of coarse; thamks for the link, I’ll read it when time permits
@David → Thanks for the info, I wasn’t aware of this, although I do love to learn SEO. I’ll take your advice, and give these links a drink
@Rob → I have to agree with you there. I have heard much talk of the non-importance of PR, but when I surf the web, the presence of even a PR1 site is an indication to me that what I am about to view shouldn’t be spam.
I know that PR isn’t everything, but it does have benefits, such as the Alexa Traffic Rank.
BTW Rob & David, I think both your comments went to moderation because I updated a few plugins; All-in-one SEO, ironically, as one. Have any of you had the same trouble with comments going there unduly?
Jun 9th, 2009
David Airey
I think what happened with my comment was I tried to edit it after publishing, and the “commentluv” link wasn’t appreciated by your spam filter when I re-submitted.
Looks like a couple of words were omitted from the edit, but you get the gist.
Nope, no problems on my site.
David Aireys last blog post..Blogs, Mad about Design
Jun 9th, 2009
Rob Cubbon
I’d edited my comment after publishing as well (aren’t we conscientious) so maybe it’s something to do with WP Ajax Edit Comments?
Rob Cubbons last blog post..What rates should a graphic designer charge?
Jun 9th, 2009
Andrew Kelsall
@Rob & David → Thanks for the info, I’ll do some experiments to see if I can replicate the approved-comments issue.
I once had the same thing happening after the WordPress 2.7 upgrade—and discussed it with Aaron Russell who was having the same issue. I think I sorted it by deactivating and reacivating suspect plugins, but as I recall, the issue sort of ceased when more comments from the same authors were left.
Jun 9th, 2009
David Airey
I read this today:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/
It’s a recent blog post from Matt Cutts where he says not to worry about Page Rank sculpting.
It’ll either clear things up, or leave you with more questions (I’m in the second party).
David Airey´s last blog ..Northern Ireland’s designer twits
Jun 16th, 2009
Andrew Kelsall
Thanks David. Just come back from a week at the coast, this’ll be the first article I’ll read…
★★★★★ Update ★★★★★
After reading the article, I suppose I would have to agree with Matt Cutts, as he is “the man”. I am pondering the idea of not sculpting PR, I don’t know. Maybe I should just wait for the [hopeful] next update to PR4 to occur without my intervention. You’re right, it has poised more questions
Jun 19th, 2009
Andrew Keir
SEO is such a curse,
You’ll make all these changes and in a month Matt Cutts will release a new article on ” due to people exploting natural link flow … ” and we’ll all have to change our blogs back to no follow
Andrew Keir´s last blog ..10 beautiful bottle designs
Jul 4th, 2009
Andrew Kelsall
@Andrew → Yeah, I agree with you there. Since publishing this article, I’ve stopped looking into the issue after reading David’s suggested article. I changed the main menu links back to normal, too. All’s well that ends well…until Matt strikes me from Google
Jul 4th, 2009
Andrew Kelsall
@Andrew → Forgot to mention, it’s great to meet another “AK”, lol.
Jul 4th, 2009
Andrew Keir
I wish there was some sort of ” quality list ” from google that you could submit your site to for inspection. Say if your sites been running for a year or more and is found to have genuine content you go on googles list of sites exempt from all the anti-spam gadgets.
Maybe specify your pages importance in your sitemape and you dont have to worry about using nofollow to protect yourself spammers linking you to bad neighbourhoods etc.
That was just a 5 second idea so it might be terrible, but hopefully you get the point
Andrew Keir´s last blog ..10 beautiful bottle designs
Jul 4th, 2009
Andrew Keir
I hadn’t thought of that Andrew, Ha.
The only thing that miffs me about my name is a damned wikipedia article on an actor “Andrew Keir” out ranks me for my own name/domain.
*curses wikipedia*
Andrew Keir´s last blog ..10 beautiful bottle designs
Jul 4th, 2009
Andrew Kelsall
@Andrew → The quality list would be a great idea, yeah, but I expect the reason why there isn’t is because of the amount of man-power it would take to review the submissions. If this was the case, I assume listing would cost money.
It’s funny that you should mention your outranking problem, as I had the same issue about a year ago when I started my blog. The poker player “Andrew Kelsall” outranked me, too. It didn’t take that long with about 20+ posts to knock him off the topspot though
Jul 5th, 2009
Andrew Keir
He even looks like an older version of me i think.
He’s deviously planned to be born 60 years before me and has preemptively stolen my identity!
Jul 5th, 2009
Andrew Kelsall
Haha. Just keep blogging and he should disappear…how dare he
Jul 5th, 2009
Andrew Keir
There is something strange about page rank… in the recent update a very new blog post of mine is PR 3 while my 7 month old homepage is homepage PR is 2.
grrrr @ google.
Andrew Keir´s last blog ..50 rebrands of 2009
Nov 13th, 2009
Andrew Kelsall
@Andrew → Yeah, I thought I may be PR4 by now, but still stick on 3. Although, I have just been awarded those ‘sub-pages’ by Google (8 in all) when anyone types in ‘Andrew Kelsall’, so hopefully Pr4 will follow. In regards to your situation, why not use no-follow if you are linking to it from your homepage? Are you giving away too much PR from your Homepage, too?
Nov 13th, 2009
Jason
Is’t this all deep linking that you are using on your sidebars? You don’t have them pointing to external websites so you are not losing juice, altough some say that you need good external links aswell as inound links.
Having said that I may give the nofollow thing a go on another website of mine.
They also say that PR may not play such a big roll in googles caffeine.
Headache.
Jason´s last blog ..InDesign Settings Guide – Preferences
Nov 24th, 2009
Andrew Keir
Andrew, regarding “Are you giving away too much PR from your Homepage, too?”
For a long time I’ve not used no follow for any internal links (except to avoid duplicates on a single page) letting it go with the flow as Matt suggests.
In regards to the specific page that’s higher at the time of posting my blog had been live for around 7 months while this page was less than 2 weeks old, had a single link to it and only a few comments.
I also had posts which were several months old, had more comments and I know for a fact had several external links pointing to them which also received PR 2.
Basically it’s just totally beyond me why new posts are outranking these. *mutter* stupid google…. *mutter*
Andrew Keir´s last blog ..Open to interpretation
Dec 2nd, 2009
Dee
your experiment by accident is actually a seo tatic to direct or control page rank juice. by telling the bot not to follow lesser important pages it saves page rank juice to pass. great blog look forward to reading more.
Apr 23rd, 2010
Digitei
Anybody know when the next pagerank update 2010
Aug 7th, 2010
Andrew Kelsall
@Dee → Is it? Oh thanks for the info
@Digitei → No sorry…
Aug 19th, 2010
Andrew Kelsall
@Jason → That sums it up, yes: Headache…agreed, I’ll leave SEO to the experts
@Andrew → I’ve stopped concentrating on it now. I barely have time to write a post, never mind tweak my SEO for now. Let me know how you get on in your experiments…
Aug 19th, 2010
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