How to raise page rank?

nikkii30 · #1 (**permalink**) 04-04-2008, 02:38 PM

I am still in the process of completing my site but I am going nuts trying to gain link popularity (inbound links) to raise my sites rank.

Everywhere I turn it says add your site here… Should we really add our site everywhere just to gain link popularity. Most importantly should we even pay for adds that say to submit your website to thousands of major search engines for a price?

Last but not least, How do you add your site to http://siteanalytics.compete.com/ ?

I appreciate any responses

Ulrich · #2 (**permalink**) 04-04-2008, 05:44 PM

Well I'm surprised no one has answered your question, but since I'm first, I'll try to answer it to the best of my ability.

Adding your site to various pages (web directories etc.) can help you to build links, but there are a few things to consider.

Is the site relevant to mine?

Make sure that the site that's linking to yours has content that is similar to yours but it doesn't necessarily have to be in competition with yours. The reason for this is that Google will give you a higher ranking. If your website is about dogs you may have a link on another site that is about dog-food. Get the picture? In fact, it can harm your site and its ranking if you add too many links to sites that has got nothing to do with yours. When it comes to web directories I can tell you from personal experience that it's not really worth it unless you add it to the Yahoo! or Dmoz directories.

What's the quality of the site that would be linking to yours?

In case you're affiliating with another page (such as the above-mentioned example) make sure the page doesn't make use of bad design practices with a gazillion images and bad-written content. It would give the visitors' to that site an impression that they don't know what they're talking about which will also give you a bad name. (You'll lose credibility in the long run)

The rate at which you add your link to sites

Google is increasing the effectiveness of their search algorithm and if their search spider detects thousands of links pointing to your website in a few days it will be considered as spam and immediately blacklisted - FOREVER! Try building 5-20 relevant links daily, keep it concistent.

Don't always link to your home page (index)

Google once again will eventually detect your site as spam if it only detects links to your index page. Secondly, you want to drive visitors to the other parts of your site as well. I'd say link about 50-60% to your main page and split the rest up to different sections of your website.

Use different anchor text

What I mean here is if your site is about dogs don't always link it as "A dogs website", instead vary it around to perhaps "Labradors & other dogs" etc. etc. Once again, the search engines pick this up and it has a positive effect on your site. Also make sure to occasionally link to your URL with just a plain www.dogswebsite.com (as an example)

When it comes to paying for ads the answer is yes and no. Yes, because it will indefinitely help you quite a lot if you do it right but remember that you have to select certain keywords when publishing your add and there probably already are a few million other websites under the same keywords. So if you don't do some research you could actually lose a lot of money.

About your last question - I just had a quick glance and as far as I could see it's just analytics about websites and I'm not quite sure what you meant with adding it however I think when ranking all it needs is a high amount of traffic to be in the directory of known sites.

I also noticed this:

Quote:

Access Compete Search Analytics reports. The best competitive search metrics - period.
Compare up to 5 Sites at a time on Site Analytics.
Save Analytics to a Portfolio: Save your favorite groups of up to 5 sites for quick access to their site analytics comparison views.
Submit Site Ratings: Vote for your favorite and least favorite sites.
Export to CSV: Save a full year's worth of monthly data to your computer.

sammyspam · #3 (**permalink**) 04-04-2008, 07:02 PM

thanks for that Ulrich that even cleared a few things up for me, great post.

nikkii30 · #4 (**permalink**) 04-04-2008, 08:35 PM

Thanks Ulrich for the EXCELLENT RESPONSE! I was eagerly signing in to see if anyone had answered.

Star · #5 (**permalink**) 04-04-2008, 09:14 PM

Oh Ulrich - I did not realize that I should not be putting my home page everywhere but linking to different pages as well. That makes sense.

Thanks for that post!

lisa · #6 (**permalink**) 04-04-2008, 11:54 PM

Great advice Ulrich! The only thing I have to add is when you are getting links from other people, stay away from those link exchange pages where someone puts your site on a page with a lot of links and vice versa. If you are going to link to someone else (and vice versa) put their link within a relevant article and not on some page with a bunch of other links.

Google can detect those large link pages and ignores them. So if someone wants to link to you, be proactive in suggesting what page you think your site should be on and don't be afraid to suggest the content surrounding your link. Contextual link exchanges are much more effective than those list-o-links pages.

sammyspam · #7 (**permalink**) 04-05-2008, 01:09 AM

what about forum signatures? im on a few of my competitor forums with my link in my signature, considering nearly everyone has a link to something or another in thier sig.. does this count as a page full of links that google would ignore?

Ulrich · #8 (**permalink**) 04-05-2008, 05:28 AM

Thanks for pointing that one out too lisa, I knew I had forgotten something

.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sammyspam

what about forum signatures? im on a few of my competitor forums with my link in my signature, considering nearly everyone has a link to something or another in thier sig.. does this count as a page full of links that google would ignore?

I'm not quite sure about these but I think the search engines "know" when it's a forum and doesn't have penalties involved although I have no proof for this, but it's just my personal feeling about it. I mean, the forums even detects MSN, Google and Yahoo etc. search spiders as a non-registered user that's "online".

Someone else might need to clear that question for you though.

lisa · #9 (**permalink**) 04-05-2008, 08:38 AM

I think Forum signatures are probably largely ignored for the most part. They aren't going to hurt you but they don't help as much either. They used to be very beneficial at building backlinks but just like everything else when people figured out "the system", Google adjusts.

Lajocar · #10 (**permalink**) 04-05-2008, 11:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lisa

I think Forum signatures are probably largely ignored for the most part. They aren't going to hurt you but they don't help as much either. They used to be very beneficial at building backlinks but just like everything else when people figured out "the system", Google adjusts.

Good point Lisa,

I think that forum sigfiles are good to get extra traffic to your site.

Often times you will see in the SERPs that a forum page lays in top 10 and a web surfer can click on sig link when reading a post.

lisa · #11 (**permalink**) 04-05-2008, 12:23 PM

Right I agree forum sigs are good for human clicks but I don't think they help raise your PageRank or quality of inbound links.

James · #12 (**permalink**) 04-05-2008, 03:57 PM

Thanks, Lisa, for answering my question before I asked it. That's exactly what I was thinking was the case.

I have been wondering lately if the emphasis on page rank on Google, even though mine have sky rocketed for whatever reason, may be side tracking us from getting people to come to our site through other means such as this one or coming through links in published articles directly.

lisa · #13 (**permalink**) 04-05-2008, 09:19 PM

I agree and all the questions about PageRank on this forum was a big inspiration for my recent blog post. It's easy to get sidetracked with ranking tools but the bottom line is, "Is your traffic increasing and are you converting sales?"