OK, so I know PR isn't everything, and I know the public PR isn't necessarily the 'true' PR, fine. Here's my question. I started my beer review site in April 08, did SEO that I could as a noob, all original content, updated about 3X per week, tried to get backlinks, etc.... My site went up to a PR4 in the first 6 months and then.... stuck ever since. Granted many of the individual posts I see changes in PR, but the homepage is stuck @ 4 for probably a year now. Would be nice to see some movement! Any ideas? Am I doing anything obviously wrong? If you have a minute, can you check it out and share your thoughts?The Brew Club Thanks!
Having a PR 4 now is like having a PR6 2 years ago, and to get from a 4 to a 5 is a lot harder then going from 3 - 4. Maybe a PR7 backlink will help you, but we both know it won't matter serp wise. Unless you're in the link selling business I wouldn't sweat it! By the way, I just checked out your site. Great job! Looks good with loads of content
Thanks, trying not to sweat it. Also, sorry I just realized that I shouldn't be asking about my site in this part of the forum. My bad.
A pr4 is a decent accomplishment. I know of plenty of business sites that sometimes don't hit pr5. I think you should be quite happy with the pr4 you have. Always nice to get higher pr, but I think after pr4 things get much more difficult to get to the next level. Your site makes me thirsty by the way!
I agree that your site looks great, and as a fellow brewmaster I really like it! If anything, you could probably get a nicer banner designed... Good luck with it.
I agree with most of the posters above that these a days it is lot tougher to get a PR 5. In this update of PR one of my site finally moved to PR 5. It took a good six months and we tried every possible whitehat backlink trick. Submitted to all good paid directories. Had one link builder doing nothing but contacting all .gov and .edu sites to give links to us. Submitted over 300 articles in the span of six month. Now the site is at PR 5 - Traffic of course is same as it was in PR 4, but at least its a matter of pride
I just got one of our sites up to a PR5 with the latest PR update, and it was simply a matter of getting higher PR links. I got a 6 PR7 links and 1 PR8 link, and the update showed that it was worth the effort. I also did a lot of link-baiting and bookmarking and comment spam, and it all worked out. You can do it, just raise your game up to higher PR sites.
Throw a nofollow tag on your 41 friends links and reduce the amount of links on your homepage and BOOM! PR5....
Well, maybe it 'aint so bad after all! Thanks for the tips and encouragement. The site has been a lot of fun building and I also get to learn about beer and web stuff! Cheers!
With such a good site, and a PR 4, you can try looking for Quality Link Exchange with relevant sites now, I'm sure they will be more than willing to do so with a quality site.
2 things -- Your site is nice and deserves PR4. The second thing -- it has toooooooooo many outgoing links. If your income is $100/day and you spend $90/day - u r left with just $10 savings. So - is with your PR. True, all those outgoing links are 100% related and legit - But they are still taking away the PR juice you are receiving from quality sites/links. Hope this has become little bit clear to you.
Did you test that ? Do you have the proof that the PR decreases when you have many outgoing links ?????
Thanks again - I have some things to consider here. Regarding the outbound links, is there a rule of thumb as to how many is too many? I've kept them all relevant, but perhaps I need to reduce the amount? Is it trial and error? How much is too much?
I totally agree with nofollowing the blogroll. It probably won't give you another PR point, but it might help in other ways.
Once a website is PR 4+ you will need to get backlinks from sites having higher PR then yours. Get backlinks from different sources. Try to get links from .edu and .gov domains
The most important thing with SEO is that you must never "surrender"! Every day you have to market your website and the positive results will come as the time passes. Build more links by distributing articles, by social bookmarking and blog commenting.