Hi all, My website is www.soccerengine.net Have been running the site now for 4 weeks an I have a unique visitor count of around 350 users. I have been doing varous things to improve the traffic going to my site. I have started by doing link exchanges and also posting the site details in as many online web directories as I can. What does google use to determine your page rank? Is this simply the measured on the amount of traffic you have to your site? With a view to improving my back rank do you think that link generation or directory listings would be more effective? How long did it take you guys to get your sites up to page rank 1 and is 350 unique users acceptable for my first month? Thanks for your help all. James
Page Rank is determined by incoming links to your site. Content doesn't matter (although the better the content, the more likely someone is to link to it) and traffic doesn't matter. Directories and link exchanges may not pass any PR. You want to get one way links from related sites. You should really forget about PR and just concentrate on your site and getting good incoming links. Google is always updating it's internal PR - the PR you see on the toolbar is only updated every 3-4 months. No one but google knows when it will be updated next.
You will see an increase in your PageRank when google has updated its datacenters with your relevant data.
So one way links have more value than doing link exchanges? Do you think that 350 users is ok for first month or am I behind?
Google's algorithm is a based on natural unbiased "votes" (links) to a site. Link exchanges aren't natural, the other site is only linking to you because you are linking to them. They are usually ignored. 350 users sounds like you are on the right track - although there really isn't a correct number.
The vast majority of directory links are now ignored or heavily discounted by google - especially the free directories. There are a few exceptions, and our course, there are the top three suggested by google's Matt Cutts - yahoo directory, BOTW, and DMOZ. You'll likely need links from authority sites (sites already ranking well for your sector/keywords) to get top rankings for any competitive keywords. Age of your site is also be a factor - the older it is, the more trust it can gain. Top rankings for competitive keywords don't happen overnight - it's a process, not an event. It can take a year or more for some niches.
Earning a page rank with Google isn't easy in the first case. In only four weeks, you're lucky to have one at all. But any increase is going to an extremely gradual one, if it happens at all. You need to have a website that stands out from the crowd. It has to be better than those of your competitors, who have probably been in existence and had a web presence for a much longer time than you have. And it certainly isn't going to happen overnight. Give it a couple of years before you worry about it! And, in any case, most experts consider page rank a relatively unimportant factor in SEO success. Duncan
"What does google use to determine your page rank?" Back links. Build lots of back links in order to improve PR.
I didn't know how google calculated their RP either - - I couldn't figure out why I was stuck with a PR of 1 for so long. Now I know that it's based on the backlinks. Either way, I'm still more interested in driving unique traffic to my site. What is PR good for? Does it bump you up in Google search results?