Hey guys, This seems like a wonderful forum, I'm sure I'll learn a lot about SEO here. I've got a lot to learn about SEO, and I'm very eager and motivated. I have a few questions if you all wouldn't mind. I'd really just like to get pointed in the right direction. 1) I have a PR3 e-commerce site, www.discountmags.com - Im trying to increase PR, and also target a certain keyword combination for Google (keyword: "discount magazines"). Can anyone give me some beginner advice? 2) I currently have an internship with a company who owns a ton of different sites, and they use some software called Web Position Gold. What's the overall consensus on this software, is it worth my time? 3) This same boss told me that Google likes it when you have outgoing links on your site which do not reciprocate back to you (more established sites). Does this hold any truth? Is this worth my time/webspace doing? 4) How often does Google update PR ranks, and how often do they re-index sites? 5) My homepage is a PR3, but I can't find another page with any PR rating. Maybe my site is a bit different since it's an ecommerce site. Anyway, I was doing some research into one of the most popular magazine subscription sites out there, www.mags4cheap.com - They are result #3 in Google for "magazine subscriptions". One thing they do is, on a few different pages on their site, they have 5 or so different links to unrelated sites. I'm assuming these must be triangular links since I don't see a Mags4Cheap link on these sites. Would it be beneficial for me to find link partners and exchange links like this site does? 6) Would it be better to list the links on the bottom of my site, or have a "Partners", or "Links" page? At present, I have a few links right on the footer of my site. 7) I have some weird looking links on my site which I'm thinking may not be SE friendly, for example: Gift Certificates: https://www.discountmags.com/giftcert.php?jssCart=2eb89f83155acd40c4bef8032fcf914e Contact Us: http://www.discountmags.com/page.php?xPage=contact.html Are these pages fine? Can they still obtain a PR rank? That's about it, thanks a lot in advance! Best Regards, Andrew
1. Dont focus on PR, it doesnt do anything for you. 2. Never heard of it but I find all SEO software to suck. 3. Think opposite. Google likes it when you have INCOMING links that arent reciprocal. 4. PR updates every 3 months (or when they want to). Indexing depends on your site. Depends on content and backlinks mostly. 5. Its always good to find link partners unless its porn, gambling, RX, ect. 6. If the people that own the site dont care where it is then throw it in the footer. Less likely people will leave your site to go to theirs. But remember they will treat you how you treat them so they might put yours in the footer where you wont receive any traffic. 7. Not sure because I didnt look at the site. But they dont look friendly to me.
Thanks for the reply Aaron, really appreciate it. Point taken that PR doesn't really matter much. The reason why I cared about PR ranking is because I thought it would help me cling onto a good position in Google Web Search results. Does this have any truth? That's weird, I was thinking the opposite. If it's in the footer, then it would get visited more than if it were in a "Partners" page or something similar. But I guess not. Can someoine elaborate on this? For example, would it make any difference if the page was this: http://www.discountmags.com/contact.html Instead of: http://www.discountmags.com/page.php?xPage=contact.html ? Thanks again. Andrew
Hi Andrew, To increase your PR, you must have more external links to your page. Ideally, these links should have anchor text with 'Discount Magazines'. You are right for the high PR, high SERP part provided Google considers your page is relevant to the keyword you are targeting. A PR 10 laptop site has no SERP when someone query for 'pizza'. Question 6 depends on individual human web expriences. I cannot comment for the majority of the users. If you want to see the effect, I suggest to program a script to log down the visits for two methods. Google can index dynamic page but it causes problem sometimes.You may want to refer to the following guidelines for more details: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34431 As for the Gift certificates link, I'm afraid to say that it is not SE friendly.. Session IDs are always the problems because bots ignore them. However, if you think that it is ok for SE to leave out your gift cert links, then just leave it . Hope it helps
I got a private message - is it from Andrew or the other name mentioned? I left a message on your 800 number. To answer all of your questions - forget the questions... You have a website You have products You can optimize it better than it already is PageRank is useless in my eyes [and others] Creating a plan of attack is the very first step that must be done - make no changes until that is decided. From there - make sure the changes are being implemented in a timely manner. Wait a week or so, see if any progress has been made in terms of traffic and/or ranking. If the "SEO expert" you used knew what they were doing you should see results on both ends. Anymore questions? Just ask. I hope this was clear enough.