Our site has been PR 5 for over four years and even though we have not worked on link development the link numbers grow at their own pace naturally. A few days ago the site dropped from PR 5 to PR 4 and most pages within the site also reduced in PR down a number. I did not notice this but was checking analytics and saw my unique numbers had jumped over 30%. I wondered why as the increase was fairly consistant over the last days.. I went to check for forum posts on a google update and saw one may of happened so checked the site thinking we may have gone PR 6. So we dropped in PR and went up in SERPS or visitor numbers. Google accounts for 50% of visitors
Why? Is that a guess or perhaps google is just re-evaluating the links? I would assume due to my traffic increase that my important links have held due to them also directing traffic to the site. Did you use a comparison tool to determine loss of important links? I didn't really feel I had too many important links - never had a PR 6 link so I dont really know what i could have lost.. I looked over your site and also note its a PR 7 and I guess this is from your clients but it is difficult for a non-web-application site to get that many BLs. I have no clients who use my template etc. Your site looks great by the way
I agree links may have increase but may not have been from relevant sites... or lost rlevant site links
Pagerank doesn't effect your rankings so can drop but you still have those quality links that hold your rankings. BTW this recent Google PageRank Update decreased alot of sites PR and I think Google is trying to put more importance on the higher PR values by lowering the sites that don't deserve them. Frankly alot don't and yours probably didn't. One of mine lost a PR point but its traffic and sales doubled the same month so again PR has no effect accept when buying links or selling them
Yes that is basically what I thought - a reduction of PR may have occured even though no links were lost or changed. What is difficult with PR is that web or internet related niches get the links due to offered free templates, web services rendered - software etc or mutual agreements between webmasters. Non web-related sites like mine - martial arts - doesn't supply a free web building offering that can request links or intergrate them into some deal. High PR will end up only in certain niches and low PR in others. I know of no martial arts site above PR 6 ( I have never seen a PR 7 ) It would be nice if PR were theme related as there must be a martial arts site worthy of being called a resource worthly of high PR. So it ends up being that there is no high PR site in my field whom I could request a link. Of course there is Wiki but it covers eveything.
Don't worry about finding high PR links but relevant ones. If a sites is relevant the PR really doesn't matter the link will still give you good value. Also try writing articles on martial arts and give free informational resources on it. Related sites will link to that type of content.
No mate or the rankings would have went down but instead they went up. next time read the whole thread
SO if PR is given due to high quality PR links coming in, it is crazy that this value doesnt display in the SERPS. If PR represents off-page optimization and the SERPS are reflecting something else then I suppose it has to be on-page optimization. The logic just seems off - I got devalued by google down 1 point and now google decides to send more visitors. Is this nuts or something else going on?
I was sitting here scratching my noggin over this one too. PR went from 4 to 5 and lost about 1000 uniques a day. Lower PR sites are ranking higher in SERPs above Higher PR. This update really does look to be geared towards on page optimization - Title and H1 tags - by the time I get the site reworked, will be time for another update, which will probably be the opposite results of this one. Will let the SERPs slide a spot or two and wait for the next update and hope we go back down to PR4 for the better traffic Ahh Google, you make my life hell sometimes!!
Well Kaptain, I guess your Ozlie like me from your verbage? I wish I were getting so many uniques that 1000 down a day wouldn't faze me. Seems like your PR and result were the opposite of mine. I am also starting to think on-page is increasing in value and this is where I have put most of the work. I just couldn't believe placing my link into a hundred directories could have long term value just like massive article distribution ( which I have tried ). All these things are gamming the engines in their real agenda so I have been lazy and not done to much of it. Although if your 'bored' .com you coulld link sports to http://www.martialarm.com or movies http://www.movies.martialarm.com Thats a pretty big network of sites you have there and I probably only saw a few of them. Can you tell me why you monetized them like you did and why you chose not to go with certain other directions?
you probably didnt lose links, just google is playing with all indexed pages, back links, pr. My PR4 website is now PR0 but deeper pages have PR3. I have one PR7 backlink, 4 PR5 links and hundreds of PR4 links and how can it be PR0 for home page with 20 backlinks showing on google results, thats a complete joke. One of my inner pages on another site have 50 backlinks including PR4 and PR3s, guess what, this page is not indexed. So dont jump to conclusions, this is google and where is google, there is inconsistency.
Marti, You are obessing with PageRank and it's a huge waste of time - quit worrying about it because the only thing that matters are rankings and traffic which appear to have gone up for you. Is your traffic increase from a specific keyword(s) or are you receiving referrals from long complex search strings (long-tail)? btw your internal linking structure on http://www.martialarm.com/ is very well designed and you're doing a good job of pushing relevancy using the anchor text. Regards, -jay
Thanks for the positve comments and yes I have worked hard to allow visitors easy access to all the sites areas. What seems to have happened is that I am still getting the same percentage 80% from the major engines and google is about 40% overall. The traffic increase seems to be on the same keywords as before but perhaps I have moved a little higher in the SERPS for them or there may be another reason but visitors are clicking them. Perhaps competition changed there meta tags and lost some appeal or something. Disappointing results for ever out of MSN and I get more direct visitors typing in my url than I get from Live. ( Dont know how to crack this )
Freshness and stale are the other things to think about in regards to pr.. Fresh links/content = an increase in pr.. just imho..
Thats a bit unfair to sites that display information that holds true over time. eg if your site doesnt offer news or need updates of the information but is perhaps factual or historical. Perhaps I should add some sort of include of news at the bottom of the pages?