Why Has Our Page Rank (PR) Dropped to 1? Suggestions?

I am getting pretty frustrated with Google Page Rank and wanted to share my story. I can't understand why the page rank on our homepage (http://www.decisionsin.com) has dropped from 5 to 1. What really frustrates me is that spam sites get PR of 3, 4, 5, 6+, but a site like DI, which provides real content and a real service, has a PR of 1. What are those spam sites doing that we are not? This is not a plug for our site, I am just trying to make a point and better understand Google Page Rank.

I have to admit, in the beginning we were not SEO friendly, so we are playing some catch up. Below I have listed all the things we've done over the past few months that should positively increase our page rank; however, it has all seemed to help very little:

1) Created a robots.txt file and verified the site isn't being blocked by it
2) Created a sitemap
3) Submitted our site to numerous directories
4) Virally spread our site via MySpace and other social networks
5) Provide link code for hosted images
6) Regular announcements on the homepage
7) Added "title" and "alt" tags to all our images
8) Started doing some link exchange (admittedly not enough)

Here are a few things that I think might be negatively affecting our PR:

1) Not enough text on the homepage
2) Hidden DIV layers. These layers DO contain real content and are not meant to fool search engines. I guess we could try using innerHTML to replace the contents instead of hiding it. Thoughts?

Well off the top of my head that is about all I can think of at the moment. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to increase our PR? I'm sure I am not alone and that others could benefit from anecdotal information, both positive and negative.

Thanks to all advance.

 

I would give it some time, PR isn't everything and I see other pages such as register.php is a pr3 still.. I'm sure your main page will catch back up.

cheers

 

Trying getting some more inbound text links.

 

I am confused...are you turning this website into a directory any time soon? Or will you be selling text links on it? If your answer is no to both, forget about the Toolbar PR. Focus on what you're doing (building a quality resource) and it will increase over time.

Hidden divs and a lack of content on your page have nothing to do with PR. Look at my site...http://www.planjam.com. I don't have one piece of text on it and it has been a PR5 for quite some time now. This is more of an SEO issue and will directly affect how you rank in the SERPs.

 

Pagerank depends on PR of your backlinks.

Have you checked your backlinks pageranks ?

Check it with backlinkwatch and you'll see you don't deserve PR5. PR1 is pretty much okay! seeing PR of your backlinks.

 

Humm.... that is also true.
To the thread starter, Why don't you again start making some good backlinks for your site. Then it will surely get some Good PR.

 

You probably had some high PR link thats was pointing to your site and got dropped.

 

Thanks for all the feedback and tips. I assume backlinks and inbound links are one and the same? If so, can anyone offer some good suggestions on how to increase the number of backlinks? We've already submitted our site to directories, contacted many webmasters asking for a link exchange, and provide link code on our site so people can post our images to their website/profile. Is there anything we're missing?

 

hoho.. same as mine. my website PR drop from 1 to 0... need more backlinks to my website... thanks for advice..

 

check in DP forums, are a lot of options how to increase site BL

 

put your site on your sig... it is considered as 1 way link... but limit your links, you may be banned for spamming..