How to improve the page rank of your website

Page Rank (often denoted by PR) is Google’s ranking software that calculates the relevance of a webpage with its content. Page Rank is a quantity (between 0 and 10) defined by Google that provides a rough estimate of the overall importance of a web page. The Google Toolbar can be obtained free of charge for Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Google has a page rank of 10 which is the highest your site can attain. The PR of your site is updated about once of month when Google updates their database of web pages. It exports new backlinks, PageRank, or directory data approximately every three months.
One highly effective method for attracting more web traffic is to first optimize the design of your web site. This will increase your page rank because search engines love sites that have clean code, are fast loading and contain lots of well written content. This ultimately results in gaining traffic which leads to more sales, a sign you have developed a profitable web site.
Below are few factors which can be incorporated to improve page rank of your website:

1.Backlinks are vital
Links to and from your site are an important off page factor for determining PageRank. Back links are Links pointing to your website from another website. The more back links you have the higher your PR will be. You can always check out your backlinks by querying Google using its link operator.
Learn how to increase the backlinks
All the links are not Equal – Quality, Relevancy and Quantity of Links Effect PageRank
•Quality of LinksLinks with high PR, who link to your page, carry more weightage than links with equal or less PR.
•Relevancy of LinksHowever, relevancy of links is equally important. If your website is about selling online lays chips and you want to get a backlink from a interior designing website then it is irrelevant.
Google looks to title tag an on page criterion of incoming links to determine relevancy and similarity. Pages whose relevancies are equal or similar to your page are given more weightage.
Another relevancy criterion for incoming links is how pages link to you. Ideally, you want the incoming link to use your keyword in its anchor text. For instance, if you want to create a link for “how to increase backlinks” then anchor text should be increase backlinks not click here.
•Quantity of LinksIf a high-ranking page links to your page, it has value. However, if the high ranking page links to you and a hundred other pages it has less value. Essentially, the voting weight of the incoming link is divided among all the links on that page.
Another quantity issue is “link Mills”/ “Link Farms”. A link mill is a page with nothing but links on it. Linking to link farms or mills can be extremely harmful. These “bad neighborhoods” are often banned sites.
The final quantity issue is timeliness of links. Too many links to your site too quickly sends a flag to Google.
In addition to taking into account the number of links to your page and the ranking of the linking page, to compute a page’s PageRank, Google considers hundreds of other factors including
• the click through rate (CTR) of Google’s search results, cached pages, favorites on the Google Toolbar
• when your site acquired the links
• how fast a site is gaining links
• the stickiness of your site (i.e., the effectiveness of your site in retaining individual users)

2.Update your website every day by adding more unique content
If you site has unique content for the visitors they will surely revisit your site.

3.Include useful high-quality information on your site
Web copy that is well written will naturally drive more traffic. And Make sure that you have your targeted keywords included in the content on your pages in a natural way. It will help your website listed in various search engines. Website owners reading your content will naturally want to link to your site without even asking for a link back.

4.Provide inside linking to your website
Internal links are links between internal pages of a website. For example if you have written an article to enhance the page rank of the website it could be interlinked with another article which is about page rank.

5.Create sitemap for your website
Create sitemap (XML based for Google and text based for yahoo) then submit sitemap to Google and submit sitemap to Yahoo. Get a Google webmaster account and sign in there to see your website statistics. It will also tell you if your site is indexed or not, and your page rank in Google.

6.Publicize your site to everyone with whom you communicate
Add your site’s URL, e.g., www.himshilp.com, to every piece of communication you initiate. Your Web address should be listed everywhere that your phone/fax number and mailing address e.g.,
• Letterhead
• Business cards
• Newsletters
• Brochures
• Press Releases
• Fax cover sheets
• Email signatures

7.Write a newsletter and send it out.
Inform people what’s new or remarkable on your site. The newsletter will remind people about your site and encourage them to visit to find appealing content.

8.Provide a Rich Site Summary (RSS).
RSS is “a lightweight XML format for distributing news headlines and other content on the Web.”
In addition to making it easy for other sites to distribute your headlines and content, your RSS feed will be indexed by popular Blog search engines, including Technorati, BlogSearch, and Ask.com Bloglines.

9.Keyword density:
Keyword density is the ratio of the word that is being searched for (the keyword) against the total number of words appearing on your web page. It has often been observed that Google considers keyword density a large factor in ranking pages in search engine results, more so than many other search engines. For example if your webpage is of “Page rank” and if you have used the keyword “page rank” only once in your webpage of thousand words then it has a lower keyword density than a keyword that occurs (say) four times in a page of similar length. Then the page wont be listed for that particular keyword since its keyword density is low.
So in order to improve your site's placement in the search engine results one needs to work on the keyword density on his page.

10.Perform the necessary Keyword research.
Keyword research plays very important role in determining the page rank. Your web copy is filled with words that visitors enter in the search engines. Intertwine these words throughout the content of your web site.

11.Construct meta tags that include your targeted keywords
Make sure you write an attractive description for your description meta tag. This gets listed first to the visitors when search engine find your website relevant for that keyword. If the description does not capture your visitor’s attention immediately you will lose your visitor to a competing web site.

12.Construct a meaningful Title tag.
The title tag is what visitors will see at the top of the browser window when your site first appears. It is the most important tag to consider when designing your web site. Place your main keywords at the beginning of the title tag. Don't place you site's name first. Most visitors will not be searching for your site name. They find you with the keywords they entered in the search engines.

13.Use heading tags for the headings and sub headings of your web site content.
Incorporate your keywords in < h1 > to < h6 > tags. Search engines give a little more weightage to these tags. They also grab your visitor’s attention faster than normal text.

14.Name files using your targeted keywords
When naming your css, image, javascript files etc, include your targeted keywords. Don't use the same keywords again and again in every file. It may be flagged as keyword spamming by the search engines.

15.Include keywords in page and directory names
Instead of giving your pages generic names, be creative and incorporate keywords in their urls.
For example rather than giving names to your pages like page1.htm, page2.htm… try to incorporate the keywords in their names, like improve-page-rank.htm will be a better choice for a webpage which is about improving the page rank of a webpage.
This will help the search engines to identify the keywords in your page url. If a site owner links to this page you will benefit by already having your keywords in your web page address.

16.Use keywords in your link text
If the links on your page have relevant keyword text in them, your page will receive higher rankings in the search engine results than those sites that don't.
For example, a link on your with the text "improve your page rank" will cause your site to be listed earlier if a visitor searches for "page rank" than if the link simply said "click here."

17.Optimize your images
Try to avoid using images to display important names, content, or links. Search engines don't spider images only text. Use ALT tags if any of the main content on your web page can't be written in regular HTML.
18.Create external files
Instead of loading your site with lots of css or javascript code, place all the code in an external file between your header tags. This will drastically reduce the load time of your pages and allow the search engines to easily spider your site.

19.JavaScript & SEO
JavaScript and images, conveys nothing to a search engine. The second thing is size. Search Engines actually have a limit to how much page content they will crawl. For instance, Googlebot has a 100 kb limit. Even though the Googlebot directive is to search for keywords and phrases, which are placed after the 100 kb limit are invisible to it.
Don't overload the HEAD section of your page with styles and scripts. Instead, you should link to external files.

20.Proximity & Hierarchy
Before you start optimizing the individual pages consider the closeness of keywords and phrases to the beginning of a page. The importance of the webpage decreases from left to right and from top to bottom. So the top left part of a webpage has highest importance. The search engine spider will read the content which is in the beginning of the page BEFORE the actual content of the page. For example if you have links tabs in the page, it is more important than the actual content of the page. Whereas human visitors generally ignore the links first and directly jump to the content of the page.
Search Engines also consider textual hierarchy. Just like writing an exam paper, a search engine looks for code clues to understand the outline of your page. To a spider, text in heading tag is more important than the normal text. Similarly bold, italicized, or underlined text has more importance than the plain text.
Google periodically changes how it calculates a page’s importance, thereby resulting in shifts in rankings, known as a Google Dance.

Enhancing traffic to your website through Linkbaiting

Linkbating is a new concept, but is becoming an effective way to drive more traffic to your website.
Linkbait is basically content created particularly to generate enough interest (like freebies, sensational stories, games etc.) for others to willingly create links back to your website. In simple words linkbaiting is nothing but encouraging others to link back to you.

Google also gives importance to the links in order to determine the page rank of a website. So your internet business is directly proportional to the quality backlinks of your website
The goal of Linkbaiting is to offer something so unique and mentionable that other sites will link to your site for free.
Several LinkBaiting ideas are:
1. Introduce a simple free tool or free template for people in your subject area to use, and spread it around, for instance a script that checks a site's rankings in Google, Yahoo and MSN.
2. Keep an eye on blogs, give reviews. If your review is well-written and constructive, you will get noticed and surely it will pay you in long run..
3. Write persuasive content : Nothing can bring you more incoming links than compelling content. Write content that people would like to read and recommend to their own visitors. This can be done by writing original research, unique posts, making people think, writing posts that teach new things, writing relevant postings, publish quality links.
4. Humor: Nothing is like writing something which will enlighten someone’s day, so if you have some funny pictures , humorous stories, or anything else that will generate laughter it could be posted on your site or blog. Doesn’t matter whether it relates to your company's business or not. Once people have clicked to your humor page, they will probably stay and look around a bit.
5. Contests and Games: organize some contests or games, this will surely drive traffic to your website.
6. Controversial opinions: A blog entry which has contradictory opinions will really lead to intense debates. It can certainly stir things up as readers alert others to what you have to say and then additionally will visit your website.
7. Sensational stories: If a client was saved because she was using your security system in his house, write an article about it. If your client’s business is increased dramatically after taking your SEO services then publish it.
Of course, there could be a lot more possibilities .The goal is simply to maximize the number of links to your site. Offering a free tool or a free service such as indicated above are a few ways of achieving that goal.
Best of luck in your Linkbaiting!

Importance of Page rank for website

Page Rank (often denoted by PR) is Google’s ranking software that calculates the relevance of a webpage with its content. Page Rank is a quantity (between 0 and 10) defined by Google that provides a rough estimate of the overall importance of a web page.

Page Rank is displayed as a green bar to the left of a webpage listing in the Google Directory, and also in the Google toolbar
The basic factor behind defining a page rank is the keywords
• If your keywords are Rare and Unique, then Page Rank doesn't matter.
• If your keywords are very Competitive, then Page Rank becomes very important

There are "over 200 SEO factors" that Google uses to rank pages in the Google search results (SERPs). There are certain google search engine optimization rules which effects the page rank they are

1. Positive ON-Page SEO Factors.

2. Negative ON-Page SEO Factors.

3. Positive OFF-Page SEO Factors.

4. Negative OFF-Page SEO Factors.

Some of these factors are listed below:
POSITIVE ON-Page SEO Factors:
• Keyword
o Keyword in URL: First word is best, second is second best, etc
o Keyword in domain name: Same as in page-name-with-hyphens
o Keyword in title tag: Title tag 10 - 60 characters, no special characters.
o Keyword in description meta tag: less than 200 chars. Google no longer "relies" upon this tag, but will often use it.
o Keyword in keyword meta tag: less than 10 words. Every word in this tag MUST appear somewhere in the body text. If not, it can be penalized for irrelevance. No single word should appear more than twice.
If not, it may be considered spam. Google purportedly no longer uses this tag, but others do.
o Keyword density in body text:5- 20% - (all keywords/ total words)
o Individual keyword density: 1 - 6% - (each keyword/ total words)
o Keyword in H1, H2 and H3: Use Hx font style tags appropriately
o Keyword font size: "Strong is treated the same as bold, italic is treated the same as emphasis".
o Keyword in alt text: Should describe graphic - Do NOT fill with spam
o Keyword in links to site pages (anchor text): Links out anchor text use keyword
• NAVIGATION - INTERNAL LINKS
o Link should contain keywords.
o Use hyphenated filenames, but not long ones - two or three hyphens only.
o Check that all Internal links are valid or not.
• NAVIGATION - OUTGOING LINKS
o External link: Link only to good sites
o Validate all links periodically
o Less than 100 links out total
o Avoid "Link Churn"
o Outgoing link Anchor Text : Should be on topic, descriptive
• OTHER ON-Page Factors
o Smaller files are preferred, Try not to exceed 100K page size
o Use Hyphens in URL
o Freshness of Pages: Changes over time, Newer the better - Google likes fresh pages.
o Freshness of Links: Excellent for high-trust sites, May not be so good for newer, low-trust sites
o Frequency of Updates: Frequent updates are equal to frequent spidering that generates newer cache.
o URL length: Keep it minimized - use somewhat less than the 2,000 characters allowed by IE - less than 100 is good, less is even better
• OTHER ON-SITE Factors
o Site Age: Old is the best
o Site Size - Google likes big sites
o Age of page vs. age of site: Newer pages on an older site will get faster recognition

Negative ON-Page SEO Google Ranking Factors

• Text represented graphically is invisible to search engines.
• Too high keyword repetition (keyword stuffing) may get you the Over Optimization Penalty.
• Redirect thru refresh metatags: Don't immediately send your visitor to another page other than the one he/ she clicked on, using meta refresh.
• Keyword dilution: Targeting too many unrelated keywords on a page, which would detract from theming, and reduce the importance of your REALLY important keywords.
• Flash page : Most SE spiders can't read Flash content Provide an HTML alternative, or experience lower SERP positioning.
• Use of frames should be avoided as SE has problems with frames.
• Excessive JavaScript should not be used.
• Invisible text Google advises against this.
• Gateway, doorway page Google advises against this.
• Duplicate content Google advises against this
• HTML code violations Google advises against this


POSITIVE OFF-Page SEO Google Ranking Factors
Incoming links :
• Based on the Number and Quality of links to you Google link reporting continues to display just a SMALL fraction of your actual backlinks, and they are NOT just greater than PR4 - they are mixed.
• Incoming links from high-ranking pages are better.
• Site Age - Old shows stability.
• Site Directory - Tree Structure.
• Complete - keywords in anchor text.
• PAGE METRICS - USER BEHAVIOR:
o Page traffic: trend of number of visitors.
o CTR: how often is the page clicked on.
o Time spent on page: Relatively long time, indicates relevance hit.
o If your website pages are bookmarked by user it is good for you.
• SITE METRICS- USER BEHAVIOR
o Site traffic: number of visitors are more its better.
o Time spent on domain: relatively long time indicates relevance hit.
• DOMAIN OWNER BEHAVIOR :
o Domain Registration Time: Register for 5 years, Google knows you are serious, register for 1 year, is it a throw-away domain?

NEGATIVE OFF-Page SEO Google Ranking Factors
• Traffic Buying is not suggested
• Old links are valued, new links are not.
• Zero links to you: You MUST have at least 1 (one) incoming link (back link) from some website somewhere, that Google is aware of, to REMAIN in the index.
• Google hates link-buying, because it corrupts their PR model in the worst way possible. Please check all these points before creating links:
1. Does your page have links it really doesn't merit?
2. Did you get tons of links in a short time period?
3. Do you have links from high-PR, unrelated sites?
• Cloaking (practice of presenting different content or URLs to users and search engines.) should be avoided as Serving up different results based on user agent may cause your site to be perceived as deceptive and removed from the Google index.
• Links from bad neighborhoods: Google says that incoming links from bad sites can't hurt you, because you can't control them.

So we can say that the page rank is the function of page,
• Strong on page gives better page rank and strong off page is added advantage
• If off page is very strong and on page is bad then page rank will be very poor
• If on page is strong and off page is poor, then PR will not be that badly affected