If you are trying to get a higher search engine ranking, you will probably have come across the term “Google Pagerank” or “Google PR” while you have been doing your research. If you are not sure what page rank is or how it can affect your search engine rank, read on for an easy to understand explanation of Google Page Rank and how to get a page rank.

In simple terms a page rank is an indicator of the quality of a particular page on website. By quality I mean the number of links that the web page has pointing to it rather than the actual quality of the content on the page.

A page rank is a whole number from 0 – 10, where 10 is the highest quality and 0 is the lowest. To find out the page rank of a particular page you need to download and install the Google Toolbar which is free. Page Rank applies to a page on a website, not to the whole website.

If the toolbar is grey, this means that a page has no page rank. If your website has pages on it that have a grey toolbar this could mean that

• The page is very new and has not yet been indexed by Google OR
• The page contains duplicate content and is in Google’s supplemental index rather than its main index OR
• Your website has been de-indexed/dropped from Google for some violation (less likely

If the toolbar is white, this means you have a page rank of zero. A PR0 is very common for a new website or a new web page as it take some time to build enough links back to your website to achive a higher page rank. It is also worth noting that Google typically only updates the page rank on the toolbar every few months so if you have a new website it may take  months for page rank to show on the toolbar for your website. However, Google is always updating the page rank of sites on an ongoing basis, so the page rank shown on the toolbar is not a true pagerank, it is a snapshot of your page rank from a given time.

To increase your page rank you need to get high quality backlinks to your website. A backlink is simply a link from another website to your own site. The best way is to get links naturally by writing such good content that other webmaster’s want to link to your website, but in reality most webmasters build backlinks by distributing articles, submitting their website to directories, exchanging links, distributing press releases, commenting on blogs and more. You can find out exactly how to increase your page rank here.

It is not just the number of backlinks to your site that count towards page rank, it is also the quality of these links. So for example, a link from a PR6 page is will increase your chances of getting a higher page rank, more than say, a link from a PR4 page. The number of links on the page that is linking to you also affects how much page rank (also known as “link juice”) is passed on to your web page. A link from a page that has 5 other links on it is of more value than a link from a page with 40 links on it.

Page rank is not linear, so it is much more difficult to get from say a PR4 to a PR5 than it is to get from a PR0 to a PR3.

Google Page Rank plays an important part in how a web page is ranked in Google’s search engine results but it isn’t worth much if you haven’t researched your keywords and optimized your web page. Page rank is a useful indicator of how popular a website is, but it is only part of the equation. So, do take notice of your website’s page rank, but don’t get hung up on that little green bar. The most important thing is that your traffic is increasing, not your page rank.

Download my SEO EBook to learn how to get your site to the top of the Google search results.

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Is your website converting?

Setting up your website is one of the initial steps of an Internet marketing campaign, but the success or failure of your website is dependent on how specifically you have defined your website goals. If you don’t have any idea what you would like your  website to accomplish, it will most likely fail to accomplish anything.

If you expect visitors to your website to perform some form of action, whether it is visitors filling out a form so a representative can contact them,  signing up for a newsletter or purchasing a product, there are some steps you can take to make sure that your website is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators of how well your site is working for you is finding out the number of visitors in a given period of time. A good baseline measurement is a month in which you haven’t been doing any out of the ordinary offline promotional activities.

If you find that thousands of visitors have come to your website this does not necessarily mean that your website is successful. Usually,
you want those visitors to actually do something on your site. The number of visitors to your site who made a purchase is usually called the site conversion rate, and it is one of the most important figures in determining the success of your website..

To find the site conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them that actually performed the action your site is set up for. For example, if you had 4,000 hits to your site, but only 50 of them purchased your product, your site conversion rate equals 1.25%. To get this percentage, just take your number of visitors and divide that figure by the number of visitors who made a purchase. Then divide that result by 100.

If your website is designed to get your visitors to fill out a form or sign up for a newsletter, make sure to also figure out what the difference is between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form will actually purcahse something. However, whether your site is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will measure the success or failure of your website whenever you make changes to the site.

If your conversion rate is poor you may want to consider how easy it is for a visitor to your website to accomplish the action the site is set-up for. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill out a form, is this form easily accessible? Does the visitor have to jump through hoops to get to it? If it’s too difficult to get to, the customer may just give up and move on to another  website. Make sure your buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or ordering page quickly accessible.

It also makes sense to have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must be specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a cut and paste job from your company brochure. The right copy can make the difference between profit and loss in your online campaign.

It is important to check your conversion rate before embarking on an SEO campaign to get a higher search engine rank. You can use pay per click advertising to check the conversion rate of specific keyword phrases. This can save you time upfront as you do not want to end up optimizing and promoting your website using a keyword phrase that does not convert well for your product or service.

• what does it mean to have A SITE that converts

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Do you own a website or blog? Are you disappointed with the number of free visitors that you receive every day from the search engines? If the answer to these questions is “Yes”, then read on to find out how you can quickly and easily get a higher search engine rank.

Each of these 7 methods can make a vast difference to where your website or blog ranks in Google or any of the other major search engines.

(1) Double Check Your Keywords

If you are getting very little or no search engine traffic, this will be for one of two reasons. Either because you have chosen a keyword phrase for your website that doesn’t get searched on very often, or you may have a good keyword phrase but your site is not on the first page of search engine results for that phrase.  Alternatively you may not have even thought about keywords.

Whatever the answer, if you are receiving no search engine traffic it is worth taking a second look at your keywords. Use a keyword tool such as Wordtracker to generate a big list of keywords related to your website and take a look at two very important statistics for each keyword:

• The total number of searches in a 24hr period
• The number of competing pages

You need to be sure to pick a phrase that has a good number of daily searches, but you also need to be sure that the competition is not so tough that you will never be able to reach the first page of the search engines. It is a bit of a balancing act, but once you have found the right keyword phrase, read on for more tips about how to get a higher ranking for your keywords.

(2) Make Sure your Keywords are in the Right Places

Many people believe that you just need to list your keywords in the meta keyword tag of your web page to get a good ranking, but this is a myth. Most major search engines including Google do not even take these tags into account when ranking a web page. The main reason for this is that they have been spammed so much in the past that they are no longer worth considering.

Two of the most important places to put your keyword phrase are in the <TITLE> tag of your web page and in the heading tags <H1>. Try to mention only your keyword phrase(s) and nothing else in these tags to ensure that you don’t dilute your efforts.

You should also aim to mention your keyword phrase throughout the body of your web page. Mention it a few times at the beginning, middle and end of your web page, but don’t go over board  – a spammy page with your keywords mentioned too many times can have the opposite effect on your ranking than you would like.

(3) Check your Web Page is Perfectly Optimized

As well as putting your keywords in the Title and heading tags of your web page you should also mention them in the anchor text of some of the links on that web page or on other web pages on your site and in the alt and title attributes of links and images. Again, don’t go overboard with this.

When you have finished optimizing your page you may want to check your keyword density. There is no exact formula for the keyword density and it should normally be around the 2-5% mark. Use a free keyword density tool to check the density and compare it to your main competitors. Try to aim for a similar density.

(4) Create a Sitemap

Creating a sitemap can be beneficial to both the visitors to your website and to the search engines. It will help to ensure that the search engines can find and index every page on your website. You can create a site map by hand, but it is much quicker and easier to use a tool to automatically generate one.

Here is a free sitemap generator.

(5) A Little Bit of LSI

LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. It sound very complicated, but it is a relatively straightforward concept.

LSI is about the meaning of the words on your web pages and how they relate to each other. If you have optimized your web page for a particular keyword phrase the search engines will analyze your web page to see if there are other words that are related to these keywords or have a similar meaning.

As well as putting your keywords in the right places and checking your keyword density you should think about including other keywords on your page with a similar or related meaning. This will strengthen your page overall and improve your chances of ranking well.

(6) Understand Who your Competitors are

Even if your keyword phrase returns a million pages when you type it into Google, the only pages of real importance are the first few websites on the first page of results. Most people don’t go past the first page or two when searching for something, so you have to aim for a page one ranking. To do this you need to take a close look at who your competitors are. Enter your main keyword phrase into Google and take a good hard look at the websites in the first few positions. How well optimized are they? What is their Google Page Rank (PR)? How many backlinks do they have? Who is linking to them?

Doing this analysis will give you a very clear picture of what you need to do to beat this competitor. In some cases you may find that the top competitors are huge multi million companies with many staff working on the website and in this case you may decide that this keyword phrase is too competitive and you may want to rethink your keywords.

(7) Boost those Backlinks

Finally and most importantly you must continually build high quality backlinks to your website. This is one of the most important factors in getting a top ranking. You can do this by writing articles, submitting your site to directories, distributing press releases, posting in forums and making comments on blogs and websites. You can get a good idea of how many backlinks you need by comparing your website to your competitors’ websites. Use a backlink tool to compare the number of backlinks on your site to your competitors.

Read about more Ways to Improve Your Google Page Rank here.

If you would like to learn about these methods in more detail or find out even more ways to get a higher search engine ranking download my report 10 Ways to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking.

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