My rank is 3/10. How does that compare?

[Furlongs]

My site is showing as a 3/10. How bad is that? I Can't seem to get it to budge.

[Mel]

The important thing to watch is your rankings. Let the PR take care of itself.

[alien]

I agree. Keyword rankings is more important.

[ChrisBowd]

Make sure you break your site up into reasonable (900 - 1000 word) pages and optimize each page for a specific keyword or keyphrase. Try for around a 3% density of the keyword (i.e. it appears on average once every 33 words) in the text of the page. That may make your copy slightly lilted compared to traditional published text but its search-engine friendly! You can play around with loading the keywords in the top 1/3rd or top 1/3rd and bottom 1/3rd of the page but the difference is usually negligible (may be the differentiator in a highly competitive niche though).

Next make sure that you name each page to include its keyword(s) in its filename and use hyphens to separate the keywords (keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.htm etc.) some people prefer underscores but hyphens have so far worked for me.

Link using text-links (as opposed to graphic links) and use the keywords in the link text (keyword1 keyword2). I know that graphical links and rollovers look nicer but by sparingly using <divs> and CSS background-colors / hover colors you can achieve pleasing results without graphics.

Structure your site in 2 or 3 'levels' and make sure that all of your level 1 pages are linked on every other level 1 page. Keep your links clean and easily accessible (i.e. don't have them nested inside 20 nested <div>s or <td> such that a bot gives up before it finds them. Make certain that you don't have <div>s overlapping links (Google's algorithm may sometimes think you are spamming keyword links and trying to hide them). I had that problem once and Google would not index the site fully for months until I finally realized the problem and fixed it.

If you use dark colored link text over a light jpg or gif background (or vice versa) check in a browser with graphics turned off because my experience is that Google assumes background graphics are transparent compares text against background colors. If there is low contrast between text and background then Google's crude contrast comparison test may discard the link as spam.

Make sure all of your lower level pages are linked to multiple upper level pages in the main visible body text, again using the keywords in the link text.

I have one site, doing-business-in-japan.com that has a PR=5 with only 2 or 3 incoming links all from other sites created by me, i.e. its PR was established primarily by internal linking. It has had that PR continually since 3 - 4 weeks after it first went online. And I am merely an amateur so if I can do it believe me so can you.

Now all you need to do is go and stick a link in 36,000 Wiki sandboxes and you are a pro :-) (just joking on that last piece!)

Chris

[Furlongs]

Very helpful

[Swebbie]

Hi,

I would add that you should concentrate your incoming link acquisition efforts on sites with PR4 and higher. And perhaps more importantly, be very discriminating in terms of how tightly focused the linking site's other outgoing links are. For example, try to get incoming links from related sites who have outgoing links that are all closely related to your own site's content. Additionally, the more incoming links you have from closely related sites that don't have a lot of other outgoing links on that page, the better.

Ideally then, the Holy Grail for all incoming links (with PR foremost in mind) would be: High PR sites, very closely related to your content, similar anchor text and descriptions in the surrounding outgoing links, and as few competing outgoing links as possible.

So just go get yourself the only outgoing link on Google's homepage, after you convince them to switch their business model to nothing but exactly the same thing you're selling. And make sure your anchor text is your main keyword. You'll be all set!

[stone3825]

I see where Chris says that he gained his PR from internal linking and only a few links from other sites. Has anyone else had experiences like this, or is it just one of those things that happens. I have built a few links up to my site and believe it is realativly search engine friendly.
I have no PR yet, (site has been active about 1 month) although I am seeing my pages listed now when searching for my domain. I have quite a few hits from the googlebot, but I have yet to see any results. Is page rank generated as soon as you have been listed, or does google's popularity cause a delay in that also, even if you have been received. Also, is there a google simulator somewhere that will let me know if google would have a hard time indexing my site. Thanks for everything, and if anyone has any tips for me or something I should change I am all ears. I do have a problem with my mass register and register search forms due to some changes(just in case anyone notices).

[nikao]

Originally Posted by stone3825

I see where Chris says that he gained his PR from internal linking and only a few links from other sites. Has anyone else had experiences like this, or is it just one of those things that happens. I have built a few links up to my site and believe it is realativly search engine friendly.
I have no PR yet, (site has been active about 1 month) although I am seeing my pages listed now when searching for my domain. I have quite a few hits from the googlebot, but I have yet to see any results. Is page rank generated as soon as you have been listed, or does google's popularity cause a delay in that also, even if you have been received. Also, is there a google simulator somewhere that will let me know if google would have a hard time indexing my site. Thanks for everything, and if anyone has any tips for me or something I should change I am all ears. I do have a problem with my mass register and register search forms due to some changes(just in case anyone notices).

that all depends on the PR of the other sites.
1 link form a site with a 7PR would give you already PR 5 i think.

[gilkesy]

Make certain that you don't have <div>s overlapping links (Google's algorithm may sometimes think you are spamming keyword links and trying to hide them). I had that problem once and Google would not index the site fully for months until I finally realized the problem and fixed it.

What exactly do you mean by overlapping?

[ChrisBowd]

First let me qualify that I am not a professional (or particulary expert) SEO. That said I do have sites that rank consistently at #1 for multiple keywords/keyphrases so I must be doing something right somewhere!

One of my sites http://www.venturejapan.com was ranking at #1 on Yahoo, HotBot and others but never even showed in Google and only the index.htm was indexed. It was a regular hair-tearing exercise to try to understand what the problem was. By chance I installed Opera 7 (for Windows) and while testing the site in Opera I noticed that for some strange reason I could not click the links in the left-hand navigation block.

After some examination of the code I noticed that I had a <div> for a central layer which was absolutely positioned such that it overlapped the same viewport space containing the <div> for the navigation links. The overlapping <div> was defined later in the code and did not have a z-index specified, therefore Opera correctly positioned it above the <div> containing the links. The overlapping <div> itself contained several other smaller <divs> one of which contained a Flash movie. Anyway, I could se the links and click them without problems in IE 6 and Netscape 7.1 but could only see them in Opera.

I recoded the page and made sure the <divs> did not overlap and lo and behold not only could I now click the links in Opera but within a couple of weeks GoogleBot had indexed the entire site and within a month the site was reflecting similar #1 positions for Google searches.

I am just now trying a header + 3 floating columns + footer CSS layout (i.e. using layers with no tables) which uses a central containers <div> with large left + right margins to force the footer to the bottom of the page. The links seem to be clickable in Opera and the layout works OK across browsers so I uploaded it and will be watching its SERPs like a hawk for the next week or two.

[crashingflwrgrl]

1 link form a site with a 7PR would give you already PR 5 i think.

IMO There is currently no evidence to back that up. I think it goes more on the number of links you have 50-100 links = PR4, 100+ =PR5 etc. Of course the longer you've had the link and the PR of the page the link is on are important factors as well.

2 cents.

[HardCoded]

Originally Posted by ChrisBowd

I recoded the page and made sure the <divs> did not overlap and lo and behold not only could I now click the links in Opera but within a couple of weeks GoogleBot had indexed the entire site and within a month the site was reflecting similar #1 positions for Google searches.

I find it extremely difficult to believe that this was anything more than coincidence. Are you suggesting that Google can "render" the page and see that some links weren't clickable?