Aaaahhhhh! Can anyone tell me why we still have a 0 PageRank rating?

[subcitizen]

We've been trying to change our 0 PR for a few months now with no success. We have a relatively new site, opening our doors in Mar 07. We've done the typical SEO type work you read about on sites and blogs with absolutely no success: no love whatsoever!

We have a friend with a site that is only a few months old that has 6 backlinks all with a 0 PR. He has done no SEO, has no traffic to speak of, and has an SEO rating of 2.

How does that work?!!

We seriously feel like we've been banished by Google! Did we do something wrong? The only thing we can think of is that we own a clothing boutique and we put the same "brand" content on each of the products pages. What we mean is, if there are 5 t shirts with the same brand, the same brand info, which is maybe a paragraph long, is on each of the pages that the t shirts are on. Could this be seen as duplicate content to Google?

Please, we need some help! Our SERP's are terrible! We're being annihilated!

Here's a link to our site:

http:www.subcitizen.com

Thank you for looking at our post! We totally appreciate any and all help!

Jason

[thegypsy]

Google hasn't updated the TBPR (toolbar pagerank) since April.... that would likely do it.

As always though, track rankings, not TBPR ....

For those that care, these guys are usually pretty accurate - Page Rank Update or Export List History - PageRank - PR

[wige]

I don't think you have been banned by Google - you have over 300 pages indexed (run a site: query for the exact number) and your page was cached yesterday. The number of links Google reports on a link: query is typically inaccurate - Google intentionally only shows a percentage of the links it detects. You can get a better list of detected links if you have a Webmaster Tools account.

PageRank (as far as the green bar) is irrelevant. The number is out of date, and only gives a small insight into one weighting factor. The most important thing is your position in the results.

If the content (descriptions of the shirts, etc) is not unique to your site, I would either change the content in question if possible, or "overpower it" by adding an additional few paragraphs of original text to the pages so that your pages will stand on their own.

If you are only duplicating a few sentences of a product description, you probably wont be penalized for it, you simply wont rank. Other sites may be older and more established for that text and will easily outperform you. Only by either replacing that duplicate text or adding to it substantially can you hope to overcome this.

And of course, build links, build content, rinse, repeat...

[subcitizen]

Thank you so much!

The content is unique to my site.

You mention: "If you are only duplicating a few sentences of a product description, you probably wont be penalized for it, you simply wont rank."

To me, that sounds like I am being penalized. Don't I want to rank?

Thanks Again!!

Jason

[Dubbya]

While Google list 6 links to your site but that's not uncommon for new sites.

Yahoo on the other hand only returns 73 links. It's simple, you need more inbound links.

Hang in there. Keep working to improve your site and let your domain "age" to a point where Google realizes that your site is going to stick around for a while. They're not going to hand out PR6 to a site unless they're confident it'll be around in a year or two.

Don't put so much value in pagerank, it's pretty much irrelevant at this point. Since you're still a relatively new site, you need to work your tail off to market your site in your niche.

Focus on acquiring links from relevant and related sites. Try to balance out where your links come from across free directories, blogs, help sites and a few paid listings. Don't suddenly get 1000 links overnight, pace yourself and snag a couple a day, every day.

Build your "street cred". Get your name bandied about and contribute to a user group, blog or forum. Keep tweaking the on and off page SEO factors that will allow you to make significant gains in the SERPS.

Just keep an eye on site traffic, keep your customers happy and let the PR take care of itself.

Truthfully, I've got a PR 3 on my site but in most cases, easily outrank the vast majority of established competitors with higher PR. These guys have been around for 5 or 6 years, have tons of traffic and customers, but I could care less that they've got PR5 or 6 if their link only shows up on page 2 in the SERPS.

Most of them are fading fast because they're relied on tens of thousands of paid links that aren't worth a hill of beans these days. Many continue to lose ground in the SERPS while I'm maintaining position or climbing a little each day. They can keep their PR, I'd rather continue to gain customers.

.02

[wige]

It is not so much you get a penalty, in that Google blacklists your site. It simply ignores the content you have duplicated. You simply don't get any sort of benefit. This means you can recover - just change the content. Now if you had spammy content, DCMA complaints, etc. even an overabundance of duplicate content (mirroring an entire web site for example, or pages full of duplicate text) you might get a penalty - your site might get weighted in such a way it wouldn't rank in the top 1,000, it might get banned, etc. These things require much more to recover from, possibly up to submitting a reinclusion request after fixing the problem.

[Webnauts]

Jason,

the pages from your site are included in Google's index and Googlebot last successfully accessed your home page on Sep 17, 2007.

And the Googlebar is not grey out. So it looks like that you are missing quality backlinks.

I did not look further to see if you have facing any penalties though. You probably should investigate that.

[1stgirl.com]

I'm not worried of 0 PR since a number of my sites with 0 PR are ranked among top 50 by Google for highly competitive keywords.

Insane Mind is one of them.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by 1stgirl.com

I'm not worried of 0 PR since a number of my sites with 0 PR are ranked among top 50 by Google for highly competitive keywords.

Insane Mind is one of them.

This is very interesting. Can you tell for which keywords this site ranks in the first 50?

[subcitizen]

Thanks for all your insight and vast experiences. As of now, I've spent two days just getting one way links from free directories, and just started to do the link exchange farm thing. My first experience with free directories is that they only put your link on for a few days and then nothing, if your lucky. Usually, they just ignore you.

Is there a better, more efficient way of getting one way links and keeping them?

Do I have to resort to yearly payments for one way links?

I really can't afford it. But I also can't afford to waste my time with free directories if they only keep my link up for a few days.

Thanks for your help, everybody!

Jason

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by subcitizen

just started to do the link exchange farm thing.

Jason, I hope that you didn't mean that. You mean link building. Or?

Originally Posted by subcitizen

My first experience with free directories is that they only put your link on for a few days and then nothing, if your lucky. Usually, they just ignore you.

If you ask for a free placement with providing a link back to them, you must just wait for a while.

Originally Posted by subcitizen

Is there a better, more efficient way of getting one way links and keeping them?

Write quality content, so people will like to link to you.

Originally Posted by subcitizen

Do I have to resort to yearly payments for one way links?

Paid links can hurt you.

Don't try to get things over-night. Such things need time. Some times, too much time.

[dartman]

Originally Posted by subcitizen

Thank you for looking at our post! We totally appreciate any and all help! Jason

You did seo?
I would hate to be a robot trying to figure out this:

<title>Subcitizen - RZST Ames Bros. Rebel8 Usugrow Something Sacred Iron Fist</title>
<META NAME="Description" Content="Subcitizen - T Shirts by RZST Ames Bros. Usugrow Iron Fist Cardboard Robot Something Sacred Rebel8 Upper Playground Fifty24SF, Estevan Oriol edoc laundry Art In The Age, and Uzi -">

Think in terms of a human reading this title and description as a search result. You named brands in the title - give them a sales message in the description.

There's not much unique content thruout the site therefore not much for Google to latch on to. Clicking some of the shirts I found the same description on each - only the image was different. Many product pages with identical information isn't going to sit well with search engines. Likewise most of the page titles I saw ere just variations of the same words. jmo

[subcitizen]

sorry i goofed with quotes

[subcitizen]

Hi Webnauts, Thank you so much for responding to my posts! That's what makes this forum so great!

Regarding, your quote of my quote:

Originally Posted by subcitizen

Quote:
Originally Posted by subcitizen
just started to do the link exchange farm thing.

Jason, I hope that you didn't mean that. You mean link building. Or?

This is what I meant

http://www.linkmetro.com/

Is this something that can hurt me in the SERPS? It's just a free forum to exchange links. Is that bad?

Thanks. At this point, I don't want any excuse for Google to ban me!

Jason

[dartman]

Originally Posted by subcitizen

LinkMetro - Home page
Is this something that can hurt me in the SERPS? It's just a free forum to exchange links. Is that bad? Thanks. At this point, I don't want any excuse for Google to ban me!
Jason

I doubt it would hurt but don't see this site giving you any help.
This would be unrelated links for the sake of linking which is worth 0 and a waste
of your time.

Ask yourself this - does LinkMetro - Home page relate to my site in any way?
No would be the right answer. A link from Hanes, FOL, etc would be golden as would other
sites that relate to the genre of shirts you sell.

[subcitizen]

Thanks so much Dartman for your posts and info. I really appreciate it! Can I ask you to clarify a few things. Thanks.

Originally Posted by dartman

Think in terms of a human reading this title and description as a search result. You named brands in the title - give them a sales message in the description.

The reason I did that was so I could literally jam as many keywords into my title as possible. For me, right now, getting as many people to my site as possible is the focus. I've had this discussion before in this forum. If you could look at it and tell me what your viewpoint is, I would totally appreciate it. Here's the link:

A quick question about title meta tags

Now regarding this

Originally Posted by dartman

You did seo?
I would hate to be a robot trying to figure out this:

<title>Subcitizen - RZST Ames Bros. Rebel8 Usugrow Something Sacred Iron Fist</title>
<META NAME="Description" Content="Subcitizen - T Shirts by RZST Ames Bros. Usugrow Iron Fist Cardboard Robot Something Sacred Rebel8 Upper Playground Fifty24SF, Estevan Oriol edoc laundry Art In The Age, and Uzi -">

Why isn't this robot friendly? Not that I know anything about it, I just want to know how to improve it. Thanks.

Also, one last thing:

Originally Posted by dartman

There's not much unique content thruout the site therefore not much for Google to latch on to. Clicking some of the shirts I found the same description on each - only the image was different. Many product pages with identical information isn't going to sit well with search engines. Likewise most of the page titles I saw ere just variations of the same words. jmo

Many of the pages are similar, but they're not identical. Are you saying that I need to write more text for each tee?

Also, one thing I've always questioned is that I put a little bit about the manufacturer underneath the text of the tee. What happens is tees with the same manufacturer get the same paragraph. Could that be a problem with Google? I thought it was better to include manufacturer info to help sell the tee. Is there a better way?

Thanks so much Dartman!!

Jason

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by subcitizen

This is what I meant

LinkMetro - Home page

Is this something that can hurt me in the SERPS? It's just a free forum to exchange links. Is that bad?

That place stinks. It is obvious that it is a place where people exchange links for manipulating PR and not building links for generating traffic. I just brought that to Googles attention to see how will they react.

[dartman]

Originally Posted by subcitizen

Can I ask you to clarify a few things.
Jason

For brevity I skipped quoting your post.

First off - do you post in T-Shirt Forums
If not it looks a good place for sig links and should also help drive some traffic to your site.

Next I viewed the thread you referenced on meta tags and the advice was good - the key was the link to Search Engine Marketing Glossary - SEO & SEM Industry Dictionary
The title tag should give a very short synopsis of the page content and the description should be "what this page is about". Having related and unique content on the page makes it all
jive or call it consistency of a theme. When bro robot visits he needs to classify the page or in essence try to determine what it is relative to its' database of keywords.
If your intent is to target mfg brands then what you have for title/descrip apparently works. If you are after the "t shirt' market it looks like you have more work to do since your G results are now keyed to your brand names. You have to decide whether your target market is more likely to search for a brand name t shirt or a t shirt in general.

I did a few G keyword searches and found these results for your site -
Iron Fist T Shirts - Pg 1
RZST T Shirts - Pg 1
Usugrow T Shirts - Pg 1
Rebel8 T Shirts - Pg 1
Ames Bros T Shirts - Pg 2
Indie T Shirts - Pg 2
Cardboard Robot T Shirts - Pg 4
T Shirts - not in the first 10 pages

So who needs PR when your on Page 1 which is the name of the game. Don't sweat PR - just make an effort to link up with product / lifestyle related sites. This won't happen in a week or a month - it's an ongoing process so don't let it get you frustrated.

As for the text duplication on the individual shirt pages - on a relook I do see repetition across the different brands but also see you had a line or 2 of additional text as a preface so this isn't too bad. I suppose there's only so much you could say about a t shirt. You might think about adding some separate pages to describe each of the brands you sell. ex - a page called About Iron Fist T Shirts. In the product descriptions for IF shirts you could link the name to the About page and then link from the About back to your main IF products page. Just a way to develop the brand a bit deeper and add more content for the big G to chew on.

As an experiment you could try this title/descrip and see if G picks up the other brands you offer that are not listed in the results shown above. -
<title>T Shirts by Iron Fist RZST Ames Bros. Rebel8 Usugrow Cardboard Robot and more</title>
<META NAME="Description" Content="Subcitizen offers the raddest, alternative and indie T Shirts by RZST Ames Bros. Usugrow Iron Fist Cardboard Robot Something Sacred Rebel8 Upper Playground Fifty24SF Estevan Oriol edoc laundry Art In The Age Uzi -">

As always, jmo

[seo4china]

Just work more on your links and you should be fine a couple of months from now. And as mentioned earlier forget about PR and focus more on your rankings and traffic

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by seo4china

And as mentioned earlier forget about PR and focus more on your rankings and traffic

Doesn't PR have something to do with rankings? Or did I miss something?

[subcitizen]

Dartman and Webnauts,

I great big Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!!!!

You took a lot of time to do the searches and answer my questions!!

Dartman, I have a few issues.

Originally Posted by dartman

I did a few G keyword searches and found these results for your site -
Iron Fist T Shirts - Pg 1
RZST T Shirts - Pg 1
Usugrow T Shirts - Pg 1
Rebel8 T Shirts - Pg 1
Ames Bros T Shirts - Pg 2
Indie T Shirts - Pg 2
Cardboard Robot T Shirts - Pg 4
T Shirts - not in the first 10 pages

So who needs PR when your on Page 1 which is the name of the game. Don't sweat PR - just make an effort to link up with product / lifestyle related sites. This won't happen in a week or a month - it's an ongoing process so don't let it get you frustrated.

The problem with those keywords is, according to the Overture Selection Tool:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/sear...ry/suggestion/

is that I'm on the first page for searches that nobody is conducting. Drat! If it was only that easy!!

As far as PR goes, according to Webnauts and others, is that the greater my PR, the better I'll do in the SERP's. Driving organic traffic to my site is really essential right now.

Dartman, thanks for the advice on posting on tshirt forums. I do that, and I'm going to do more of it. Also, I have been thinking about writing separate pages for the particular brands that I carry, so thanks for that as well.

So anyway thanks again everyone for the advice!

Jason

[dartman]

Originally Posted by subcitizen

The problem with those keywords is that I'm on the first page for searches that nobody is conducting.

I think this was the point I was trying to make - what market (keywords) are you targeting.
As it stands you're targeting the brands but, unfortunately, how many people search specifically for Iron Fist T Shirts. Short of PPC ads you'll probably need to rethink the way you have set your titles, descriptions and page content text but you need to decide what market (apparel, t shirts, indie, underground, etc) you want to target first.

I'll use one of my sites (sig) as an example. We're in the billiard supply business however we focus (target) pool table felt and custom printed pool table felt - not on billiard supplies. No emphasis on cues, cases, chalk or other accessories altho we carry those also. If you search G for either of the first 2 terms our site is #1. We offer the 3 major brands of cloth but we also know most shoppers do not search for a brand specific cloth - they simply search for pool table felt and that keyphrase is a consistent theme thruout our main page and specific brand pages (in your case they probably search for T Shirts). I will say we name the brands in titles and descriptions where appropriate to the page yet the "theme" is still pool table felt. Just passing on the concept so if you do decide to retarget your site maybe this will help. Good luck.