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Here are some observations that I have made recently:

1. On several of my own sites, I have some pages with zero page rank despite having links pointing to them PR 5 pages on the same site. These pages are now 2-3 months old. Shouldn’t they have PR by now?

2. Most of these pages rank well despite the apparent PR 0.

3. Doing searches on Google show up a lot of anomalies. Many top ranking pages have PR 0.

For example, go to http://www.prsearch.net/

This is that great search tool I mentioned last week which gives you the PR and backlinks of the search results. Do a search for Bratz dolls..

Here are the top 10 sites when I search:

#1 PR 6 Backlinks - 151

#2 PR 7 Backlinks - 5

#3 PR 0 Backlinks - 18

#4 PR 4 Backlinks - 2

#5 PR 0 Backlinks - 0

#6 PR 0 Backlinks - 0

#7 PR 0 Backlinks - 0

#8 PR 0 Backlinks - 0

#9 PR 6 Backlinks - 46

#10 PR 0 Backlinks - 11

4. Backlinks at Google don’t tally with known backlinks. This has been reported a lot in various publications recently. Google use to only show backlinks from PR 4 or more sites, but it has been reported that backlinks from lower PR sites are showing and backlinks from some higher PR sites seem to be missing.

Reading through these observations, it is clear that something is going on.

It might look at first glance that PR is not being updated since lots of pages which should have PR don’t. I don’t think this is the case, and I will explain in a moment what I believe is going on. However, before we do that, let’s consider some of the other stuff listed above.

Look at those top 10 results again.

How can it be that 6 pages with PR 0 rank in the top 10 for a competitive term?

Also, how can it be that some of those PR 0 pages don’t have PR, yet they do have backlinks? Look at position 10. PR 0 yet 11 backlinks reported by Google. Go look at those backlinks and they all have PR 0 as well. So is Google now reporting backlinks from pages that are PR 0?

It all seems very weird, yet I believe the answer to this is very simple. Google has not updated the Google Toolbar for some time, yet in its own database, PR is largely up to date. This means that pages that appear to have a PR 0 may in fact have much higher PR.

From a webmasters point of view, this is a real pain. Imagine putting up a site, adding a page to get some link partners, but not getting any PR on the links page for several months. You contact other webmasters for a link exchange, but the other webmasters ignore your request because you are PR 0!

Could it be that Google have decided to update the Google Toolbar far less frequently, or not at all, so that webmasters cannot find out the true PR of pages in the index?

If so, why would they do this?

Google use to show only backlinks from pages with PR 4 or more, yet now appear to show backlinks from pages with much less PR, even PR 0. Does this mean that Google have changed their policy on which pages they show as backlinks?

Possibly, though doesn’t it make more sense that Google still only shows PR 4 pages as backlinks, but since PR on the toolbar has not been updated, we see these backlinks as significantly less PR than they actually are?

For any search engine to return the most relevant results possible, those engines must try to stop webmasters using techniques that get their web pages better rankings. For Google, this includes manipulating PR.

Google state this clearly in their Program Policies for use for Adsense advertising.

Read through the section “Site Content” and look at the last point in the bullet list. Google specifically mentions PR manipulation. If Google is applying these rules to Adsense advertising, does it not make sense that they also apply these rules in their algorithms?

If Google is trying to:

a) prevent reverse engineering of its algorithm, and b) prevent webmasters from using techniques that might get a webpage ranked higher than it deserves based on its content,

Then surely, not updating the PR on the toolbar is a good thing for Google.

In doing so, it makes it very difficult:

a) for webmasters to find out why top ranking pages rank so well, and b) for webmasters to get links from other webmasters (which is a way of manipulating PR and increasing rankings).

I know Google want to make their engine the best it possibly can be, and they should be applauded for that. It makes it easier for searchers to find things of relevance. I believe that the whole idea of Pagerank was based on the premise that quality sites would get links from other sites because of their quality, not because of artificial linking like link exchanges. Link exchanges have just gotten out of hand and made a mockery of the Pagerank idea.

So what can you do about it? Well, my suggestion is the same as always. Add quality content to your sites. Other sites will naturally link to yours because your site offers value to THEIR visitors. In addition, write some quality articles and submit them with your own resource box that links back to your site. Submit these to sites that reprint articles, and you will naturally grow your own backlinks and PR through quality content. Your rankings will improve, and Google should love your site for the value it adds to the internet.

For details on how to use Articles for better rankings, why not re-read the fr.ee report available to my newsletter subscribers.

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Andy Williams is author of the free, ezSEO
internet marketing newsletter, offering subscribers up-to-date
information on all aspects of internet marketing.
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I knew things were bad at DMOZ. But I guess I didn’t realize how bad, until I started eavesdropping on a few forums, and reading the avalanche of e-mails I received on the subject.

When it takes up to two years to get a web site listed, there’s a serious problem. When perfectly qualified web sites are rejected for no other reason than the fact the editor considers them serious competition to his or her own site, there’s a serious problem.

When you e-mail DMOZ about the status of your web site and don’t even receive a courtesy response to your questions, there’s a serious problem.

When you have egotistical DMOZ editors fighting each other to have their own web sites listed, there’s a serious problem.

And quite frankly, I don’t see how the mess DMOZ has created can be fixed. With an apparently endless backlog of web sites waiting to be approved, how can they possibly catch up. The answer is, they can’t.

But this isn’t just a performance issue we’re talking about here, this is a morality issue. The very fact that it’s a matter of public record what DMOZ is doing speaks volumes about the character of many of their editors.

After all, much of what I’ve written negatively about DMOZ came directly from the mouths and/or keyboards of DMOZ editors themselves. At least they claimed to be DMOZ editors. And for the life of me, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to own up to that dubious distinction, unless it were actually true.

This is what one DMOZ editor had to say. “Since I became an editor for DMOZ a few weeks ago (albeit for a tiny category) I have seen on the DMOZ editors board that there are a lot of good volunteers there who work hard to try to keep the directory up to date and useful. Its a shame because there are also seem to be a lot of editors there who are lazy, or who have let the “power” of being an editor go to their heads. (The people who DON’T ever post on the editor message boards, or update their categories, etc.)

I think some method to allow webmasters to check the status of their site submissions (and to know why their site gets rejected if it is something fixable, and the site is related to the category and not just a spam submission, etc) would be an excellent first step to improving the system. Unfortunately the editor management system seems to be circa 1998 … I am only guessing based on design/functionality, but I assume big changes are not coming any time soon.”

Even Google may have come to the realization that DMOZ may have finally run its course. Previously found via its own tab, the Open Directory has been demoted to the “more” page.

This was Google’s explanation for the demotion. “We analyzed what people were using, and that had become less popular over time. As the web grows, directory structures get harder to use. It didn’t seem to be worth the real estate on the home page.” Ouch!

Demoting the directory may also be a way for Google to eventually distance itself from the Open Directory Project, which powers it. The volunteer-produced directory was added back in 2000, near the height of the Open Directory’s popularity.

Today, there are often complaints that the ODP, has not keep up with submission demands. In addition, there have been delays in getting the most current data out in a format that ODP partners such as Google can use.

Ultimately, any problem with the Open Directory–which is not in Google’s control–still reflects badly on Google.

I do have a solution to this whole DMOZ mess, if anyone wants to hear it. I say nuke the site for morbid, and put it out of its misery!

About The Author

Dean Phillips is an Internet marketing expert, writer, publisher and entrepreneur. Questions? Comments? Dean can be reached at mailto: dean@lets-make-money.net

Visit his website at: http://www.lets-make-money.net

Over the past few years, there have been many debates about different search engine optimisation strategies, though it is highly important that a range of strategies are pulled together as one to form the best optimisation program possible. There is one particular factor that is becoming ever more important when it comes to reaching number one in the search engine results pages. That factor is “content”. It seems search engines in their quest to provide ever more relevant results are giving site content more and more weight in their ranking algorithms. These days we are seeing web pages packed full of relevant text as opposed to the wonderful, graphical pages that used to adorn many a company’s web sites.

Though of course page content is only one aspect of a good optimisation campaign, it is important to follow a few simple guidelines when constructing that content in order to get it right:

1. Research ? before you write a single word about a particular product, group of products or service, it is important that you know as much as possible about your subject. Good research will allow you to construct factual, relevant content. If you decide to merely copy content already out there, then be very careful. It is advisable to approach the owner of such content first and ask their permission. For example if you need to write about a product and your supplier already has a good description of it on their site, then it may be the case that they will let you use it for promotional purposes. Again you need to seek their approval first. Even if you intend to re-write someone else’s content it is a good idea to check with them first. In general a good rule of thumb is “if in doubt, don’t do it”. Your own original content is always best.

2. Spelling and Grammar ? you should always seek to maintain a high level of spelling and grammar. Always assume anyone reading your content is looking for mistakes. Buyers look for reasons not only to buy, but also not to buy. Good spelling and grammar portrays a confident and professional image.

3. Layout ? page content needs to be laid out correctly in order to appear more pleasing to the eye. Keep paragraphs short and to the point. Any keywords and key phrases need to be worked into the content naturally and read correctly. Titles and headings should be in bold and the first letter of each word should be capitalised. Always use a plain, easy to read font. Fancy fonts may look nice to you, but don’t forget your content is going to be read by the masses and needs to have a general appearance, that can be read by everyone. Any important words or references should be highlighted using quotation marks or again bold text.

By using the three basic guidelines outlined above, you will be able to write good, relevant page content, that is straight to the point, pleasing to the eye, and professionally written, as well as keyword rich. Never forget the search engine spiders love content, but be careful not to over do it, otherwise you will lose your readers attention, which ultimately means lost sales.

Thanks for reading my article. Please feel free to rate it at the bottom of this page.

Jason

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Jason Morris is co-author, search engine optimization and marketing consultant of Business Phone Systems Direct. An established communications company, offering advice and implementation of high quality business phone systems.
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Before using keywords for your site, it is always better to check for the popularity of these sub theme keywords. Some or all of the tools mentioned in the keywords tools section could be utilized to measure the popularity of these keywords.

Based on the popularity count of these tools we should come up with a descending order listing of our most unused but good key phrase. These are our good target keywords. As the competition increases on the keywords, deeper optimization then just building keyword specific pages will have to be done.

Variations on sub- theme words:

This is the word- play to get into the mind of the user.

Now our set of 25 to 30 keywords will be expanded to include singular-plural word combinations, juxtaposing the same words in a different combination, using synonyms, building on the list of words using Thesaurus & a good dictionary.

The ideal set of keywords/ key phrases is to come up with around 70-100 possible ways of looking for that web site on the search engines (our keyphrases)

Research on these variations of the sub theme keywords for actually combing up with the combinations that are relatively un optimized for yet popular. At the end of this exercise we will have the ranked list of keywords, which we can start optimizing for.

General observations & other nuggets:

When using google to check for the competing pages through the SERP house the keyphrase in quotes. This will do the exact phrase searching for the phrase that we are optimizing for. Now to have a real feel of the actual competition on this phrase use the adword tool.

Typically offline competition for the business & online competition are not equivalent. The client needs to be driven out of this mindset. Online the competition for us depends on the key-phrases that we choose rather then the industry or the competition chosen keywords.

Another useful tip is to watch out for the ranking of the subpages on the SERPS page.

A higher occurenec of a sub- page suggests a lesser competitive key- phrase.

Keep excel sheets handy to work out on your key words

Here is a benchmark: If the site is fairly well optimized, and has a focused theme, then the combined total number of visitors from secondary variations of the main keyword phrase, should be higher than the number of visitors from your main phrase by itself.

Another yardstick can be that 20% of your search traffic reach you through your primary theme words. Another 20% through the sub theme words & their combos & the remaining 60% is fractional. A true pyramid.

Keep the keyword density on your pages in between 5-20% while optimizing. The latest talking optimization based on keywords is that almost none of the things mentioned above might apply as it is. You create text based on the end user perspective & optimize for 5-6 keywords per page. Check your referrer stats & fine tune optimization.

Free Keyword Tools:

The first tool that can be used is Overture.

One trick is to check the keywords on all the Overture tools, US, UK, DE, FR and even JP. You would be surprised at the ideas you can come up with on the other O Tools that do not appear on the US one. Also, the de-pluralizing and match-drive-alphabetization some times does not appear on the other tools. Second tool of course is the word tracker.

Use Google adwords to check on the competition for the chosen phrases using the CPC barometer. Higher the CPC more the competition.

Another tool is at:

http://espotting.com/popups/keywordgenbox.asp

Yet another tool is Alta Vista “PRISMA”

One can use Refine search option of Teoma to arrive at more generic/Primary keywords. Another way of doing that could be through the DMOZ subcategory study.

Refining of key words can be done using the Server side data or the referrs log.

7Search.com’s Keyword Suggestion Tool

http://conversion.7search.com/scripts/advertisertools/keywordsuggestion.aspx

http://conversion.7search.com/scripts/advertisertools/keywordsuggestion.aspx

More tools in here:

http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/Authoring/Online_Tools/Keywords/

Once the keywords have been finalized lets look at the places where we can utilize them.

Rakesh Ojha is a successful Internet marketer utilizing both pay-per-click marketing and search engine optimization to increase website traffic. To learn more, visit http://sem.mosaic-service.com

One of my favorite subjects to teach on at our live SEO Mastery Workshops is that of keyword research and the behavior of a specific target audience using my all time favorite research tool, Wordtracker.

For those who have not heard of, Wordtracker it is a Web based service that will help you discover which keywords and phrases will be most effective for attracting the right audience to your Web site. Not only that, but the service also tells you how competitive your keywords are (or how many other competing Web pages have been optimized with those keywords in mind) plus how many people have actually searched for those keywords in the past within the last 60 days on the major search engines.

Wordtracker can be used for even more powerful things than just “researching keywords.” I’ll be revealing much more in the future about the impact of researching “visitor behavior” vs. keywords

QUESTION:

What is one of the more common mistakes made by new SEO students who are just learning how to research keywords?

ANSWER:

One common error that some people make (both new and experienced) when researching keywords, is they tend to have a lot of preconceived keyword phrases in their minds. While this may not seem like a bad idea, the fact is that people sometimes spend hours, days, and even weeks researching hundreds of keywords only to be disappointed in the end when many of the keywords they’ve chosen, turn out to not have any real pulling power to attract the right traffic. There are many keywords which are just too competitive or worse, some words are not even being searched for. For success you want a keyword phrase that is at least being used by your target audience and ideally, it’ll be a phrase with low competition.

Wordtracker has tremendous ability to deliver up extraordinary niche keyword phrases which are in high use by a given target audience and sometimes even with zero competition. I’ll be sharing much more about exactly how you can tap into these ideal phrases and how you can do it nearly instantly without spending hours or weeks of research.

QUESTION:

What do you mean by the term researching the target audience’s “behavior?” Is that not what Web analytics software like Webtrends does?

ANSWER:

No, Web analysis software generally tells you about the behavior of visitors within your Web site after they have found you. I am talking about the importance of researching your ideal target audiences behavior long before they ever find your Web site. Wordtracker has tremendous potential to reveal clues as to what your target audience *really* wants or what they might be looking for.

QUESTION:

I have searched Wordtracker’s report of “most searched for phrases” but I can only find one appropriate keyword phrase? I want more. How do I get more good phrases?

ANSWER:

Here are just a few quick tips:

1. Take the one phrase or keyword you found and enter it into “Comprehensive Research” and click Proceed. That should bring out a variety of phrases that are related to the same subject. (I’ll be sharing much more on this in the future)

2. Apply a little more lateral thinking about who your target audience is and research a little more about how they may be searching. Thinking “outside the box” mixed with Wordtracker’s comprehensive search can be powerful.

3. If you can’t find enough gold in the top 1000 “most searched for” phrases you are not thinking laterally enough. It is there, we just need practice learning how to tap into it. But for the sake of argument, if you could not find ANY keywords within the top 1000, did you know that you can actually purchase a killer list of the top 20,000 keywords or the top 100,000 keywords.

QUESTION:

I have done well with my keyword research and Wordtracker has helped me to build some great high performance strategies. However, I want to add more great ideas for content (and sell even more product), but I feel like I have really hit a dead end? I think I’ve already chosen the best keywords.

ANSWER:

If at any time you feel that you’ve hit a dead end, then it’s time to stop thinking about your product or service and start using Wordtracker’s powerful database to help reveal a new strategy which you could employ. Your focus must be on your target audience’s “behavior.” Stop thinking in terms of how bad you want to sell the product and start examining how people might be searching for the product. Often you will discover that there can be “multiple target audiences” perfect for your product. You just have not realized it before. I’ll guarantee there are many, many, more powerful niche phrases in Wordtracker’s database of over 380,000,000 million queries within the last 60 days. To many Webmasters, those powerful killer phrases remain hidden and elusive.

QUESTION:

Wordtracker has a feature to help me identify the most common spelling errors. How many misspelled words should I include in my keyword Metatag?

ANSWER:

The best thing here, is not to go wild with misspelled words. The keyword Meta Tag has always been a great place to include 2 or 3 misspelled words. As you may know, the keyword Meta tag is not even that influential anymore, but a couple of researched misspells will not hurt things.

TIP: A much more powerful use for an important keyword that you identifyas commonly misspelled, is to try using it in your Google Adwords campaign, if you are running one.

QUESTION: Sometimes I just want to check the validity of one keyword phrase without looking at hundreds of other suggestions returned in Wordtracker’s results. Is there any way to do this easily?

ANSWER:

Sure. On the main menu under Item 5. Multiple search, choose the second option down called Exact/Precise Search. Using this option will return details on just the specific keyword phrase you are looking for.

QUESTION:

I would like to know how Wordtracker is for accuracy?

ANSWER:

Wordtracker uses results which are extracted from the Meta search engines so they are actually very pure. In other words, these are numbers which are not skewed by the use of automated querying software.

QUESTION:

Which of the major search engines are best to focus on when doing research. I am assuming it is best to spend time studying Google.

ANSWER:

I guess it depends on which type of research you are doing. Certainly one of the best search engines to explore for keyword research is MSN. This is not only because a lot of folks are shopping on MSN but because MSN can still be influenced fairly quickly. (Secondary results are coming from Inktomi and for longer 3 or 4 word phrases and you can get real quick exposure by optimizing for results researched in MSN if you use paid inclusion.

On the other hand, if you are researching human behavior more than just keywords, I would stay focused on Google simply because you can discover great opportunities in Wordtracker for “behaviorally related” phrases. Let’s face it, most folks (including your target audience) are searching on Google right now so it’s still one of the “most revealing” places to help you understand what people are doing online.

About The Author

John Alexander is the Co-Director of Training of Search Engine Workshops http://www.searchengineworkshops.com with Robin Nobles. Together, they teach 2-day beginner, 3-day advanced, and 5-day all-inclusive “hands on” search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe. John also teaches online search engine marketing courses through http://www.onlinewebtraining.com, and he’s a member of Wordtracker’s official question support team.

john@searchengineworkshops.com