Google PageRank

Well there comes just a new update on Google's Page popularity algo on2nd August 2012. The PageRank toolbar has started showing new ranks for all websites worldwide. The update this time seems a major one and there could be no further expectation of any new changes within the next 24 hours. The last update was on May 3rd and third last was on February 6th. The duration gap has now become constant. Google rolls out these updates quarterly, after every three months. The next update and last update of this year is expected anytime between November 1-10 2012. PageRank as you all know is a numerical weighting scale between 0-10. Websites that are recommended by related niches via backlinks rank higher on PR scale and get the benefit of faster crawl and index rate.  Blogs with higher PR are crawled faster compared to those with lower PageRank. For example a PR 7 webpage is crawled several times per minute compared to a PR 5 page that is crawled once every minute. The faster the robot crawls your pages the greater the chances for you to drive organic traffic from Google and build readership.

The PR for MBT remains at 4.0 and same is true for SEM which remains at 2.0. My main focus these last months have been Alexa Rank and I must congratulate all our readers for taking MBT to attain an Alexa Rank of 7K. MBT now counts amongst the very few Google blogs that has AlhamdulillAh crossed the 10K boundary. SEM has amazingly reached 29K within just 6 months and is improving daily. 

How important is PageRank?

PageRank is a successful link analysis algorithm that differentiates Google from its Market competitors. This algo is and was the backbone of Google's popularity when Larry Page and Sergey brin  first introduced this new giant search engine's functionality in September 1998. SEO professionals and internet marketers have now started measuring a website's popularity in terms of PageRank and Alexa Rank. PR is good to attract paid product reviews. Business owners do pay well if your blog has a stable PageRank, at least 3.0

But PageRank comes last in my priority list. Read further to find why.

Google Web Spam Head, Matt Cutts himself says that what is more important is your Content and not the PageRank. Watch this useful video:

Why your PageRank is not increasing?

Your PageRank did not increase? If yes then don't get frustrated and start understanding the concept first. PageRank is not sequential and surely not proportional to the number of incoming links. It is an automatic system that depends on quality links pointing your main domain. I have already written a detailed post that explains every single question revolving around your mind:

• Read: Three Reasons Why your PageRank is not increasing

Do you need several backlinks?

It's a myth that PR depends on getting hundreds of backlinks from niche websites. A single link from a high PR blog can change your rank from 0 to 4. Some guest authorshave already experienced this with us before. You must not waste your precious time commenting on forums and blogs just for the sake of low quality backlinks. Keep yourself limited to just 4-5 blogs that you may read and interact with. Build a relationship with your favorite authors and once you succeed in winning a respect in their eyes for yourselves, you can then start guest posting at these blogs without any hesitation.

Quick PR Formula:

• Guest post on at least 4 Blogs (where you comment) with PR > 3
• Make your Post of at least 1K words
• Make sure your blog is well designed, presented and contains at least 25 posts. You must provide a solid reason so that the author may offer a link.
• Produce a post that is related to the author's niche
• Make it presentable, sound mature and to the point
• Never try to promote yourself or your blog on a guest post, talk about the topic only.
• Add images and video to make the post stand out

No one would neglect such a great post. Try it.

Do not fool yourselves

Site rankings do count well but give your first priority to quality content only. Write more and publish more. Do not waste your online working hours in finding tweaks to somehow increase your PageRank. Instead do a lot of reading and Work on your SEO skills and build readership. There are many blogs online with PR 6.0 but they are not well versed with marketing strategies to use in order to market their blog and make a living out of it. Neither PR nor Alexa are as important as readership. I have always emphasized on the following priority list:

1. Readership First          (i.e. Posting quality content)
2. Traffic second              
3. Alexa third
4. PageRank Fourth

Advertisers look for a return value in your blogs, if you fail to offer that you fail to win a lucrative income. Internet Marketers look at your niche topic first and then they analyze your readership, fan followers and finally your site rankings.

• Read: How to find sponsors for your blog?

What is the Maximum PageRank achievable by a blog?

So far blogs that are managed by a single author or 2-6 authors could succeed in achieving a maximum of PR 6.0. I have not come across any blog with zero investment to have attained a number greater than six. Normally large businesses that have strong marketing backup rank high because the investment is huge. Blogs like search engine land, seomoz, mashable and techcrunch are corporate websites that have several hired authors who write tons of articles per week. Many people are involved behind its promotion and management and they are often backed by both print and electronic media.

So if you are a dedicated blogger then achieving 6 should be your goal. Remember Pagerank does not decide which blog is good and which is poor, its only an algorithm that tells whether a site is well recommended online or not. Reputation of any blog depends only in its strong reader base and quality updates.

What's your PageRank?

Do share with us your updated PR values and feel free to ask any SEO related question. I just hope this new update was a calm one for most of you. If you have seen a sudden positive jump then well done, if your Rank remains the same then thumbs up but if your PR has dropped then don't get demotivated and start working on the simple PR formula we shared above. Nothing works better then this technique so make yourself prepared for some quality guest posts and work with patience because you have a lot of time. i.e. 3 Months. The next update could occur anytime between 1-10 November 2012.  

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Facebook Introduces New Marketing Features For Brand Pages

Facebook Pages are a great way to promote a brand, and pull traffic to a website. They offer many marketing features, such as targeting a specific audience, learning about insights and analytics, promoting your content, and more. Well now, Facebook has announced in a blog post, that it has introduced some new features to further assist marketers to better promote their content and draw more traffic. These new features include scheduling posts, unpublished page posts, and updated page admin permissions for third-party apps. These new features come as Facebook continues its stream of changes after a survey, that rated Facebook disappointingly low in terms of customer satisfaction.

Facebook got a low customer satisfaction rating due to its controversial updates such as the Ticker, the Timeline, and the every-increasing security concerns. Hence, these new features could be a bid to curb the losses incurred by Facebook as marketers reduced their activity. Now, Facebook is back with new options for such marketers. Options not currently available for Google Plus Pages.

Scheduling posts

Alas, this is a feature much awaited for by page admins. Facebook had no scheduling option for posts before, so admins either had to make do manually, or use a a third party app such as HootSuite. While those apps are perfectly fine, it's nice to have an in-build option on Facebook.

Page admins can now schedule their posts anywhere between 10 minutes to six months from the time of adding a post. They can also reschedule the post if it is more than 3 minutes from its scheduling time. This is a great and easy feature for page admins, who don't have to use any third party apps. Scheduling your posts will bring consistency to your page. In fact, it is a whole marketing strategy, scheduling posts at an optimum time so that maximum of your followers can see them.

Unpublished Posts

Here is another great new feature designed especially for targeted marketing. It is for page admins who sometimes want to send sponsored updates. These posts aren't really published, and don't show up on your timeline. Instead, they are sent to your followers based on their demographics that you choose. For example, you can send out posts only to men, or only to women etc. You can use this feature to run segmented marketing campaigns.

Admin Permissions

This is another great release aimed at restricting permissions to other admins and third party apps. Previously, there were fixed privileges for admins, which means if you needed an app to access your page to manage it, you had to grant it full permissions. But now, you can limit what permissions you give out. For example, a post scheduling app doesn't need to access your insights, not vice versa. Hence, you can restrict permissions to ensure more security.

These new changes look promising. But whether Facebook will be able to redeem its rating in user satisfaction or not, only time will tell. Hope you liked this post. If you run pages on Facebook, then do go ahead and try them out. And share this piece of news with others too :)

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