Client Questions Answered : Improving your Page Rank
Another post for the Client Questions Answered Series.
This question comes from author, Dennis AuBuchon
Dennis writes, …“I would like your opinion on my web site and the exposure I have received through my articles and interviews. The exposure I have received on my name has grown a lot in the last few weeks. My web site is getting better page rank in google.”
My response:
All in all, I think you are doing everything right. I can tell you are very active with link exchanges, you are actively creating conversations about your book or regarding the topic of your book. Your website is packed with quality content, and useful information, and it appears that you keep it regularly updated. Like you said in your message, you are gaining quite a bit of exposure, and this can only do good for your site and your book sales.
With all the great things you are doing, there is still a lot you can do to improve upon it. This is a good thing, because I believe that your site really has the potential, and the content, to become the true resource you mean for it to be.
Let’s quickly look at some stats regarding your domain: myqualitywriting.com
PageRank: 3
Google Cache Date: Mar 25 2007
Age: 01-2005
del.icio.us: 1
Y! Links: 97
Y! .edu Links: 0
Y! .gov Links: 0
Y! Page Links: 97
Y! .edu Page Links: 0
Technorati: 1
Alexa: -
Cached: 44
Supplemental: 78
dmoz: 0
Bloglines: 0
dir.yahoo.com:
MSN Links: 104
MSN .edu Links: 0
MSN .gov Links: 0
MSN Page Links: 100
MSN .edu Page Links: 0
Google Backlinks: 9
Yahoo! Backlinks: 189
Live Search Backlinks: 104
This list shows us a few very important details. Firstly, you have a solid domain name, that has a clean history. You are already building pagerank, and have at least been crawled recently by google bots.
Secondly, while you are gaining external links, you are weak in the .edu and .gov sectors. Google places alot of emphasis on links from educational facilities and/or government entities, so finding opportunities to gain links from these types of sites can really help build a strong web of links for your site, and ultimately boosting your page rank in the process. The great thing about this, is the fact that you have a reason to be talking to schools, and government agencies. Just in my brief search I found a glowing review from a police officer, and a couple mentions of your book being recommended reading in a classroom situation. Something to think about.
Lastly, the website itself. This is a big one. While you may have quality content on your website, accessing it can be a slightly daunting task. I have a hard time navigating down the list of links, with my eye jumping around to the highlighted “New” and “Updated” markers, but never settling long enough to actually find what might interest me. You need to establish a hierarchy of information, so when someone comes to your site, they can quickly see what is important to them, and how to access it.
While making your information accessible to humans, you also need to make it accessible (and appetizing), to bots and spiders that search your site for content. A quick look at your home page reveals the following:
Total page size: 44647 bytes (not including images, attached scripts or style sheets)
Text content: 7000 bytes
Text content percentage: 15.68 %
So only 16% of the stuff a googlebot has to sift through on your website contains useful information. By rebuilding your pages to utilize standards compliant xhtml and css, you could easily flip that to 85% useful content and 15% code. You make google happy, and they will give your page better pagerank as well as better indexing for result pages.
Some final thoughts would be to really nail down what you want this site to be, and start targeting that theme through the use of keywords on your pages and your links. Make sure that your page titles are accurately reflecting your page content. I would also suggest incorporating your blog into your website, and using that to highlight all the rest of the great existing content.
Well Dennis, I really hope that helps give you some ideas on ways to improve an already flourishing site. I think if you are serious about having your site take off, you are going to need to hire someone to help you take that next step. There really is a lot that can be done that I haven’t even touched on yet, but start with the small stuff and keep moving forwards.
Good Luck Dennis, I am sure you will have lots of continued success.
Do you have any additional thoughts for Dennis? Leave a comment and let him know, or tell me what I could have done better.
