Getting Good Google PageRank

Question

In SEO people talk a lot about Google PageRank. It's kind of a catch 22 because until your site is actually big and you don't really need search engines as much, it's unlikely that big sites will link to you and increase your PageRank!

I've been told that it's easiest to simply get a couple high quality links to point to a site to raise it's PageRank. I've also been told that there are certain Open Directories like dmoz.org that Google pays special attention to (since they're human managed links). Can anyone speak to the validity of this or suggest another site/technique to increase a site's PageRank?

Answer 1

Have great content

Nothing helps your google rank more than having content or offering a service people are interested in. If your web site is better than the competition and solves a real need you will naturally generate more traffic and inbound links.

Keep your content fresh

Use friendly url's that contain keywords

Good: http://cars.com/products/cars/ford/focus/

Bad: http://cars.com/p?id=1232

Make sure the page title is relevant and well constructed

For example: Buy A House In France :. Property Purchasing in France

Use a domain name that describes your site

Good: http://cars.com/

Bad: http://somerandomunrelateddomainname.com/

Example Type car into Google, out of the top 5 links all 4 have car in the domain: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=car

Make it accessible

Make sure people can read your content. This includes a variety of different audiences

• People with disabilities: Sight, motor, cognitive disabilities etc..

• Search bots

  In particular make sure search bots can read every single relevant page on your site. Quite often search bots get blocked by the use of javascript to link between pages or the use of frames / flash / silverlight. One easy way to do this is have a site map page that gives access to the whole site, dividing it into categories / sub categories etc..

• Down level browsers

Submit your site map automatically

Most search engines allow you to submit a list of pages on your site including when they were last updated.

Google: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/about.html

Inbound links

Generate as much buzz about your website as possible, to increase the likely hood of people linking to you. Blog / podcast about your website if appropriate. List it in online directories (if appropriate).

References

• Google Search Engine Ranking Factors, by an SEO company
• Creating a Google-friendly site: Best practices
• Wikipedia - Search engine optimization

Answer 2

Google doesn't want you to have to engineer your site specifically to get a good PageRank. Having popular content and a well designed website should naturally get you the results you want.

Answer 3

Good content.

Update it often.

Read and digest everything at Creating a Google-friendly site: Best practices.

Be active on the web. Comment in blogs, correspond genuinely with people, in email, im, twitter.

I'm not too sure about the domain name. Wikipedia? What does that mean? Mozilla? What word is that? Google? Was a typo. Yahoo? Sounds like that chocolate drink Yoohoo.

Trying to keyword the domain name shoehorns you anyway. And it can be construed as a SEO technique in the future (if it isn't already!)

Answer all email. Answer blog comments. Be nice and helpful.

Go watch garyvee's Better Than Zero. That'll motivate you.

Answer 4

If it's appropriate, having a blog is a good way of keeping content fresh, especially if you post often. A CMS would be handy too, as it reduces the friction of updating. The best way would be user-generated content, as other people make your site bigger and updated, and they may well link to their content from their other sites.