Basically every increase in Pagerank is harder to achive. So an increase from PR2 to PR3 may be relatively easy, but an increase from PR3 to PR4 will be a little harder.

The best way to think of it is to imagine a mountain with a zero Pagerank or PR0 at the bottom and a Pagerank 10 at the top. Imagine every rise in Pagerank as a little flag on the side of the mountain…

As you can see, the flags are not equally spaced. The distance and amount of effort to reach each flag or Pagerank increases the further up you go. This is essentially how Pagerank works.

Pagerank is based roughly on the number of inbound links to a page as well as importance of the page providing the link. There are many other factors that come into play when calculating Pagerank, but the exact forumla is a closely guarded secret by Google.

Here’s what Google says about PageRank…

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.

A high Pagerank doesn’t necessarily determine a high position in the Search Engine Results Page or SERP. Often you will see pages with low PageRank returned higher than high PageRank sites in the SERPs. Indeed it is possible for a page with little or no Pagerank to be returned in the #1 position for a particular keyword if Google deems it the most relevant page. This is especially true for keywords where there is low competition.

Pagerank is a general indicator of how important Google thinks your site is. It’s probably not something you should focus too much energy on. It’s far better to concentrate on your Search Engine ranking for keywords relevant to your site.

If you get the right keywords for your site and rank highly in the SERPs for these keywords, you will see a lot of traffic to your site. Better still, this will be traffic that is actually looking for what your site has to offer.

In short, Pagerank is something you should be aware of but shouldn’t focus all your attention on.

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#1 SEOmoz
http://www.seomoz.org/

#2 Bruce Clay
http://www.bruceclay.com/

#3 Search Engine Guide
http://www.searchengineguide.com/

#4 Web Master World
http://www.webmasterworld.com/

#5 Search Engine Watch
http://searchenginewatch.com/

Hope you find these useful!

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Tags
You must have keyword-rich page URLs - FALSE
You must have a keyword-rich domain - FALSE
Heading tags are necessary (H1, H2 etc.) - FALSE
Using keywords in comment tags will hurt your rankings - FALSE
You need to use keywords in meta keyword tags - FALSE
Meta keywords must be included in page content - FALSE

TRUE: It’s actually far better if you use the keyword meta tag to include misspellings and other keyword varieties that you don’t have in your pages.

Submitting, Crawling & Indexing
You need to submit URLs to engines - FALSE
You need a Google Sitemap - FALSE
You need to update your site regularly - FALSE
Regular spidering helps ranking - FALSE
You need multiple sites - FALSE
You need doorway pages - FALSE

TRUE: Provided you have a link to your site, you will be found and indexed. The majority of sites don’t need a sitemap.

Page Content
Pages must contain a certain number of words - FALSE
You need to use bold or italic text on your keywords - FALSE
You must use a specific keyword density - FALSE
You must optimize a page for a single keyword or phrase per page - FALSE
You must optimize for long-tail keywords - FALSE
Duplicate content will get your site penalized - FALSE

TRUE: There is no specific page length that pleases search engines. Keyword density tools are not needed. Don’t optimize a page for single keywords or phrases. Rather, try to optimize each page for 3-5 phrases that are related. That way your page copy reads better than repeating one phrase many times. 

Site Design
Your HTML code must validate to W3C - FALSE
Your navigation must be text links not images - FALSE
You can’t use Flash - FALSE
You can’t use Javascript code - FALSE

TRUE: Not even Google.com validates to W3C! Graphical navigation is okay as long as you use ALT tags effectively. It’s okay to use Flash in moderation. Use it as one element on your page but don’t have the site completely in Flash. Javascript has legitimate uses but you must ensure you provide alternative routes for spiders where Javascript doesn’t allow them to follow.

Pay Per Click
PPC ads will help organic rankings - FALSE
PPC ads will hurt organic rankings - FALSE

Link Building
Google’s link: command is accurate - FALSE
Reciprocal links don’t count - FALSE
Pages are ranked in PageRank order in the search results - FALSE
You must be in DMOZ or Yahoo Directory to get good Google rankings - FALSE
Google Toolbar PageRank is accurate - FALSE

TRUE: The Google link: command is not very useful. Use Google Webmaster Tools or the Yahoo link command instead. Reciprocal links from the right sites are good and can be very helpful. Pages are NOT ranked in PageRank order, try a few searches and check the top 10 sites. Chances are they don’t appear in PageRank order. Google Toolbar PageRank is not accurate, ignore it!

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You want as much targeted traffic to your site as possible. Note the use of the word “targeted”.

Many sites offer services where they promise to deliver a certain amount of traffic to your website. But often this is not targeted traffic. The visitors have little interest in your website because they are untargeted. They often leave as quickly as they arrive at your site.

Getting targeted traffic is important because you want to match your visitors as closely as possible to the products or services you are offering. That alone will increase the success of your website. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to sell a product, offer a service or simply build up a successful site – targeted traffic is essential to the success of any site.

Pay Per Click Marketing

The most obvious and expensive form of Search Engine Marketing is Pay Per Click or PPC marketing. Often, people expect huge volumes of converting traffic from Pay Per Click campaigns. Actually what they get is a huge bill for clicks which only resulted in a few extra sales if any. The disadvantage to PPC is of course that you are paying for every click. I’ve seen entire project budgets disappear due to poor Pay Per Click management.

Pay Per Click is a tool and it can be powerful if used correctly. But few people spend the time learning enough about the inner workings of how to use PPC effectively. If you’re not prepared to get into Pay Per Click deeply and don’t want to risk spending a fortune on wasted clicks it’s best to leave it alone.

Search Engine Optimization

Probably the most popular Search Engine Marketing area is Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Most people will of heard the term SEO at some time. The goal of SEO is to get free traffic to your site from Search Engines.

The major advantage to SEO is that once you’ve met the initial cost of getting SEO work done, every single click is free. It is normally the aim of Search Engine Optimization to get your site listed within the top 10 natural results for particular keywords or phrases.

In highly competitive markets it can be difficult to get a top 10 listing for popular keywords. Many Internet Markets are now targeting so called, “long-tail keywords”. These are keywords or phrases where there are established searches everyday but a low number of competing websites.

Search Engine Optimization essentially falls under two different categories. Onsite SEO and Offsite SEO.

Onsite SEO

Onsite SEO focuses on changes to a website’s code or text with the aim of making the site more attractive to the Search Engines. It may involve the inclusion of targeted keywords and also making sure there are no problems, which could stop Search Engine spiders or “bots” from accessing the site.

Offsite SEO

Offsite SEO essentially covers everything that is not onsite SEO! This normally involves building links on other websites back to your website. There are many ways to do this and I will go into some more details about some different techniques in future posts.

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