Understanding
Google’s algorithm for PageRank is really essential in order to rank
higher on search engine results. I have already explained that PageRank is not much important compared to Alexa Rank.
But if you wish to compete well on SERPS then understanding its algo is
very important. The entire infrastructure or foundation of Google is
mainly based on backlinks. The more backlinks your site have the more
its significance increases in the eyes of Google. It is very important
to keep a balance between incoming links and outgoing links. Your
incoming links are the backbone of your blogs success. Incoming links
are links that come from other websites to your blog. When people like
your content they will mention you on their site by giving a credit link
or attribution link and the more backlinks you receive the more you
grow in sense of authority and trust in internet. What are Internal and External Links?
Internal links
are links pointing to any page within your site. For example If I link
an old post I am actually increasing the number of my internal links. Always keep internal links as DoFollow
Never
make the mistake of adding a nofollow link to any of your internal
page. Increase the number of inbound links as much as you can so that
search robots may enjoy crawling and indexing your pages.
External Links
are links that point to other sites from you site. In other words when
you link to any site on the web you are actually increasing the number
of your outbound or external links. Keep external links minimum. Link
other webs only when necessary.
When should you add a nofollow or dofollow Tag to external Link?
If
you have observed my PageRank dropped from PR 4.0 to PR 3.0 on first
Google Update but just yesterday Alhamdulillah I got back my PR. I can
not claim that it took place because of the changes I made but I can
assure you the steps I learnt and applied will benefit MBT in future.
Its true to say that you learn from your mistakes and I have learnt a
lot from some of the mistakes that I made and this is one reason why I
am sharing this post today.
I was linking all
major websites like Facebook and Google services blindly because
somewhere I had read that linking major social networks will improve
your blog’s relevance and its respect and trust will increase in the
eyes of search robots because linking big sites shows that you are
writing on something worth sharing and Google always makes sure to
promote blogs that provide quality tutorials by discussing products
availed by major web services.. But whatever I read earlier was all wrong! because
I have personally experienced the pros and cons now. How? Lets first
understand what exactly is PageRank and what increases or decreases its
value.
PageRank:
In
layman terms when more and more sites link to you the more your
PageRank increases. PR algorithm or in other words the entire Google
infrastructure is based on promoting sites that are recommended
(backlinked) by other websites with good reputation. Therefore if a site
has PR0 it means, that site is not well trusted and does not publish
content that can entertain Google users. But if a site or blog has PR
> 1 then it means, that site has now some importance in the eyes of
search robots. Robots enjoy crawling PR ranked sites several times per
day. MBT is Alhamdulillah crawled every single second by Search Spiders.
The moment we publish a post the next moment it appears on Google
search listings. This is because the more PR you have the faster your
site gets crawled.
In short more backlinks you have, the better your site gets crawled and the faster your traffic grows. Furthermore you will succeed in attracting sponsors too. That’s what PR is all about.
Got PR? Now how to flow the PR Juice wisely?
After
your blog receives a PR increase it does not mean that you should party
out and yell and scream out of excitement rather you should know that
now you need to be more careful in maintaining the PR. It takes months
to build it and few days to loose the PR. PR Increases only when your
incoming links grow. When more and more site link to you, your PageRank
improves. Whenever you link to an internal page (Page Within your site)
or an external page (Other websites) you are basically sharing the PR
juice with those pages. If you keep on linking external pages blindly
then on next PR update you will experience a PR drop because you shared
your bottle of juice with others therefore your share of juice
decreased. So what to do then? Follow up
Read more on PR Juice & Linking internal pages here…
Which links should you tag as nofollow?
To
make sure that your homepage may not loose the PR, simply add a
nofollow tag to links that point to external sites. When robots crawl
your content they look for links on your page and if you have tagged a
link as nofollow then robots will crawl it as normal text and they will
not bother looking at where the link is taking them. This prevents the
PR flow to those sites tagged as nofollow. Always link mega sites and
social networks as nofollow but never add a nofollow tag to any internal page. Some examples include:
- Facebook Profiles, Pages, Developers page etc
- Google Services such as Gmail, Google+, Adsense, Feedburner, Blogger, YouTube etc.
- Mozilla and Chrome and other browser add-on pages
- Microsoft, Yahoo, Google
- Torrent links, rapidshare links, megashare links etc etc.
- Demo, Download and Iframed Pages
- and Thousand others…
To learn how to add a nofollow tag to a link please read this post:
So which links should be tagged as dofollow?
In real terminology there is nothing such as dofollow Tag
When you leave a link in its original form without adding a nofollow
tag then it means that the link is dofollow. The spiders will crawl the
link, index it and will count it as an external link thereby sharing
your PR juice with that external page that you have linked. So which
should be kept as normal? The answer is: All Internal Links/Inbound Links and niche links.
Internal
links will help spiders crawl your pages more deeply and they will get
indexed often. When you link to a previous relevant post, the spider
will go and check where the link is taking him thus re-indexing the
previous post. This improves your search listings.
Niche
links can be can not be dofollow. Always give a link to a friend’s blog
or to a blog that shares the same content as you do. Of course you are
linking to him because you liked his content and you wish to share his
content with your readers. This is also a polite thing and more
importantly when that person finds that you have linked to him then may
be someday he would link to you too as a thanksgiving. Most people make
network friends this way.
Now lets see how Google supports whatever I shared today:
I
hope this little post may help most of you in better understanding
in-page and off-page link building. If you have any question you are
most welcomed to post your query. Hope you utilize and maintain your
PageRanks well because after all that is one proof of your hard work.
Good day friends. :>