Very Basic Google Information

I recently found a comment on my blog by a fellow blogger asking some questions about Google. I am not an expert, but I should be able to shed some light with a little basic information. Instead of creating a long drawn out email. I decided to use the content and create a post.

The Comment:

“Hi, I just came across your blog tonight when trying to read up on Google. That one word to me just means “mixed up or maybe it should be googley”. When it was just a search engine for me before I had a blog I was fine with them. But now that I have a blog it is just a word that is messing me up. I bought the blog had a page rank of 4 I kept it  up to a 4-3 and then this week I guess I heard through the blog-line that Google did a revamp or whatever and I got shot down to 0!!! How the heck can that happen? And then you talk about the Google tools, I’m really not sure what or where these are. I hate to admit this but I need help with Google. I did have problems with my Feedburner because the prior owner did not give me her username and password for Feedburne, so when I went to sign up  it wouldn’t let me in and prior owner won’t answer my emails so I created a new username and password do you think this could of brought my Page Rank down? Maybe because it looks like MomsCashBlog, If you could answer any questiosn I’d love it. Or any hints….details or anything to do with Google Page rank? Maybe  you could email me at my blogs email above. Thanks sooo much”

The Reply:

Google’s primary function is a search engine. When people enter search terms in Google, the results are ranked according to importance. The ranking is determined by a mathematical formula or algorithim that Google purposely keeps secret so that webmasters and marketers cannot game the system.

Page Rank

One of the factors included in the algorithm is page rank. Page rank or the importance of the site is determined by links pointing to the site. The quality, quantity, and relevance of the links have an affect on page rank.

Google Tool Bar

If you would like to know the estimated page rank of your site install the Google Tool Bar in your browser. The google tool bar contains a page rank bar that will have a number between 1 and 10 if you hover over it, and will be completly gray if your page rank is 0 and will be completly green if your PR is a 10. Also by clicking on the toolbar you can see the number of links in Googles index pointing towards your site.

Keep in mind that the tool bar page rank is an estimate, that gets updated approximately every 3 months. But actual page rank is an ever changing thing.

SEO

Most new bloggers just start writing and don’t understand about page rank or ranking in the search engines. When you have some time, do some research on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and keyword research. Once you understand what these concepts are and how they work, you will understand how to rank higher, and increase organic traffic, which is traffic from search engines such as google.

Free Tools

If you look in my free tools section you will see links to WordTracker which has a free and a paid tool, that can help you with keyword research. They also have some great articles and tutorials, that are worth reading. Also check out the Google Keyword Tool, and Traffic Travis. These links can be found in my Free Tools section in my sidebar as well.

Page Rank Penalty

I took a quick look at your site and the Google toolbar does say PR0, but you still have 54 sites linking to your blog. I beleive your site may be penalized because of violating one of Googles terms of service you can find the Google TOS on their website.

Don’t Sell Links 

But, I think I know what your problem is, so let me try to explain. Google wants the most accurate search results possible. So they want to rank sites according to natural links. Not attempts to game the system. One common past practice that Google has cracked down on is people buying and selling links.

Yes webmasters used to be able to make a lot of extra money by selling links on their sites with anchored terms such as credit cards. Often times when Google suspects sites of selling links they will penalize the page rank with a 0 even though the actual page rank should be a 3 or 4.

From taking a quick look at your site I beleive that those six links under Featured Sites, are actually paid links. It’s possible they were put there by the previous owner and you knew nothing about it. Also check out the rest of your site for any Pay Per Post articles or other paid links such as those through text link ads. Google frowns on these as well.

Use No Follow Tags

This is what all of the hoopla over no follow links are all about. If your not sure what no follow is do some research on that as well.

Request Reinclusion

The good news is; you can get your page rank back. All you have to do, is remove the offending sections with suspect links, and do a reinclusion request with Google.

This is not as ominous as it sounds. Just go to Google Webmaster tools, and click on request a reinclusion. Then you need to explain what happened; You purchased a blog who had a previous owner who had been selling links. You have removed all of the offending links, and would like to request a reinclusion. Chances are you will get your page rank back once the request is reviewed.

Learn, Learn, and Learn

While your waiting for your reinclusion don’t get discouraged. Spend that precious time increasing your knowledge and creating quality content. Learn about SEO both on page and off page. If you do these things you’ll be competing with the big boys in no time. Best of Luck.

Feedburner

One other thing. It’s unfortunate you may have lost some original subscribers when you had to create a new feedburner feed. But that shouldn’t have any effect on your page rank.

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