I find it difficult to understand how topics involving the importance of Google PageRank continue to be an ongoing debate in forums. Interestingly enough, often those people claiming that PR has nothing to do with how Google determines the placement of sites in search results, are those people with low PR sites.

Google PageRank is certainly not the only factor in determining your position in the SERPs, but believing that it does not play a role in search results is simply crazy.

A Google feature that helps determine the rank of a site in our search results. 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. Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your searches. Webmaster Help Center

When a user enters a query, our machines search the index for matching pages and return the results we believe are the most relevant to the user. Relevancy is determined by over 200 factors, one of which is the PageRank for a given page. Google 101

How often does Google crawl the web? Google’s spiders regularly crawl the web to rebuild our index. Crawls are based on many factors such as PageRank, links to a page, and crawling constraints such as the number of parameters in a URL. Any number of factors can affect the crawl frequency of individual sites. Webmaster Help Center

Please do not bother showing me dozens of examples of sites with low PageRank doing better in the search results than sites with higher PR. No one is saying that PageRank is the only factor. It is simply one of many factors involved.

Until Google chooses to ignore PageRank by removing it from the algorithm, it would be foolish for website owners to do so. While I do not feel it is something we should obsess over, for top 10 results, we certainly shouldn’t ignore it either.

J. Cricket Walker of CricketWalker.com

Don’t bother adding comments to popular blogs. It’s a waste of your time. You are about as likely to write anything interesting enough to drive a reader to your website as I am likely to shoot an Ansel Adams’esque windswept landscape, blindfolded.

Of course…

They just might like what they see, and tell others about you. *gasp!

You can’t risk it!

They might link to you!

If you take the time to set up a blog, make sure that the content is of no value to anyone. Just scrape duplicate content from other blogs and add a ton of spammy links. That way you can be sure no one considers linking to you.

Do not add quality content to your website!

Make sure it breaks in all but one browser. Preferably Opera: because nobody uses that one anyway.

Whatever you do, don’t even think about joining a quality ‘Webmaster Forum’ as the last thing you would want to do is become a valued member of any online community with your signature attached to your post and profile.

Though, if you feel the need to join, don’t bother with quality posting…

…Better yet, don’t even read the rules!

Just dive right in with ‘Mr. Obvious Replies’ and spam your URL all over the community in as many threads as possible with as much zest for ctrl-v as your fingers will allow. That way you can get banned faster and won’t have to worry about someone wanting to link to you.

Even curiosity can get a hit or two to your site a day and god-forbid if your posts lasted longer than the Windows Boot Logo. This way, they’ll all hit the Spam can and be assured of never being seen.

If someone is foolish enough to ask you for an interview after seeing the quality of your posts in the forums, tell them ‘No!’ immediately. You cannot take the risk as they will inevitably link to your site as part of the article. This can be bad news, indeed.

If after seeing your crappy content, someone is desperate enough to ask you to write a guest article for them, (it goes without saying that you would certainly never offer to write a guest article) turn them down. If the bar is that high then you haven’t been working hard enough and need to re-read this article. If they insist, make sure you do not add an author bio linking to your site.

It would be nuts to submit to a quality directory like the V7N Web Directory. Directories are like a phone book of the web. Why would you want to be listed with like-minded business people?

Join social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon? Are you crazy? Even though they use the nofollow attribute on all outgoing links, you cannot take the risk.

What if someone actually likes what you have to say, and starts paying attention to your post? What if they look up the URL to your site? Don’t do it! A few links might sneak through!

Co-Authored by Jay M. of OpticalDevotee and Cricket of CricketWalker.com

For the most part, I’m not inclined to explain myself. If I do something, I know why I did it and if others can’t understand, or if they misunderstand me, I tend to think of that as their problem, not mine.

In the past, this attitude has gotten me in trouble.

In business and marketing, it can really get you in trouble. I recently saw a post by DreamHost staff making fun of their own downtime. At first, it was very confusing. Do they now know how offensive their clients find downtime to be? It seriously angers me when a host I pay good money to can’t keep their servers up.

But I’m sure they know that. They just didn’t communicate their knowledge of it very well.

In business, especially the Internet kind, I think communication is extremely important. Explaining where you see your organization going is important. Explaining how you will deal with challenges that arise, and how you plan to overcome challenges that have arose; these are important tasks, and fundamental to marketing.

Customers can’t read you mind. You need to tell them exactly what you’re thinking.

That’s my thought for the day, and one that is somewhat related to my post about Brand Management.

For active members of the V7N Forums, the announcement that I’ve stepped away from V7N’s daily operations is not new news. For several months now I’ve been less and less active.

Adam Smith, a friend I knew in Seattle who lives with his wife and children here in Tokyo, has taken over day-to-day operations. He effectively runs our Contextual Links service, and our customers give him rave reviews.

Reiko still handles the office and taxes and all those mundane things.

As for me, I must admit that SEO no longer holds my attention. That does sound like a horrible thing to say after the kindness the SEO industry has shown me, and the lifestyle it has afforded me, and the relationships which resulted from my participation in this industry. But the fact remains that SEO simply doesn’t interest me. At this point in life I’d be more interested in reading a user guide to a microwave oven than a Google patent.

Making money is good, and SEO does that. The Internet remains the easiest place to advertise and the largest market there is. But in the end, what does it matter?

For the past several months, I’ve been in “back to school” mode. At my age, going back to school is certainly not the norm. But the political issues we still face today interest me, and I’ve always believed that people do the best at what interests them. No, I’m not going into politics. But I do want to understand the issues, and see if I can’t add my voice to the chorus of voices that is required in a democracy.

What does the future hold for V7N? I really don’t know. I’ve considered selling. I still do consider selling. But for now, there will be no major changes. Adam and Reiko are running things nicely and it leaves me plenty of time to read and study.

If I do sell V7N, it will be with stipulations that protect the interests of our customers. So, in other words, no worries.

And thanks to all the fine folks in the SEO industry who’ve made it such an intriguing and human industry.

I’m no expert on advertising. I do tend to be greedier than many advertisers, though, and my approach to advertising has served me well. So think of it as a guerrilla marketer’s guide to advertising.

Advertising Builds Brand Awareness

A lot of folks want advertising to convert immediately. That’s rarely what happens. Advertising should be thought of primarily as a brand building vehicle.

Take for example my banner ads for V7 Inc, our web hosting service. Most users seeing that banner will see it at the very moment that they need web hosting. Most impressions will be wasted, if you think of it that way.

But what the advertising does is build awareness of the V7 Inc brand so that when the time comes, and the consumer thinks, “I need hosting”, V7 Inc may have a place in that consumer’s mind.

To illustrate this point, I will admit to placing affiliate banner ads for LunarPages on V7N’s Hosting Directory. Although the banner ads were removed last month, just yesterday I received notification of a sign up. People do not necessearily act immediately, but if your ad is being seen chances are it is making an impression which may translate into sales down the road.

Read the rest of this entry »

Whatever determines link juice, it sure as hell ain’t PageRank.

This comes as no new news to most SEO’s, but the myth of PageRank being the dominant factor in link juice is still quite popular amongst the forum posting crowd.

We here at v7n place a lot of links. (Matt doesn’t read this, does he?) Our Contextual Links Program has paid out over $140,000 to thousands of bloggers. So, yeah, we know links.

In the link building business, no matter how indifferent one is, sooner or later you’ll take a good look at what links are passing link juice and what links aren’t. So we do tests. We place links on blogs, using keywords in the anchor texts that do not appear on the linked-to pages. We track these links, and sometimes we place them on pages blogs that we wouldn’t usually use in the program. We place them on brand spanking new PR0 websites. We place others on old crummy PR0 websites. In most cases, the links do pass link juice.

Yes, links on PR0 websites - websites that have never had PR - still pass link juice. Amazingly enough, they pass enough link juice to put the linked-to website in the top ten for search terms that do not even appear on the linked-to page.

But sometimes links do not pass ranking juice. Why is that? When we find sites that do not pass link juice - and they are not as common as you might think - the one thing they all have in common is a lot of links to not-so-nice neighborhoods. And that doesn’t mean “paid links”. Paid links, even when they are marked as such, do not automatically result in a website losing its link juice. It appears to be an issue of number, frequency and percentage. If a good portion of the outbound links are to penalized websites, you can expect to lose your link juice. If, on the other hand, you slip in an occasional link or two to a bad neighborhood, chances are that you will not suffer any link juice loss.

Christ almighty. Bloggers saving the world - whatever next?

Carbon offsets? Ridiculous. Won’t solve a thing. Why? Here’s why.

The natural environment is indeed precious. Who could possibly disagree? It’s a shame the environmental argument is now inextricably bound to the global warming (one world government) argument. Is global warming a problem? To be honest, I have no idea. I’ve read the science. I’ve been confused by climatologists who are a lot smarter than I am, and even they can’t agree.

What do I know.

I know. I’ll go out and enjoy the sunshine.

And turn off this monitor.

And not waste any energy, neutral or otherwise, reading what bloggers have to say about the environment.

I suggest you do the same…

A month or so ago HostGator bought some banner advertising on the v7n forums. Not for HostGator.com, but for their SEO hosting division, aptly named SEOHosting.com.

A few people have asked, what does SEO have to do with hosting?

We’ve known for several years now that Google has a patent which filters and devalues inter-IP links.

Quoting Google’s patent:

Re-ranking component 122 begins by identifying the documents in the initial set that have a hyperlink to document x. (Act 301). The set of documents that have such hyperlinks are denoted as B(y). Documents from the same host as document x tend to be similar to document x but often do not provide significant new information to the user. Accordingly, re-ranking component 124 removes documents from B(y) that have the same host as document x. (Act 302). More specifically, let IP3(x) denote the first three octets of the IP (Internet Protocol) address of document x (i.e., the IP subnet). If IP3(x)=IP3(y), document y is removed from B(y).

On occasion, multiple different hosts may be similar enough to one another to be considered the same host for purposes of Acts 301 and 302. For example, one host may be a “mirror” site for a different primary host and thus contain the same documents as the primary host. Additionally, a host site may be affiliated with another site, and thus contain the same or nearly the same documents. Similar or affiliated hosts may be determined through a manual search or by an automated web search that compares the contents at different hosts. Documents from such similar or affiliated hosts may be removed by re-ranking component 124 from B(y) in Act 302.

But if you’re not linking to your own sites from your own sites, why worry about inter-IP link devaluation? You don’t need to. But why are you not linking to your own sites? If you have the link popularity, use it.

We here at v7n own a hundred or so sites, and for the most part they do not participate in inter-linking schemes. Why? Because they are on different topics. Health, finance, travel, etc. Inter-linking those sites would not create much in the way of link popularity, but we still host them each on different IP ranges. The reason for this is, in one word, Google.

Google loves to launch half baked filters and penalties. They do this on the basis of what they know, so it’s in our interest to keep Google’s knowledge to a minimum. At least where it concerns website ownership.

That’s where multiple Class C IP web hosting comes in. It’s the SEO equivalent of not keeping all your eggs in one basket.

It might also be a good idea to keep your domain registration private.

They were never going to win this.

American Blind & Wallpaper Factory Inc  agreed to abandon the nearly 4-year-old case against Google. The truce also stipulated that Google wouldn’t change its long-standing policy that let advertisers place ads tied to a rival’s trademark.

No company has successfully sued Google in this area.

If you’re using Google Apps, you might find the fine print a little curious, as reported on News.com:

“I am a lawyer, but I don’t want to believe the words I’m reading and am trying to find an alternative rendering of the language to make Google seem less grasping.“

The passage in question is this:

” you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, modify, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services. Google reserves the right to syndicate Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services and use that Content in connection with any service offered by Google”

However, Google followed up in the comments:

 ”I’m the engineering director on Google Docs. I posted on the original thread, but I’ll repeat it here… we state in our terms of service, we don’t claim ownership or control over your content in Google Docs & Spreadsheets, whether you’re using it as an individual or through Google Apps.”