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Question:
How do we increase our Google rankings? Our longest running website has a homepage ranking of PR4. The whole site consists of approximately 9000 pages which cover our products and accessories.
You have to press just four keys to get to the product from the home page. The second level pages have a ranking of between PR3 & PR4, but when you get to the manufacturer's page (3rd level), only three pages out of approximately 30 have a ranking at all (PR2). The individual items are on the fourth level, and none appear to have any ranking.
Could you advise as how we can get a ranking here or do we simply have too many pages? We're sure we have a good site which was designed to be easy to navigate and reduces searching. Looking forward to your reply.
Submitted by Steve K.
Answer:
First of all, nice site! Clean and easy to navigate. Your site's internal navigation scheme is very good. You have over 9000 pages all within 4 clicks of the homepage, and each of those pages has a link back to the homepage. You couldn't have done it any better.
The problem with your low PR is quite simple. Assuming no inbound links (links from other websites) to your internal pages, each click away from the homepage will typically result in a loss of 1 PR level (or more, depending on the number of links on the linking page).
This means since your homepage is at PR4, after you click 3 times you have lost virtually all of your Google PageRank for that page. There is only one way to increase PageRank: get more inbound links.
Google PageRank is based entirely upon inbound links, nothing else. The Google link: command shows that you only have 5 inbound links to your homepage. Given Google's overwhelming emphasis on inbound links when ranking pages in their search results, you simply have to have a lot more links than that to be competitive.
I suggest that you start a link exchange campaign right away. Don't make the all too common mistake of thinking you'll lose traffic if you link out to other sites. If you choose your link partners carefully, you will always have a net gain in traffic with each link exchange.
Why? If you choose quality link partners, you'll get back at least as many visitors as you "give away". But the best part is your additional inbound links will boost your PageRank and your rankings in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS).
This of course boosts your traffic continuously as long as you keep getting more inbound links. How many links is enough? I can't answer that because I haven't reached that level yet. I swap links with more webmasters each and every month.
Each and every month my websites get more visitors and go up in the SERPS. When I get to where I have as many inbound links as Yahoo.com, I'll consider quitting exchanging links.
Also don't make the common mistake of being afraid to exchange links with competing websites. If you're wondering why, re-read the above paragraphs.
As stated previously, if you select your competing link partners wisely, they'll send you at least as much traffic as you send them. And the traffic they send you will be as "targeted" as you can get. After all, they just came from a site that offers the same thing your site offers!
For more information on linking strategies and increasing PageRank, check out these resources:
free-link-building-ebook.html
linking-techniques.html
getting-links.html
SEO.html
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