Pagerank 0 T0 3 In 30 Days
The Pursuit Of PageRank And Why You Shouldn’t Bother
Let me start this post by saying a few things. First and most importantly, doing an experiment like this was such a waste of my time (full time job, dad, full time blog). After the first few days of this site being active I realized it was not going to work as planned and decided to have a little fun. Ultimately, both plans fell through and I left the site alone. It has now been pulled off the web. Geez, what I would do with that 10 hours and $245 (break down of money will come later)!?
After my idea for the site fell through my new plan, no matter how pointless, was to do as little work as possible and see how high I could get my Pagerank. While this experiment had no definitive goal other than high, I feel as though I failed. Pagerank 3? Come on, that is so easy to achieve. And why did I think that achieving a high PageRank mattered. Most good SEO’s know that PageRank is just one piece of a giant pie. Now that I have brought it up I would like to discuss other places to generate traffic. Lets start with twitter and move on to Facebook, PPC campaigns (which don’t have to run you into debt), email subscribers, and the list goes on and on. So, while I believe in chasing PageRank, doing it passionately is not necessary. In fact, about a year ago Matt Cutts had a few things to say about PageRank Sculpting here. To reiterate my point about Pagerank I have decided to list a popular search result under a particular niche I work with. Tops placement is as follows:
- PR 4
- PR 4
- PR 4
- PR 4
- PR 3
- PR 5
I think you get the picture. Higher PR doesn’t always equate to higher rankings. Wow, I just did a great job explaining why my experiment was a waste of time.
The only thing that kinda made me happy was that it happened in 30 days, which I think can be explained by Google deciding to update it’s Pagerank. Simply, I got lucky on when I started the site and when Google decided to do a PageRank update. Had I opened the site a 1 month earlier my title would read “Pagerank 0 – 3 in 60 Days.” If I followed PageRank updates more carefully I probably would have been able to guess, within reason, when Google was going to update PageRank.
Again, before I list the steps I took I want to reiterate the importance of spending time writing relevant content, building quality links, appealing to your readers, watching conversions, optimizing landing pages, and basically caring about your readers and users as much (or maybe a little more than) as you do the search engines. Plus, there is much speculation and controversy around one aspect of what I did to obtain links (although more and more individuals are using this method).
My Time Wasting Journey
Like I stated earlier, after just a few days I decided to move away from the sites original plan. I only state this again to place emphasis on the number of pages I started with. I usually start a site with about 25 pages, which applied to this site as well. While I would recommend starting with more (possibly 50 – 75) I am not sure it is an exact science. I think having a base is very good but, but more importantly, I believe you should be constantly adding valuable content to your website. So over time what you start with doesn’t necessarily matter. Beside the number of pages I started with (happens to be 25), I decided to update the site at least once a week. I believe twice I update the site more than once a week. Most of the added pages went on my blog, but I did add one static article page. This was all I did in regards to adding content. After thirty days my site had 33 pages of content (genuine content–minus contact, about, etc). Most of my pages ranged in length from 350 – 500 words.
For the sake of time I decide to spend zero time working with on-page optimization. While on-page optimization is not necessary to achieve great rankings ( I am lumping everything together on this–however, this does not apply to the title tag as I believe it is very important) it can help in more competitive markets and really should be part of your “best practices” campaign. I have seen little jumps in rankings based on this form of optimization, but it has helped before. For more information regarding on-page optimization you should visit SEOmoz and Rand’s article here.
On to the most controversial step in regards to increasing PageRank or rankings. Again, once I decided my original plan was lame I moved on. Keeping that attitude in check, I was not going to put much time into this venture. This can be difficult as obtaining links is a process that takes time. It doesn’t always have to take time, but doing link building right is a marathon and not a sprint. To make this process easier I decided to buy links a few links (I have differing opinions than most in regards to buying links). I purchased 2 links on two pages that had a PageRank of 3 and 2 links on pages with a PageRank 2 (The total cost of the 4 links was $70 dollars). I purchased 1 directory ($100) listing in a high quality directory. I placed two links on two separate article pages that I had on other sites–both were PageRank one. Lastly, I built a Squidoo lens. I pointed all my links to my homepage. I am not sure if received any other links from other sites who might have found my site useful. Probably not as it is not that difficult to pick up a bloggers tone from the quality of their site. The total cost of my link building venture was $170.
Basically, that is all I did. Genius, huh? Not sure I would do this again, especially because I pulled the site off a few weeks later. Anyway, I guess everything can be turned into a learning experience.
Related posts:
Every
few days I will review my favorite apps or plugins. The reviews will apply to the web industry.
Marc is currently obtaining a Masters Of Arts in Religion. Although not considered well read by a friends wife and a conversation hog by another friends wife, Marc spends hours wasting time on political/news websites, blogging, and reading religious books. Lastly, he quintessentially defines football fanatic. 
