Every now and then, I read a post somewhere that really moves me. Lots of times, I can’t link to it, either because it’s not on topic, or my lineup is already filled with posts, or I’m just too dang busy working on my business.
But I got to thinking recently about the whole link-loving thing. I guess sometimes I forget how hard it seems in the first few months of blogging to get attention, traffic and those coveted links. Certainly, on my “Overdue Link Love” posts I try to spread the luv around. But then I read a post today by a woman I don’t even know, named Lizzie. And it moved me.
Lizzie has a brand new blog and wanted to try and monetize it. She turned to PayPerPost as a source of revenue, only to be flatly rejected because of her lack of Google Page Rank. So, in a quest for inbound links, Lizzie found a blogger who did link exchanges :: only to find that same said blogger refused all requests from sites with a Page Rank of less than 3.
Now, I may not be able to spend hours every week hunting out new and deserving bloggers to link to, but I can say this: that I have NEVER ONCE checked someone’s page rank before I decided to link or not. And you may disagree with me, but I don’t think it’s worth your time or energy to care about it, either.
Can I just state the obvious here :: sites without a current page rank will eventually get ranked. So let’s not be so dang short-sighted about our SEO goals here, people. URGH. What is a PR0 link today can be a PR6 link in 6-9 months.
Here’s a table that shows that even pages with a rank of 1 add up to help your total page rank “score”. Plus, there are even rumors that Google might do away with Page Rank altogether, anyway.
Write good headlines. Use good title and description tags. Link to sites that are relevant. Build relationships. Eventually, Google will love you for it. And if you are only relying on Google for traffic anyway, you’re missing out on some seriously great site building opportunities.
Lastly, I’ve always been grateful for every dang link that comes to this blog. Including Grant’s, Walter’s, Wendy’s, Jason’s, Leisa’s, Kate’s, WAH(web)Mommy’s and Jesse’s. These fine authors all have relatively new blogs in the work-at-home/small business niche and I think they deserve my link love and your attention.
And since running this site really is extremely time consuming, I’d like to ask that if you have a blog or site with good content (no splogs!!) that is a resource to entrepreneurs, work at home parents, or home business owners, please send me a note about your site. I would be happy to add you to this list, help build your page rank, and help you get the attention you deserve from Google, PayPerPost, or anyone else you wish to impress.
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Thanks so much for mentioning us, it means alot!
Thank you Wendy!!!
It is really nice to see a “big name” so clearly say what so many of us “small names” already know. Relevancy and building relationships is more important than any software derived ranking.
Hi! Thanks for taking the time to read my article.
After my rejections I didn’t really go looking for links, but for ideas on how I could improve. And that’s when I ran into the site of the blogger who refused to link (or be linked from, which I thought to be quite strange) blogs with less that PR 3. I was a little shocked, to say the least.
I have decided to concentrate then on building my network organic links through content and let the chips fall where they may. Hopefully someday I’ll be able to offer a little support to a fledgling blogger.
Thanks again for the link.
In my eyes PR is still very important, but only as a health indicator of a site. Personally when it comes to Link Building the only thing I am interested in is has Google cached this page. But then again I already have a descent PR, I’m just looking for more specific Anchor Phrases.
The Google PR system is such an ongoing challenge! I agree that good content and titles are key, but I’ve also learned that when sharing link love it’s important to consider the fact that too many links on a blog can cause Google to think you’re an illegitimate links only site, which can banish you to the supplemental index and hurt your online business - ouch!
Thanks for the post Wendy! Love your new blog.
Helene
Thanks for the link lovin’ Wendy. I personally don’t even know what my rank(s) is/are at this point. I used to be anal about checking that several times per day until I realized it takes a while to affect any change.
I like to go based on subscriptions and return visitors per day. I know I’m doing a good job when people visit a couple of times during the day to see what comments got left and to see if I posted anything new.
That’s blogging success to me. Monetarily speaking, with my gaming blog, I have noticed an increase in Adsense 10-fold in the last 3 months over the previous 18 months because I am attracting more expensive ads, not that I am getting more traffic now. Quite the opposite recently, since cutting back on posting from work due to a performance review. /grin
The reason you come to mind when I write something thought-provoking is because you’re so real. Who at SOBCon will ever forget your talk? I sure won’t, because I’m still in stitches when I think of it. You and Tony have a ton of my respect for your staying at home parenting/businesses.
Wendy and all the commenters — you’re right! It shouldn’t really matter how much arbitrary value google gives to a site. What matters to me is the quality of the content.
And I like that for the most part, bloggers are willing to help each other out. It’s nice to see that instead of feeling threatened by each other, bloggers do what they can to share the wealth. (The truly good ones do, anyway!)
Thanks for this, Wendy. Because I can’t widgetize my blog right now (canned template, will change soon) I don’t have access to a lot of stats and info on traffic.
I don’t even know what my Google PR is, only my Technorati #, which I watch go all over the place so I don’t worry too much about it.
I do know that I write good content, fairly frequently, and have a nice group of readers who aren’t super-vocal, but come out of the woodwork at the most unexpected times.
I link to good stuff and that’s all I care about. People who obsess over stats are being very short-sighted.
It’s not the tech, it’s how the tech improves human connection. Focus too much on “what the machine says” and you’re missing the Big Picture.
My site isn’t a resource to work at home moms unless they want to know about the crazy things that happen in my family, or with my sheep, or the kids, or silly pets, but I think it’s an entertaining site with a very broad range and some pretty great photos. I have monetized it, so I am always looking for opportunities and links.
I also recently started a blog about the side of NY that many people never see or know about. It’s very new tho’ and has a huge Alexa and no Google PR yet altho’ it is indexed. Trying hard to get links for that one. http://othersideofnewyork.com. It’s also my first experience with Wordpress. Wish me luck!
Great post Wendy. It’s far too easy to get caught up in the PR numbers game. I’m with you: Link because you like the blogger or the article. We all started at PR 0. And I firmly believe that what goes around comes around. Linking out to great undiscovered blogs somehow seems to draw the attention of bloggers that are a notch or two up the totem pole from you. At least that’s been my experience.
People are far to much wrapped up with PageRank, we should just work on our Quality content and the rest will come along.
i did a article on this last week…
http://www.yeepage.com/is-pagerank-coming-and-who-cares
I have never actually thought about page rank. I don’t even know what my blog’s page rank is. Someone recently told me that my company page rank is 5 and I asked them how they knew this and they said they have a notice on their toolbar. Oh well. I say just focus on building relationships and friendships and even if it doesn’t lead to increased page ranks it will most likely lead to something better.
Wendy– Thank you so much for the link and mention. I really appreciate it.
I’m in the same boat as Lizzie. My blog is in its 4th month, and I have no PR yet so I’m sad:( I don’t want to care about PR but I also just signed up for PayPerPost and expect to be rejected as well. My problem is that I’m impatient and I’ve been working hard but get frustrated since I don’t have the “numbers” to prove it.
Wendy, thank you for the links. It’s a really great info for me, thanks again
Hi Wendy,
Thank you so much for linking to my site - that was certainly an unexpected surprise! I have to say you helped make my week, lol.
WAH(web)Mommy
I tell you what fosters an attitude of anger - Google not updating their page rank since I believe 5 months ago.
I had a page rank of 4. I bought a brand new domain in July which has a page rank of n/a. I worked my butt off to get the PR up on that site between buying the domain and the end of August, because that is when the next update was supposed to be. I’m still waiting. The page still has a page rank of n/a. It may continue to have a page rank of n/a unless Google updates the page rank, which may not happen any time soon. Yet they manage to update it internally on a daily basis.
I would not mind, except some advertisers use page rank as their main criteria for picking a blog out to advertise on. So, the bottom line is, Google is costing me money. And we’re not talking a little amount of money.
That fosters anger towards Google. They should seriously think about how many people they are upsetting by delaying this update. Possibly they think we all rely on them and they can do whatever they like and we’ll still love them and use them and their services. I have to say if they think that, they are fooling themselves.
I feel like yanking all my gmail accounts, moving away from google reader, dumping google analytics and the wonderful Google calendar which I just found, purely on principle.
Cheers,
Snoskred
Snoskred, in more ways than 10 do I get angry and frustrated with Google. That’s a post in and of itself with their arrogant attitude that claims to put users first when in so many ways their policies are far more self-serving than anything else.
By the way, this site didn’t get a page rank for 6 months from the time I started it. Then I suddenly went up to a 4. Go figure.
But honestly, Google is very against web site owners selling ad space based on page rank. They don’t want people to be able to buy their way into the rankings (oh, the hypocrisy…). At the same time, I can kind of understand their dilemma - because it makes it easy for spam sites to simply buy their way into the SERPs.
Google has even said that you must report and tag your advertisements with “NoFollow” - but frankly, it isn’t my job to build my site code to let Google know how I make money off of my site.
See??? I told you this would turn into a blog post!!
I branched out into freelance writing over the summer, and I can’t tell you how excited I was to come across this site AND Freelance Parent. Hooray!! Not only do I advertise my services on my own site, but I also work to showcase others through my “Support Mompreneuers” page and by opening up my Friday “Up For Debate” posts to contributing writers. To me, it’s all about developing relationships rather than seeing who can build the most links more quickly.
Thanks for the link Wendy!
I have quit paying attention to PR and started working on creating quality sites that my readers might want to return to a long time ago.
The web is too full of garbage already.
I’d rather feel like I helped someone with my site than that I just boosted my PR and made someone else feel like crap in the process because I “couldn’t” link to them for fear of losing some PR.
PageRank is something I pay very little attention to, for the same reasons as others who don’t pay much attention to it. It’s nice to have, but it’s really not a good determination of how much quality content is on my site.
That seems really rotten, I’d never heard of that practice and I’m glad people who linked to me when I first started blogging were more generous than that. What goes around comes around.
its this type of post i’ve bookmark & subscribed to your rss
i also link up if there’s a need, pagerank consideration is only for morons
yeah spread the love i say