I had a pleasant surprise present from Google on the New Year’s Eve. Google did the toolbar PageRank update on 31st December and HowToMakeMyBlog.com jumped from PR0 to PR4.
I registered the domain name on October 24th 2008 and published the first article October 25th so to be Google PR4 just over two months after registration of the domain name is very surprising and feels like a great achievement.
I was thinking about steps I have taken, steps that you can take, to get your blog site to be ranked PR4 by Google in a short period of time.
What is Google PageRank?
Google PageRank is one of numerous factors Google uses to determine the importance of a blog and it is based on the value of your inbound links. Google evaluates how many links there are to your blog from other pages, and the relevance and quality of the linking sites. DigPageRank can help you check your own PageRank.
I believe that the following factors have contributed towards Google assigning HowToMakeMyBlog.com with a PR4:
Guest posting
- I wrote two guest posts at Problogger. Each of these has given my blog a high-quality, relevant inbound link as ProBlogger is PR7 blog.
Links from related high ranked websites transfer more PageRank juice than links from non-related sites.
- Guest post 1: Create A Media Kit To Attract Advertisers To Your Blog
- Guest post 2: Get Inspiration from Blog Comments When Writing your Next Post
Calculate the value of an incoming link by looking at the PR of the linking site, and dividing it by the number of links on that page.
I highly recommend writing guest articles for relevant blogs that are ranked with higher Google PageRank. Read more about how I got guest article spots on ProBlogger.net.
Other inbound links
- Putting my link out there by commenting on relevant and high-profile blogs, being part of social media sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, posting useful answers in relevant forums.
I would recommend taking time each day to work on your blog promotion. Comment on relevant articles, discuss on relevant topics in forums/social media, and in other ways try to get your blog name and URL out there.
Check your PageRank backlinks and see the value of each of them and the anchor text they have linked to you with.
Blog onsite PageRank factors
- Content is not taken into account when PageRank is calculated but writing useful and keyword-rich articles that makes people link to, comment to or submit via StumbleUpon, Twitter and other social media gives you inbound links.
- I regularly updated the blog writing 56 articles from October 25th until December 31st.
- I optimized the internal linking structure.
How is your blog doing with Google PageRank? What did you do well to get where you are? What did you do bad to not be where you want do be?
Have I forgotten some reasons that you think definitely help increase PageRank? From your experience are some of the reasons I have listed not that important?
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STUMBLED!
First off, congrats, you are probably one of a handful of people who enjoyed the recent update.
I think commenting on other blogs is probably good, but from first hand experience, it hasn’t helped me AT ALL.
I have commented on so many blogs its ridiculous. I’m guessing thousands over the past year all using the URL of my main blog and guess what, my blog went from PR3 6 months ago to a PR0 for the last 2 updates.
I enjoy blog commenting so it hasn’t stopped me from doing it but it definitely hasn’t help me in the least with my blog.
I have resigned to the fact that I will no longer check my PageRank and have uninstalled the Google toolbar from my Firefox.
I just wrote a post about my experience at http://www.pliggs.com/wheres-my-pagerank/
Thanks for all the comments!
@Geoserv – Sorry to hear about your PR going to 0. I guess it is time to analyze the things you do and see what you are doing wrong so hopefully your PR will increase next time.
@Rowell Dionicio – Not much. I have been creating websites since late 1990′s and had started working with blogs around 2006. It is all self-thought through experimenting, trying, failing.
@ezg – I appreciate your opinion. This post is kind of a summary post (I also link to all the detailed information that I wrote about before) and was written because of this Google PageRank jump to show my readers that some of these things I write actually do work as this blog is work in progress and I try to write as much as possible about how I do it here.
@Session Magazine – Nice one! I am sure many would love to hear those secrets… what about a guest post? hehehe
Great tips; I’m already trying to implement some of them.
Thanks!
Hi Marko,
In the past week or so, you have made some valuable commentary on how to use Twitter to grow traffic to your blog as well this posting helpfull too. As a new blogger on the block it has been very insightful and helpful. I am stating the obvious here but I have to say that as a blogger one should bring value to the table and fill a void out there. That would be the only way you get repeat traffic. Twitter and Google page ranks can help draw attention of the potential audience out there. But what will keep them coming back is true value. Thank you for sharing your wisdom on promoting the blog.
Roshan
http://roshanthomas.blogspot.com/
That is amazing, nice work man! After 7 months I got a PR2, lol!
Thanks for the tips. I have only had my blog for about 1 month, so I’m not ranked very high, but one of my goals for the new year is to work on that. I love commenting on other blogs; not just because it helps with traffic and ranking, but because I learn so much from them and feel as if I have something to offer on some. I’m a website developer, but I’m just starting to learn about optimizing for search engines, so I suppose it will be a work in progress. Thanks again for sharing your experience.
Wow that’s a pretty big jump in PR. Thanks for outlining those steps as they will be helpful for me and other bloggers out there. What is your background in regards to blogging in general? You know quite a lot and the information you post on your blog is very helpful.
I know that my opinion is not very right, but i want to say, that you just repeated your rules which you have named in earlier posts… You are always just saying these two things: write guest posts and comments in bigger blogs.. How many times you can repeat this?
It’s enough for me to hear this 1-2, not more 3 times, but then you are always saying just these things you lose my respect.. Sorry.
I got PR 5 on http://www.sessionmagazine.com from no page rank to PR 5. There are many ways to get that PR and you have to optimize your page a lot. Key to success are relevant backlinks and using rel=”nofollew”… And there are some secrets…
I started my blog back in September, and having read about the PR update, I thought I would check it out. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I now have a Page Rank of 3. As you point out, Marko, the best way to improve your visibility is to ensure that your content remains relevant, interesting and useful. I have found that the easiest way to do this is to write about a subject which you are passionate about.
TLR
Hehe, OK, maybe I will write you some guest post. But I will have to correct my grammar
English isn’t my main language xD
I went from a nothing to a 0…so it wasn’t too bad of a loss. I just registered the site toward the end of Dec. so I’m not upset about it
Congrats!
Marko – thanks for sending me this via StumbleUpon, and congratulations on the page rank!!
Improving page rankings is something I started to look into a few months back.
Having said that, I’ve been reading loads and it seems that a Google ranking is becoming somewhat redundant – with social tools such as StumbleUpon/Twitter becoming the predominant place for internet users to find new and interesting sites. Would you agree that this statement is acurate? Personally, I still think that Google will always have a strong position on the world wide web.
I’m currently only with StumbleUpon, but I am considering joining Twitter… do you think it’s best to be a part of both networks? Do you have any thoughts on each, and what is better?
@Manz – Yeah, having PR4 doesn’t mean my blog will move up the rankings, Google is looking at so many other factors.
I just looked at my stats from October 25th until today and only 1.11% of my traffic is from search engines! StumbleUpon and Twitter stand for most of my traffic. StumbleUpon sent me more traffic until now but Twitter sent me better quality traffic (I am still collecting data, but I Twitter stats post is coming up soon). I would recommend being active on both, as I find them working good together (for example posting same links on both). I have already written some articles on both so I would recommend you to check them out.
Thanks Marko.
Your stats are just as I expected… but I suppose, the Google ranking is a good indicator on how all other efforts (blog commenting, link backs, stumbleupon, etc) are helping your website/blogspot.
I’ll be going through all of your blog archives over the next few days!!
All the best for 2009 – you’ll have a page ranking of 8 before you know it
Hey Marko,
That’s impressive.
I got my brand new domain to PR3 in less than two months… and I didn’t even try that hard.
It’s just a matter of doing the right things.
Wouldn’t you agree?
@Rezbi – Doing the right thing, of course, that usually is providing quality information and getting quality links.
@Jim Gaudet – I think me having a link to my first guest post in my second guest post helped getting a better PR. It also got some attention online and some good links. Check some of my older posts on how I got the guest spot at ProBlogger and how much traffic it brought me.
Neglected to mention, I think this is a very good site and I’m gonna bookmark it.
Great job. I do web design and have helped some PR sites, only PR4. But, that PR4 has given me a PR3 in less than a year.
Links are so important, but relevant links are more important. Plus, make sure your link is coming from a DOMAIN that has a great PR and Alexa rank.
Your first post has a PR5, NICE!!! the second has no PR, as of now..
I think you probably have a lot of great comments on nofollow blogs or you have a great link building scheme.
I need to read how you guest posted, I think that will help me a lot. Although for me, I do not want too many people on my blog since I do not write enough posts. But a PR is great for the future when I have the time.
Great post. I agree with all of what you said. Your really just scratching the surface here though when it comes to pagerank.
Your guest posts on Problogger obviously did you well as they enjoy a PR 7 and have obviously sent you some serious link love.
You also implement many good practices both in the stucture of your URL (no numbers in URL) and your use of “nofollow” in many of your links.
Yes, I think it has a lot to do with your affiliation with the high authority sources when you did guest blogging, not to mention quality content and inlinks. Great job.
@ Marko
“I think me having a link to my first guest post in my second guest post helped getting a better PR.”
That’s a good point. I don’t think many people realise having internal links, of linking one post to another on the same site, is counted towards PR.
FYI: Blog comments, unless tweaked by the blog owner, are no follow and don’t add to PR value.
I got my site from a pr0 last month to a pr4 but getting lots of high quality links to the URL. Thats what it is all about- quality links.
@Nomadic Matt – Yeah, I have written about that in http://www.howtomakemyblog.com/comments/5-simple-steps-to-build-blog-traffic-by-writing-comments/. I just feel that putting my link outthere, even in nofollow sections, is helping increasing awareness and exposure of my blog and in those ways helping getting high-quality links.
@Session Magazine – I am looking into the CommentLuv plugin at the moment. Will include it soon if I find a good way to incorporate it.
@howtomakemyblog
Maybe u shouldn’t use nofollow for comments. It is nice when blogers stick together. “U comment I follow” policy.
Congratulations
your blog is really good,almost same was happened to me my blog jump from PR0 to PR4 in 1 month and 2 days,and now after this update its still PR4…
@Zoran – Congrats! Did you analyze your actions to see what are the probable reasons you got PR4 so quickly? Mind sharing your experience?
@Marko
I was work really a lot on blog and I was sharing my posts on social sites,I was many times on front page of stumbleuopn and few times on reddit after that many other sites posts things from my site on their sites and put link to mine there are people who was not put link back to me but ok hehe,Marko once again thanks a lot your blog is really good I learned new things here.Sorry for me English.
@Zoran – Thanks for the detailed information, do not worry about your English and all the best luck with your blog in the future!
I found you blog by way of Stumble Upon.I love S.U.
Thanks for all the good tid-bits.
I’m passing them on.
Congratulations, and thanks for those tips, and I’ll never forget the most important step to become a wellknown blog, Guest Posting.
Congrats for the PR, and thanks a lot for the tips
@Silvera SU is probably the best site I joined in 2008. Every good article or site I come across I will “Like It”. Marko is on SU so I get his messages about new posts and after reading them (because they are all great) I will make sure people see it on SU.
Woow.. That is just amazing.. I also say a comment saying that she got it to PR5. Its just amazing. I have never heard of such big jumps in PR in my life. Kudos to you guys !!
I think it’s amazing that you’ve started your blog just a few months ago and it has gained so much popularity. Keep up the good work. I want to start a blog too, this is one my goals this year. I’ll be reading your blog often to gain tips and advice.
Hey Marko,
Just dropped by to let you know I haven’t ignored the last email.
It’s just been hectic.
I’ll get in touch soon.
Rezbi
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