How To Increase Page Rank In Search Engines Including Google
Have you been wondering how to increase Page Rank of your website so that it appears higher and ranks better in search engines? Do you know what a Page Rank actually is and how you can increase it to increase your website visibility and drive more traffic via the search engines to your website? In this article, I am going to share different ways of increasing the page rank of your blog / website.
What exactly is Page Rank?
In simpler terms, Page Rank is a terminology used to indicate the importance of a website in search engine results. The higher the page rank, the much sooner and higher your website appears whenever a visitor searches for a keyword in search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. Google considers over 200 factors when showing up a website in their search results. Page Rank is one of them.
What is Page Rank and how to Increase Google Page Rank for your Blog / Website
Page Rank takes values from 1-10. 1 indicates least importance and 10 indicates the highest importance. Some also call page rank as Google Page Rank. This does not mean that the page rank is owned by Google. It simply means that is the page rank of a website/blog when a specific keyword is searched for in Google. So if someone searches for a keyword in Yahoo or Bing, there might be a variation of Google Page Rank & Yahoo Page Rank for the same website as it depends upon their algorithms, ranking factors, etc.
Today most of the targeted traffic comes from Search engines and hence it is becoming really important to increase the page rank of a website/blog. Trying to push a website’s page rank from 1 to 10 is definitely not easy task, but at the same time, it’s not impossible. And, it does not happen overnight! It takes years to achieve a page rank of 10. And ranking high in search engines is definitely a sure way to make a website or a blog more visible in their niche.
To increase page rank fast, here are some of the most important factors and tips:
1. Unique and High Quality Content
Undeniably, all search engines want unique content and it is expected of us to provide high quality content, apart from making them unique. Gone are the days when people used to merely copy text off of other websites and then use it in their website and rank high after slight modifications. Such gimmicks won’t work anymore as the search engines have evolved over the years and have become smarter. So content scraping won’t work. Period.
Just focus on writing content on topics that interest you the most. Make sure that the articles you write, add value to your website and make sure that it is helpful. You would not be reading this article if it wasn’t going to provide you tips on increasing your pagerank, would you (unless you are our regular reader)? Similarly, for your visitors, make sure that the information that you provide will benefit them. Benefit for them = Benefit for you. Benefits are directly proportional, you see!
2. Frequent Content Updates
Now this does not mean that you keep on updating each and every post of your blog every day. Let’s say that you have 20 articles in your blog and you publish your 21st article. You feel that the content in your 21st article is an extension of the first article and would help your readers if you linked back to it from your first article. If you feel so, then go ahead and do it.
So go ahead & update your first article with a link back to the 21st article. Also add a note towards the end of the article with the heading “UPDATE” or “NOTE” and write few words about the update that you have performed. That will help users understand what you are up to and will also benefit them as new readers who arrive on your first article, will easily find the link to the relevant article (the 21st article). All they will have to do is simply click on that new link to read this article.
One another way is to update content using images. Often, I find that I am writing articles and I simply don’t have the time to search for relevant images. So I simply go ahead & publish the post with just text content. When I get some free time, I come back to this post, do my searches and find an image or two that I can add to this post. When I do find the images that make me feel satisfied, I add them to the article. So this is how I keep updating my posts.
Those are just couple of ways. You could come up with other ways of updating your content. There’s no hard and fast rule. See what works best for you.
3. Relevant Keywords
If Keywords are essential component of an article, then using “Relevant Keywords” are the “life” of an article. Without using the relevant keywords, the chances of search engines finding your articles are slim and the chances of your readers finding your article relevant are slim to none. That does not mean that you can go ahead & include tons of keywords in your content. That’s an absolute NO! Don’t ever do it, or you will be penalized on the grounds of “Keyword Stuffing”.
So when you write an article, make sure that you are using relevant keywords in the H1 tag, Meta Description and in the body of the content. This is an excellent way to increase page rank on Google.
4. Keyword Density
A perfect way to get your website penalized is by including keywords 100 times in the same article, in the manner that it makes no sense. Yes, you may have come across search engine optimization softwares that tell you how important keyword density is and how many times you must repeat the keyword in the article in order to improve the density of the keyword and make your article likeable by the search engines.
Although using Keywords in your article are mandatory, sticking to a XYZ percentage of keyword density is no longer applicable. Don’t try to fill in keywords just for the sake of filling up your article. Do it because you find it natural to include it in a place that you have chosen and make sure it makes sense. If it doesn’t make sense for you, it won’t make sense for your users either. So ignore the age old 10% keyword density rule and focus on the natural flow of content. That will help you increase Google page rank apart from increasing page rank in other search engines.
5. No Empty Rule
This rule is very simple. It states that you should not leave any necessary details empty. This includes details such as Page Title, Meta Description.
Who invented this rule? You may ask. Well, I did. How? Well, it’s simple. I learnt a lot from Google Webmaster Tools. If you have an account with them, simply login. In the left menu, look for “Optimization” & click on “HTML Improvements”. This section will show you any Missing title tags, Duplicate title tags, Duplicate Meta Descriptions, etc. Simply edit any of the articles on your blog that are missing this info & add it. The Page Title & Meta Descriptions are very important as it helps your readers find the page via search engines. So don’t leave them empty and increase your page rank.
You can get more free info for your website by visiting at Google Webmaster Tools
6. Take care of Images
I often see that people merely include images and leave it at that. Agreed that everyone may not have the time to tweak images, add info to them. But let me tell you, it’s totally worth it if you spend time and efforts in adding the info to them. By info, I mean the ALT tag info. If you are using WordPress, you will also see the option to add a Caption. Why not add it if you haven’t done it so far? Do it so that it provides more meaning.
Also if you could keep the sizes of images down to the lowest possible size, that would help increase the web page load speed. Google takes page load speed into account when ranking websites. So the faster your website loads, the better. That said, don’t go ahead & strip off images of your website. Your users won’t like it. Yes, I know. It might sound complicated to find it hard to judge what you need and what you don’t. But you will need to find the right balance to see what your users will like.
For example, if you are running a comic website, then you will need to explain the situation/jokes by using images as they have a great impact. In such cases, using images are unavoidable. But what you could do is instead of including the PNG version of the images, you could include a JPG image compressed at 80% of it’s quality size. In such a way, you can include images and also make them load fast.
If you are running a WordPress blog, then I recommend using WP Smush.it. Its a free WordPress plugin that lets you chop down on image size without having to manually do them. I use it on my blog to optimize all images. I have seen no side effects of using it. In fact, I have noticed an overall increase in load speed of images and hence I recommend it to you.
7. Accessible Website
Make sure your website is accessible. Ensure that there are no time outs, redirects, etc. And AFAIK, Google hates redirects, especially if it’s on the home page. For this, ensure that you are seeking web hosting from a reliable web hosting solutions company. If your website has a large down time or your visitors keep seeing the “Internal Server Error” messages often, that will affect your website negatively & can have a serious toll on your page rank. So make sure you compare web hosting services prior to committing to any one and pick the one that offers the best services at a reasonable price.
8. Using Signature
People often don’t think of this. Although its generally overlooked, using a signature can really help increase your page rank as it counts towards internal link building. Usually these signatures are in the form of images, so they look appealing and inviting. So if you don’t have a signature in your blog, make one now.
9. Social Sharing
Sharing your website / blog over the different social mediums have become really important and easy nowadays. If you are running a blog, then make sure you have placed social sharing icons underneath the post title and towards the end of the article. That way, you will increase your chances of getting your content shared. This will add towards increasing page rank.
10. Offer Newsletters
Newsletters are generally sent out when you need to inform your readers of news and updates. Sending newsletters not only help you keep in touch with your readers, but they also help you in receiving additional traffic.
There are different email marketing services available that also let you send newsletters to your users. Read all about such email marketing services here.
11. Offer RSS Subscriptions
Offer the option to subscribe to your blog’s RSS feeds. In this way, you will make it easy for others to distribute your content over the web and this will help in getting your website indexed by the popular blog engines.
12. Press Release
Press releases are an excellent way to reach the public directly. The only drawback of press releases is that you would need to pay the fees associated with it. But if you look at the positive side of it, you get to gain more traffic and exposure as it lets you connect with your audience quickly.
13. Freebies and Giveaways
We all like Freebies, don’t we? If you can possibly give out a freebie or two on certain occasions, that will help. If you are generous enough and can afford giveaways based on competitions, quiz, polls, etc. that would be great too.
14. High Quality Backlinks
Getting back links is not tough, but getting “High Quality Backlinks” is the real deal. Gone are days when you could simply pay someone to get backlinks to your website and expect to rank real high in the search engines. As per the last info that I have, Google not only looks at the back link, they also look at the source of the back link. So if you have a technology related blog and paid for backlinks on a Weight loss website, then sorry to say, but you have wasted your money. A weight loss website is “not relevant” to a tech website, so that won’t count under genuine back link. And if you ever get lucky with it, that won’t add much to your page rank.
15. Exchange “Relevant” links
Try to exchange “relevant” links with websites in your niche. Don’t try to do this exchange just for the sake of it. Do it if you genuinely think that it will help your users and do it in your niche for “relevancy” sake.
16. Directory Submissions
Directory submissions definitely add to the page rank of a website. There are different article directories and web directories available and if you can get your website accepted into such directories, then you will have the advantage of receiving high quality back links.
Here are some of the top web directories and article directories that I know of:
- DMOZ
- Ezine articles
- Yahoo Directory
- Best of the Web
17. Blog Commenting
Help your users in issues that have by actively participating and leaving helpful comments. That will help build your relationship with your readers and problem solving will only make your more famous and known for your efforts and time.
18. Guest Blogging
Offer to guest blog on different blogs of your niche. See if you can get them to guest blog on your blog as well. This won’t be of much use if you are discussing on the exact same topic but will work wonders if you are discussing on two separate topics under the same niche.
For example, let’s consider the “health care” niche. Let’s say you deal with “eye health care”. There’s another blog that covers topics on “dental health care”. You could approach them for guest blogging in this way, you both will get more traffic and will increase your fame.
19. Offer Language Translations
Primarily, most of the users on the web prefer English for effective communication. So if your target audience speaks a different language than English, then offer them language translation facility so that it makes it easy for them to read and enjoy your content.
20. Avoid Illegal Ways
Get creative in the ways of helping your users by providing valuable contain. Refrain from becoming creative in using illegal and/or bad ways of gaining page rank. If the search engines suspect that you are trying to deceive their web crawler bots by misleading or repeated words, nasty page redirects, including hidden text, duplicate site or pages, etc. you stand at the risk of penalization and your website may be de-listed from the search engine index. So avoid the bad ways and instead, focus on providing quality and helpful info to your users.
Your Turn!
What do you think of the above tips to increase page rank in search engines? Have you used any of the tips in the past? Did you see any increase in your page rank? Do you have any tips that you would like to share with us? Please feel free to share by commenting below.