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.

Only the Top 10, Best Tech Blogs – Countdown Begins…

1. ZDnet

ZDNet

ZDNet offers latest news & happenings in the technology world and hence, they can be considered as a top technology blog site. They offer different options to switch blog “edition” so that you can read what’s hot in the different geographic locations of the world. Some of their areas that include (but not limited to) are Windows, Cloud, Networking, Storage, Tablets etc. The slideshow in the homepage of this tech blog offers a glimpse of the interesting topics following by Featured Stories. They also offer Top Stories, Debates, Photo Gallries, Videos, Downloads, etc.

2. Engadget

Engadget

Engadget excels at providing information and hence can be considered as the 2nd Best, Top Technology Blog. Some of the categories that they cover are: Gaming, GPS, Handheld, Portable, Science, Software, Internet, Laptops, Tablets, Networking and others. In addition to this, they also offer Top stories that could be of your interest.

 3. Cnet

CNET

Cnet is one of the oldest and reputed tech blogs out there. This tech blog specializes in Reviewing different things. So if you are looking for a review on a Camcorder or want to buy the latest cell phone but want to read others’ review first, Cnet would be the best place to start. They offer reviews on wide range of Categories, but some of them include: Car Tech, Home Audio, Home Video, Desktops, Mp3 Players, Digital Cameras, Televisions, Tablets, etc.

Apart from that, they also feature sections like Hottest Review, Latest News, Downloads on different platforms, How To, Deals, etc. They offer much more than what I can cover here, so make sure you check ’em out.

4. Wired

Wired

Wired offers latest info on a variety of categories such as Gear, Science, Security, Business etc. They also have sub-categories under each category and once you start checking something, you will only start sinking deeper.

On the home of their blog, they feature latest posts, Wired Video, Photo Galleries, Special Report, Recent Stories, All  Headlines, Hottest Web Links, Enterprise, Gadget Lab, Game, Life, Opinions and others.

5. I Love Typography

I Love Typography

I Love Typography is one of the top tech blogs that specializes immensely in providing you with only the best typography that you can use for Web Design. They also have a Shop and you can buy Codex Magazines. These magazines can feature articles, book and type reviews, interviews, tips, type history, new and notable fonts, essays, typeface design — from typography experts.

Apart from the above, they offer articles on origin of fonts, curated list of best fonts and other such related articles on typography. So if you are looking for font related font, forget others and check them out first.

 6. Mashable

Mashable

Mashable is one of the most popular tech blogs in the world. They specialize in offering information on Social Media. They also offer latest news and happenings in the wold of Technology, Business, Entertainment, Lifestyle, Videos and more.

The homepage of Mashable offers: “The New Stuff”, The Next Big Thing,  What’s Hot, etc. Due to the variety of the topics they cover,it’s easy to get lost in the pool of information, so make sure enough time on your hands if you want to check them out.

 7. Smashing Magazine

Smashing Magazine

One of the brilliant additions to the Top Tech blogs is Smashing Magazine. They specialize in providing Web Design information. Some of the Categories include Web Design, Mobile, Graphics, UX Design, Coding and WordPress. Each of these categories contain their own Sub categories and you are bound to find a lot of excellent and useful information here.

Some of the other features include Smashing Highlights, Smashing Job Board. This is a must check out top tech blog, if you really want to get started with some quality articles on Web Design.

 8. Tech Crunch

Tech Crunch

Tech Crunch excels at providing information on Startups. Apart from that, they also cover latest information on Mobile, Gadgets, Enterprise, Social, Gaming and others.

Their homepage features, Latest News, Trending Stories, Upcoming Events, Product Guides, Crunch Board (Job listings) and other latest information.

 9. 40tech

40tech

40tech covers more like the “technical” part of anything. So if you are wanting to find out solutions for adding a label to mail message  in mailbox or Trying to backup your passwords, you should start from here. They offer news on variety of topics such as Android, iOS, Mac, Windows, Google, Cloud, Evernote, Springpad, etc. They also include information on to increase your productivity.

10. Guardian

Guardian

Guardian covers a lot of areas and hence it could be considered as one of the top best tech blogs.  Apart from covering lot of info on technology, they also cover different areas such as News, Sport, Comment, Culture, Business, Money, Life & style, Travel, Environment, TV, Video,Dating,Offers, Jobs, etc.

Their homepage features latest news, Best Video, Best Sellers, Guardian Jobs etc.

 That’s it!

Do you know of any other best tech blogs? Do you think any of it will make a good addition to this list? Feel free to share by commenting below.

The Best SEO Plugin For WordPress 2013 – WordPress SEO by Yoast

Undoubtedly, WordPress is proven to the most popular blogging tool used by millions of users today. WordPress has made blogging very easy and simple for all the users. Anyone with basic knowledge of computers can now start a blog. Apart from that, WordPress has gained immense popularity because of its ease of use, extensive customization, robustness, frequent updates and help from the community. And the best part is that WordPress is completely free and they don’t charge you a penny to use it to start a blog yourself.

Now as if it weren’t’ enough, the WordPress community didn’t stop there. Although they provide us with vanilla version of WordPress that any user can use to get started immediately with, they have gone a step further and have made provisions for us to add additional functionality by means of “plugins”. All these plugins are available for free and we can install these plugins and use them as we see fit. One of the most important reasons to use a plugin would be for the benefits of “Search Engine Optimization”. With a well Search Engine Optimized blog, your blog can receive large amount of traffic every day. And in order to get more traffic from the search engines, you have to make sure that your blog is optimized well and completely for the search engines so that the blog ranks higher. For a novice user, this is very difficult. So what to do?

Enter “WordPress SEO by Yoast”

One of the most appreciable additions to the plugin repository is the addition of a WordPress best SEO plugin called “WordPress SEO by Yoast”. This plugin is available free of charge and you download this from WordPress and get started using it within the next couple of minutes. I have personally used this plugin for over an year and because of the features it offers and for it’s simplicity, I consider the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin as the best WordPress SEO plugin. By using WordPress SEO by Yoast, you can perform Search Engine Optimization on your blog/website with minimal efforts and boost your website’s ranking in search engines. The following are some of the features that I find, are important and very appealing.

Very Useful and Important features of the WordPress SEO by Yoast

1. Article Posting area

WordPress SEO – Article Posting Area

1. Focus Keyword

This is by far the most important feature that separates WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast from other WordPress SEO plugins, in behavior and looks. As can be from the image, WordPress SEO offers different functionality in the article posting area. The main feature that I want to highlight now is the auto-suggestion of applicable keywords. Notice how I have entered my main keyword and how it is showing the related keywords for my keyword? I use the keywords as basis for my long tail keywords and I include the most relevant keywords from the suggestions box into my article. That helps my articles rank better in search engines and increases overall visibility of my blog.

2. Snippet Preview, SEO Title, Meta Description and Meta Keywords

Under the General Tab, along with the focus keyword option, you can find Snippet Preview, SEO Title, Meta Description and Meta Keywords. I am going to discuss the functionality of each of these features below.

Snippet Preview: Enter something in the SEO Title box & in the Meta Description textarea. The Snippet Preview area will show a preview of how your article might appear to visitors when your blog shows up in search engines. This is very helpful as I can either add new content or edit existing content in the SEO Title & Meta Keywords so that most of my content (if not all) can appear to the users.

SEO Title: There is a limit counter right beneath the box against this. This limit counter shows the number of characters that will be shown from as your Article Title to search engine users. You can fine tune this to make sure that the title does not get cut off.

Meta Description: This works similar to SEO Title with the exception that it previews Meta Description and allows more number of characters to be input. Fine tuning this Meta Description can help convey the intended message to your users and help increase more clicks to your website.

Meta Keywords: As I stated in my previous article, these are useless for Google, but may be useful for the other search engines. Use this if you want to target search engines other than Google.

3. Page Analysis Tab

WordPress SEO – Page Analysis Tab

This tab is awesome too.It shows the mistakes that I am making in terms of under-optimizing my blog for search engine optimization or if I am over-optimizing them for search engine optimization  Either ways, it analyses my mistakes and tell the same to me and I get to correct them. This is a huge time saver and I do not have to use any other external software do do my page analysis.  Everything happens right here, right now, with the blog. Can’t beat that!

4. Advanced Tab

WordPress SEO – Advanced Tab

Lets you provide more information that the search engines can make use of. This will again help increase your blog’s visibility  in search engines, so you can change them as needed.

5. All Settings of WordPress SEO by Yoast – Top WordPress SEO plugin

WordPress SEO – All Main Settings

As can be seen from the image above, there are loads of other options available. Each of these options have many settings, so I may not be able to cover them in this article. But I will try to summarize the functionality of each of those options below.

Dashboard: Provides different options to maintain general setting including Webmaster Tools info for Google, Bing & Alexa.

Titles & Metas: Provides you rich set of options to show default values in your blog articles/pages, should you forget to include any while posting a new article. So this will serve as backup if you forget to include all necessary info. This will save your search engine ranking, at least to some extent.

Social: Provides access to Facebook & Twitter sharing & lets you customize them.

XML Sitemaps: Lets you generate XML Sitemaps. This is the format that Google bot will need in order to be able to understand the structure & layout of the articles in your blog/website to crawl effectively.

Permalinks: Let’s you modify the Permalinks for boosting ranking in search engines.

Internal Links: Provides enhancements for Internal Links. This will improve ranking in search engines when used correctly.

RSS: This helps enhance your blog feeds and also protects them from dumb web scrapers.

Import & Export: Import & Export data for re-installation or for backup purposes.

Edit files: Let’s you edit the contents of the .htaccess file. Warning! This is strictly for highly advanced users only. If you are a new user or want to play safe, just forget about this option and use other options normally.

Conclusion:

So as you may have understood by now, there are many obvious benefits to using a SEO plugin for WordPress and specially WordPress SEO by Yoast for your blog/website, than not using it.

Note:

It’s a good idea to take a backup of your blog/website, whenever you are experimenting with a plugin or adding a new one. I have used WordPress SEO by Yoast for over an year and have had no problems at all. Hopefully this will be the case with you as well.

Your Turn!

Have you used WordPress SEO by Yoast so far? Do you agree that it is the Top Best SEO Plugin for WordPress? If you are using it, can you share your experiences with us? Or are you using different WordPress SEO plugins? Would you mind sharing your feedback on them? Please feel free to share your thoughts and views by commenting below.