Affordable Website Promotion

Could PR0 Links Actually Help SEO?

Keith Lunt — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:01:10 +0000

Common perception states that for a link to be worthwhile, it must be from at least a PR2 page. But, is that actually still the case?

If you take a look at the Google PageRank algorithm, you will see that a link on a PR0 / PR1 page is worth next to nothing. However, many observers know that these days PageRank counts for nothing.

But, what I have noticed is that time and time again in paid blogging, the same advertisers keep coming back and buying links of PR0, even grey barred, websites. It is not just one campaign in which they buy the links, thinking they are saving a lot of cash with a PR0 link, these advertisers buy hundreds of such links over an extended period of time.

Over enough time to have decided whether the first batch of links have worked!

Does this mean that they are continuing to invest in a lot of useless links, or are they very astute and know something that most of the rest of us who want PR4+ links do not appreciate?

I suppose there is the ‘clever’ aspect here within the buying. You can buy 3 or 4 PR0 links for the same price as a PR2 link. But you then have to remember that the ranking that we are looking at is not Google’s current ranking. It is a snapshot, potentially taken up to 6 months ago when Google really delays the update. So it could be that the advertiser got lucky and a lot of the sites in reality have better ranks than they show for.

I actually doubt this, or at least whether it would work often enough to make financial sense. A buyer would need more than 1 in 3 to be showing PR0 instead of PR2 to make it worth while.

So, assuming that these people who are working as agencies for other sites are not being totally daft, could there be something in it? Well we are talking blogs here and google does give a special interest in blogs. I know full well that if I publish a link to a new site in one of my blogs then Google will pick that link up straight away and might even list the new site the next day. Link from a normal web page and Googlebot might be along within a week and then take a day or two to list the newly linked to site.

I have to say that on balancing everything I do think Google is throwing out its own rulebook and it is possible that within blogs, PR0 links have a lot more weight than we credit them for. Just as long as the blog is listed on Google!

We Could Do With A September PageRank Update

Keith Lunt — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 10:20:04 +0000

It cannot have missed the attentions of many website owners that PageRank has not, on the whole, updated since April. Easter weekend in fact. Aside from a few small tweaks here and there very little changes have taken place for 5 months.

Given that sites that had been around for a few months when the last update took place might only have got a PR0, some quite old sites with a lot of good links could still be showing a PR0.

Whilst most PageRank sceptics will say that it doesn’t really matter to traffic, it does and it can make a whole lot of difference. If you have the Google Toolbar installed and as you enter a site you see it is PR0, your first impressions are set as it is a new and unimportant site.

But, if you see PR5, PR6 or above then there is a good chance that you lean back in your chair and prepare to browse around this highly authoritative site that you have just stumbled upon. This means more pages read and more chance of uncovering interesting material and maybe you deciding to follow their RSS feed and come back at a later date.

So PageRank does matter and a September update for all of those that are waiting would be fantastic!

A September PageRank Update?

Keith Lunt — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:31:55 +0000

We have not had a PageRank update for almost 5 months and now watchers are saying that they are seeing the early signs of Google getting ready for an update. So, will there be a major September Google PageRank update?

I personally think that there will be. It has not happened for a while and Google is desperate to keep us using the PageRank toolbar widget, so it must update soon. Why is it desperate for us to maintain the use of that tool? Well that is a whole series that I am supposed to be typing up when I get the chance – check back in a couple of weeks and hopefully it will be ready by then!

Aside from that, really any changes to your search engine positions will happen week on week as there are the smaller changes to the PageRank that Google does not show to us. It is just once in a while that the search engine teases us by giving us a new insight into its ranking of our websites.

On the whole, an update is nothing to fear. As long as you have good content and so on you will be seeing pretty much the same traffic now as next week, whether or not it updates. It is only if you are selling links that a climb could be excellent news and a drop devastation!

Limiting Your Company

Keith Lunt — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:41:00 +0000

If you are a UK business, you have several options for how you run your organisation.

You might work as a sole trader / partnership, in which case there is little difference between you and the business.

But you might prefer to operate a limited company as that will give you a level of protection by separating your personal finances from those of the business.

There are costs involved in setting up and maintaining a limited company and you need to file accounts every year, but you are limiting your liability if the company fails or is sued. I was recommended by an accountant that it was ideal for people handling large sums of customers’ money and other such risks.

Improve Traffic By Reducing Dropouts

Keith Lunt — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 12:37:31 +0000

Here is a true story for you of how important it is to look after the customers that arrive on your website and managing what they are seeing.

This website offered a fantastic deal of a £1 domain name & hosting offer. It is a great offer and one not to be missed.

Unfortunately, when they first started the offer the price of the domain name was shown as full, with the discount only being shown once the potential buyer went to the checkout. This led to a 30% drop out rate on the shopping basket.

Now they have changed the way the basket works so that the £1 price is shown the moment you add a domain (click the link and give it a go, if you have not already done so). This way it is obvious to customers straight away that they are getting the domain for £1, not £12.99.

The effect, well the 30% drop out rate became just 1%. For the sake of a simple change to their basket they had increased the uptake on the offer from 70% to 99% – near enough half as many sales again. And this is without having to invest time and effort into finding new people to visit the website.

That is why it is so vital that you check your website stats and make sure that the number of abandoned baskets is low and investigate why baskets are being abandoned!

£1 Domain Name & Hosting!

Keith Lunt — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:05:48 +0000

Here is an offer that has been brought to my attention that I wanted to share with people – for just £1 you can buy a brand new .info domain name and get free hosting!

What’s more, the offer includes their sitebuilder package, which allows you to create a website with 10 pages, 5 email addresses, picture and video galleries and an MP3 Jukebox.

All this for the price of just £1, whereas it would normally cost you between £8 and £12 for a .info domain name. And that is with your annual hosting!

It is hard to see how you could create a basic 10 page website and at the end of the year not have made a reasonable profit on it. Even if you just created a small site about your product and then fed visitors into your main website to buy and complete, then you would be seen by the search engines as having these links from a separate site, on different hosting servers.

The benefits of a second URL just to capture a few people’s interest is huge and can be a good source of traffic. So well worth looking at.

To find out more about the £1 url offer, follow the link. And let me know what you think of it and if you create a site!

Using Expired Domain Redirect Traffic To Increase Your Website Traffic

Placing Effort Into Retaining Visitors

Keith Lunt — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:59:37 +0000

Plenty of people everywhere are asking the same question – “How can I increase my website traffic?” Yet many people overlook an essential part of this area and that is in retaining the visitors that you have got.

It’s fine to spend days link building and article writing. You can spend thousands on pay per click and banner adverts and you can even run affiliate schemes.

But, these all have one thing in common – they are costly and are aimed at driving new visitors.

It is in fact far cheaper to work at retaining current visitors. In fact, it is free. Instead of worrying how to attract the next 100 visitors, a lot of which might just instantly bounce, instead concentrate on appealing to those visitors that you already have.

For example, on a blog use Feedburner and watch which of your posts are generating the most interest from RSS subscribers. Use Google Analytics to see which pages are read most often and what terms people are using to find your site.

Now, go away and write more content to appeal to these people. If they have already found your site, especially the RSS users, then give them a reason to keep reading. That reason is more of what they are looking for.

By doing this you are slowly building a loyal following of readers. You might be surprised at what they are preferring to read, but give them what they want and they will keep coming back.

And then they might start sharing posts and pages with their friends, bookmarking you on social media and generally helping you to find more readers.

Yes, it is a lot slower than investing in PPC. But, the advantage is that it is building readers that are genuinely interested in you and your site rather than random visitors who might only stay on the site 2 seconds.

The downside is that regular readers are less likely to click on your own PPC adverts, but with a regular band of readers, they should be helping to spread the word of your site and it is giving you a target to work with when creating new content.

Instant Website Traffic

Keith Lunt — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 17:41:15 +0000

If you are wanting to create an instant stream of traffic to your website then there is an easy way, although not necessarily that cheap!

You can instead of building a website from scratch buy an existing website. I’ve just been approached by an existing business without a successful website, asking if I would be willing to sell them one of my portfolio of websites. Of course, being in it just for the money, I said I would consider any reasonable offer!

Is it a good way to go though? You really need to look at the existing traffic and what you could do with that website to nurture and increase that website traffic. But, if there is some traffic to the site and it looks as though the traffic will last, then buying an existing website can turn out long term to be very good value for money.

What you need to look at is not what it costs you, but how much traffic the site is receiving and how much it would cost you in Pay Per Click and other advertising streams to generate that much traffic.

If that equation shows that you will pay a lot less per thousands hits by buying a website than you would through other advertising streams, then you know which way is the cheapest and which method you should be looking at!

So, if you want an instant hit on website traffic, think of buying an existing website with plenty of traffic. It could be well worth it in the long run.

Watch Your Traffic To Increase Website Traffic

Keith Lunt — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 21:14:50 +0000

By watching your traffic carefully, you really can increase your website traffic. So, what must you do?

Well how can watching statistics help you gain more visitors? We will look at two elements. The first is encouraging existing visitors to come back and the second is finding new visitors.

You can use various tools to monitor your website traffic, depending on how you use the site. You might use Google Analytics to track page views and search engine terms and Feedburner to track readers of your RSS feed.

By carefully studying your traffic – looking at how people are finding your site; the pages they are reading and for blogs the pages regular readers are viewing – you can determine which of the pages are attracting visitors and what is the most successful content.

For example, if Feedburner shows that a particular post has been read a lot more than other posts, you know that the title and content of the post has attracted more interest from your loyal readers. Therefore, you can write more content based around these same themes.

You can also see what search terms are creating traffic to your website and write specific information based on these terms. Not only does this increase your search engine optimisation on these terms, but it also provides the searching visitors with what they are looking for.

When you start to write far more targeted material your readers will come back more often and find you a bigger wealth of information. Hopefully, some will digg your posts and share on Facebook and Twitter and so on.

In all, use your statistics packages to see what your visitors want to read, provide it and hopefully see your traffic going up.

Caution! Experts Who Optimise Websites

Keith Lunt — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 20:59:31 +0000

A little tale of caution for you today!

A web design customer asked me yesterday for a quote to optimise his site for a local search term. So, I did my research.

Is the term worthwhile?
On the Google keywords tool, it came back with zero monthly searches, which I was expecting as I have a good knowledge of what local search terms are relevant to this area.

So I checked his site’s position for that term and he was nowhere to be seen, but my own website (without direct effort) was second. A quick look back over Google Analytics for 15 months and this confirmed – no-one uses those search terms.

Sometimes traditional marketing is best
I emailed him back explaining this and saying that he would be better off spending money on direct advertising as, at the moment, there is no traffic on the terms.

The sting in our tale
But where is the warning in this tale? Well he thanked me for my time and said that he had not chosen the terms himself, he had been approached by some SEO wizards promising him first place placement and loads of traffic with it, for a total of £1,500.

Of course, my research and honesty had just shown to him that the money would have been wasted. So the moral of the tale is, if experts approach you with great offers, check that the offers really are worth while and spend time on your own research first.