Page Rank

I am here to tell you first hand, do not buy paid links. Many will tell you that paid links do not incur a penalty with Google, but I tend to disagree. Let me give you a case in point.

My site blah.com. (that's not the real name, the real name is kept secret to protect my real job)

Once upon a time (a month ago) blah.com was rated #1 on all 3 search engines for the phrase "Blah". That makes sense for sure. I've owned this domain for more than 5 years, but only started using it for a web site about 6-9 months ago. It's been #1 or #2 for the phrase "Blah" almost since day 1.

Then I was reading in some SEO forum that it's more effective to buy one good PR paid link than doing a ton of free directory submissions. I'd like to meet the guy who made that suggestion.

Anyway, to make a long story short, life is never that easy. Now that I've purchased my link, my site has dropped out of the top on google...how low did it go? Let me put it this way, I got tired of hitting the next button. Now, I am still listed somewhere (i.e. not banner), but I am being penalized for buying a paid link (I'm sure of it).

To compound the situation, I am having trouble getting the link dir that I purchased the link on to remove it. I've sent them 4 e-mails with no responses. My next step is to try to involve paypal...but then what?

So, now I need to do everything I can to remove the link, then beg google for re-inclusion, admitting that I've been bad (even though I didn't know it) and saying that I'll never do it again.

Many "experts" will tell you that I am not incurring a penalty for this, they are WRONG. Nothing else has changed on my site and "Blah" is not a common search term (even at #1 I only got 10-20 hits a day on the site, but I was starting to get ranked on other keywords as well and traffic was starting to grow).

So Paid Link Penalties are real, deal with it, don't do it...find a better way. Nuff said.

One of the most over discussed topics on the net is whether or not PageRank actually matters to search engine results. 99% of the time, the discussion ends with some "authority" giving you an example of a search which shows a lower pagerank site higher than one with a higher pagerank.

What a load of bull!

Let me tell you this, PageRank counts. Now, that statement requires a little extra explanation. Let me give you some point form notes:

• 2 sites with the same PageRank on the Google toolbar do not necessarily have the exact same pagerank!
  
• When all other things are equal (SEO wise), then PageRank is the deciding factor for search engine placement.
  
• The PageRank you see on the toolbar, or by looking at those "Future PageRank" sites is almost always out of date.
  

So, if you have a site with PageRank 3 and you're comparing it to another site with PageRank 3, they are not the same PageRank. PageRank is more finely granulated than a 0-10 numbering system.

Here's my concrete example (you knew it was coming, didn't you).

I had a web site: http://recipes.gocurious.com, entitled "Best Ever Recipes". I added a bunch of content to the site and got some backlinks.

I then decided to register a domain: best-ever-recipes.com because I know that domain name helps in SEO results. I then permanently forwarded the old to the new (so that I didn't lose any of my old backlinks) and proceeded to get backlinks to http://www.best-ever-recipes.com and add more content.

Just before the latest PR update, I decided to use new software on the recipe site, Serendipity instead of Jooma. My better half (who does all the work on that site) was not happy about loosing the old site's look. So, I decided to split the sites into two distinct sites. The old one using Joomla and the new one using Serendipity.

Now, just before the split the site was ranked #1 or #2 on google for the phrase "Best Ever Recipes", depending on which day you did the search. It was also ranked well on "Best Recipes Ever".

Apres split, both sites had PageRank 3 (cool), but neither site was #1 or #2 on the phrase "Best Ever Recipes". The old site (http://recipes.gocurious.com) was ranked #9 and the new site not ranked at all even though it had the exact same domain name and had the phrase "Best Ever Recipes" all over the place.

This leads me to one conclusion.

3/2 = 3 (in google terms...in other words, there is a lot of difference between 3 and 4 in PageRank), and PageRank matters. You can take a high 3 in pagerank and split it to two low 3's.

The new site is coming along well and getting ranked much better than the old (hooray to Serendipity), but the old still wins on the phrase "Best Ever Recipes"...

For those of you new to Project AdSense, this blog is not necessarily meant to draw conclusions, it is meant to document what did/didn't work so that others can learn from it. The bottom line is that PageRank matters, it is always out of date (on the toolbar) and getting quality backlinks is something that you should strive for.