Google search terms question

[Sandstone]

Over the past week I have had a noticeable increase in traffic to my blog. Looking at the Stats page it appears that this increase is from Google search terms. I am not getting bombarded by traffic by any means but there is an increase. I looked at my page rank and I am at 1. I understand this is rather pathetic? Is it possible I was at a 0 before? If so then I think the increase may be from being a 0 and then moving up to a 1. Is there anything I need to do to maintain the traffic?

[Orionjoel]

I doubt that the pagerank will have any bearing at all on your search traffic. Or at least very little.

Depending on the age of your site, it may be that google is just change how it ranks pages in results and your page is showing a little higher. Or maybe it is that people are just searching for different keywords that ultimately leads them to your page.

If you have been updating your blog more often it could also be that you are getting more notice from google when they are indexing pages because of more frequent content updates.

At the end of the day that pagerank you are seeing could be out of date or may have only just changed, there is no way to know exactly when or how your pagerank has changed.

[Orionjoel]

Just a little further clarification.

I just did out of interest a check on the PR for my site (in the signature) it is over 18 months old and shows up as a PR 0 site. However in my stats for this month I am showing at least 50+ referrals from Google search.

I also show up reasonably in a number of different searches, however the ones searches that find there way to my site are often some really strange ones, but it is releveant when you look at the post they go to, just not expected.

[chadcharlie]

Pagerank has a TREMENDOUS amount to do with your Google search results and thus referrals. I'm not sure what was driving the answer above mine. Google coined the term Pagerank and it suggests exactly that: the rank of a page, based most heavily on credible links into your site, as far as most SEO students can tell.

To maintain it, keep producing good content and positively reinforce incoming links. Don't bait them necessarily, but write content that other people will want to share.

In my experience, one up in PR will bring another 100 uniques to the site, up to PR 3 then it becomes more drastically exponential. ...well let me rephrase that, PR1 doesn't necessarily generate 100 a day, but 2 is near 200 and 3 is pretty consistently 300+, not counting Stumble or Reddit (ect) traffic. Hit 5 and you are generating nice traffic.

Lastly, without sounding unnatural in your copy, be conscious of the subject you're writing about, and use specific words when talking about it. If you were musing about Subjective Reality, a sentence like, "When we're dealing with Subjective Reality, it becomes problematic yada, yada," is a MUCH stronger sentence than, "When we're dealing with this mindest, it becomes problematic yada, yada."

Take care,
Chad.

[GregD]

I suggest not to start a debate about PR because there is no end to it, there are plenty of people on both sides.

Instead I can tell you an example from actual facts. There is an adsense article directory I was part of and members there who are regulars with many many articles always told new article writers asking about "when will money come" that it takes time for the articles to mature. Now this is not a concept I still understand well, but there are just too many examples where if you create content it will all of a sudden start getting Google traffic some 2-6 months later.

Similarly, there are also examples, including 1 weight loss website of mine, which are completely put aside and never touched for more than 6 months even a year and they just gain page rank and traffic. For example years ago when i was working on my weight loss one, it was 0 PR and little traffic all the while I was actively working on it. I left it as my life went in another direction at that time only to discover several years later that it became PR 2 with a little bit of traffic all by itself.

Lastly, to add that if you do write interesting articles then chances are that you will get links from people. Also if you did a little bit of SEO yourself it takes time for pages to get registered, for links to be found, etc. So you can have a positive effect later of work that you do today.

Best what you can do is record your progress every day. I do this in my Excel. I record PR, traffic, pages indexed, # of backlinks and some analytics data. This way I can know when something happens which of my actions could have cause it.

Damn i wrote a lot - sorry

[executivecoaching]

Hey guys, I used to run an SEO company and have many sites sitting in the #1 spot for some very tough terms. Although PR is nice, it does not necessarily effect your search engine results. I have a site that is PR3 in the #1 spot in a very tough niche and got the site there in 6 months and beat out other sites which have been around for over 5 years, PR5, with ten times the amount of links I have. There are probably over 50 items on my SEO check list that make a difference in the result. So PR is nice, but not the determining factor.

Hope that helps

[mikethedrummer44]

Originally Posted by chadcharlie

Pagerank has a TREMENDOUS amount to do with your Google search results and thus referrals. I'm not sure what was driving the answer above mine. Google coined the term Pagerank and it suggests exactly that: the rank of a page, based most heavily on credible links into your site, as far as most SEO students can tell.

To maintain it, keep producing good content and positively reinforce incoming links. Don't bait them necessarily, but write content that other people will want to share.

In my experience, one up in PR will bring another 100 uniques to the site, up to PR 3 then it becomes more drastically exponential. ...well let me rephrase that, PR1 doesn't necessarily generate 100 a day, but 2 is near 200 and 3 is pretty consistently 300+, not counting Stumble or Reddit (ect) traffic. Hit 5 and you are generating nice traffic.

Lastly, without sounding unnatural in your copy, be conscious of the subject you're writing about, and use specific words when talking about it. If you were musing about Subjective Reality, a sentence like, "When we're dealing with Subjective Reality, it becomes problematic yada, yada," is a MUCH stronger sentence than, "When we're dealing with this mindest, it becomes problematic yada, yada."

Take care,
Chad.

Nuuuuhhhhhhh uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh