Fact: High Google PageRank does not directly guarantee good search engine placement.  Although PageRank does factor into the SEO equation, page relevance, good quality content and links are the essential factors of a well balanced SEO campaign. For example, I’ve seen relatively new websites with no PageRank perform better in the search engine rankings than websites with a supposed PageRank of 4.

For the SEO geeks like me, the discussion and speculation can be seen as nothing more than inside baseball. Many SEO firms tout that increasing a site’s PageRank is the end-all and be-all to search engine optimization, but in my experience this is not the case.  Leading people this way I guess makes SEO more mystical and easier to sell, but it takes the focus away from the fundamentals of a good SEO campaign. In my opinion, having been inside the game for more than 10 years, placing a high emphasis on creating a high PageRank just for the sake of doing so really amounts to nothing.

Why? Because:

1. PageRank can be falsified with clever redirection techniques.  I have seen domains for sale with a PageRank of 6 only to find out that the PageRank was actually a 0.  How do I know that?  I was the purchaser of such a domain.
2. PageRank can be manipulated by those who overuse no-follow tags within a website. Google is rewriting its algorithm to address such abuses.
3. As soon as you think you have it figured out, Google without notice changes the parameters of the playing field and the rules of the game.
4. Focusing on just one aspect of your SEO campaign can actually make your site look unnatural. I have seen Google time and time again give websites “a haircut” (lopping off PageRank numbers) after a PageRank update.
5. It can take four to five months for a Google PageRank to update, so it really isn’t a good measure of the quality of your current SEO campaign.
6. It pits your site against the Google algorithm.  I caution and tell clients all the time that they are not competing with Google to get PageRank, but instead are competing with their rivals. SEO efforts should focus on outpacing your competitors on a keyword-by-keyword basis.  For example, I have seen certain SEO strategies work well for one keyword and not work so well for others.

So your best course of action is to focus on the fundamentals of SEO. I have learned that if you focus on the fundamentals of your search engine placement, then your Google PageRank will increase over time naturally.

These fundamentals include:

1. Well written content that’s written for your audience and centered on your keyword market focus
2. Congruent meta information, which is in alignment with your written content
3. External, contextual and editorial links to pages throughout your site
4. Balanced internal link flow within the website
5. Increased exposure and brand identity through every Internet marketing means possible, including but not limited to blogging, article submissions, video, press releases, etc.

To put it another way, a well optimized website arises when the market focuses of your content, meta tag information, external and internal links are in alignment with one another. Then and only then do you have an optimized website. If you make these element your focus, and not simply PageRank, then a quality PageRank will follow.

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Special thanks to Bruce Westbrook for editing this blog post.

Hello again everyone.  Thank you again for reading our Internet Marketing blog…  We hope that you enjoy this post.  To be completely honest with you, we had to really pare down this post in order to get it into the blog today because increasingly there are more and more variables and avenues to increasing your search engine placement, your Internet exposure and traffic to your website.

The one constant in our business is change.  Our Internet marketing company spends a large percentage of our time developing and testing new Internet marketing not just SEO strategies to increase the reach of our clients as the Internet expands.  This post is designed to kick off the discussion of website issues that will have a negative impact on your search engine placement.  This list is by no means exhaustive.  Consider this post therefore as a living document.  There is one guarantee about this subject and that is this will be expanded and updated overtime so stay tuned and enjoy.  If you have any relevant comments, then feel free to leave them.  We look forward to the dialogue.

So just how do you torpedo your website within the Google search results?

1. Have little to no content on the key web pages of the website.  Being in the industry for years, we have heard virtually every excuse in the book as to why website owners don’t place quality written content on their key pages. The excuses span the gambit from, “We are a custom home builder company and our users must see our homes first” to “Pictures sell. We are an ecommerce transactional site.” All of these statements might be true, however the fact still remains that at the time of this writing search engines are content based.  If you don’t have a minimum amount of indexable content (250-300 words) on your key web pages, then your site will not have a chance at placing well, period.

2. Substituting style over indexablity.  Although this is becoming less and less of an issue, it still exists. Many business owners are lured by the beauty and slickness of a splash landing page or a flash intro.  These pages are not search engine friendly. However, what is worse, some businesses go all in and opt for an entirely flash coded website.  The search engines are evolving, but they still aren’t really able to read text embedded on a flash web architecture.  If you are in the process of updating your website or building a website, then take this to heart.  Why would you pay lots of money to have a website developed only for it to be invisible to the public?

3. Copy your content from other websites — there’s nothing search engine spiders like less than plagiarized content. Paraphrasing published content might offend the search engine spiders less — but be aware that just because you change a sentence or two around doesn’t mean that you won’t get penalized. In fact, if the Google and Yahoo search engine spiders realize that you’re posting plagiarized content, not only will your site fail to rank effectively, but it might also be penalized and pushed off of the search engine rankings altogether!

4.    Never update your content — if you want to fail miserably at SEO, simply post all of your content at once and then leave your site to ossify for years! Search engine spiders and other website operators don’t like sites that never produce fresh material. For extra demerits, try self-plagiarizing content you’ve already written and passing that off as “new fresh material!”

5.    Avoid linking to good, relevant sites — if you really want to waste your SEO efforts, don’t bother building links out to relevant sites. Instead, focus on either linking to nobody or linking to every two-bit irrelevant site you can find on the net. Hire a link farm service that hasn’t been vetted. And be sure to include links in an obnoxious, glaring, hard-to-read format — that way you’ll guarantee that whatever visitors accidentally show up at your site leave quickly.  Tip: Don’t be Link Scrooge.  We are not implying that you need to link directly to your competitors from your home page or advertise their specials, but do link to relevant trusted sites in your business community.  Being a good resource to your niche is as important as having a properly coded sitemap and keeping it updated on your website.

6.    Use obscure or bizarre long domain names — so what if the domains for “usedcars.com” and “oldautos.com” have been taken? Who cares — go for “ihaveoldcarsthatIwouldliketosell.com” and “pleasebuymyusedcars.com.” Or even better yet, attach to other larger domains (such as geocities.com) so that your site is buried nice and deep. There’s nothing web searchers or engines like less than distractingly long names THAT AREN’T RELEVANT.

7.    Forget about theme — your thoughts wander, so why shouldn’t the thoughts on your website? Sure, you may want to sell used cars or used car parts and optimize for those keywords, but why not share your general thoughts with the web community as well? Failing to focus your content and thematic SEO objectives will guarantee a ridiculously low ROI!

8.    Repeat key phrases and keywords ad nauseam for no reason — why not just write the words “used cars” and “buy used cars now” over and over and over again until you get carpal tunnel syndrome? Surely, if your website contains tens of thousands of references to one of the web’s most common key phrases; you’ll drive up your SEO rankings, won’t you? Absolutely not! The search engines may not be as savvy as HAL from 2001 or the computer networks from The Matrix or Terminator, but they can sniff out schemes to defraud them. So if you want to send your rankings through the floor, bulk-up on fluff copy.