Free SEO For Your Blog
Posted by Mert Erkal on Jun 12, 2008 in Blog, Search Engine Optimization | 14 comments
My blog’s PageRank used to be 3 in November 2007. All of a sudden it dropped from 3 to 0 in one night. Since then I am trying to recover it. The good thing is my blog is not totally punished. My blog’s Google search engine results traffic tripled during the same period. However, PageRank is still perceived as one of the major indicators of a good quality blog by many bloggers/sponsors.
Since very long time I have been trying to recover my PageRank, but I have failed until today. When I see that http://www.sta.rtup.biz/ is offering free SEO for websites and blogs, I desperately jumped on it!
I signed up, and started a new discussion titled Free SEO for my blog Searchforblogging dot com I am very much surprised when I got a quick response from TheMaster.
I also got a very valuable response from a current member who has also suffered from PageRank faculty, but somehow recovered. See the post here: How to get reconsidered for PageRank after Google penalization
TheMaster could not fix the problem(I did not expect him to fix either!), but has given me some great ideas. I strongly suggest you to submit your SEO oriented problems to this site and get advice from TheMaster. It is completely free at this moment.
By the way, if you know how to recover from such a penalization, please tell me for the sake of humanity! Looking forward to hear your suggestions and experiences.
Mert, thanks for the great links to both the SEO site and the article on penalization. I agree with the article that you need to get away from Text Link Ads. Once I took their buttons off my business’s blog, PR went from 0 to 4 during the Google Rank update. Funny thing is that a client’s blog (www.mothersbookbag.org) which has very low traffic has the best PR of all the blogs I work on (PR5). The site serves as an add on to an enewsletter I do for them, otherwise it’s not much of a blog. My feeling is that it has good rank because all the links to it are from very reputable websites, mostly from nonprofit organizations. I think we need to look at the quality of our backlinks as much as what we’re looking to. But it’s more an art than a science, especially when Google is constantly changing the recipe.
Hi Mert!
Mine was also dropped from PR 4 to 0 and then it went back sitting at 3. What I did was…nothing! I kept posting as usual as nothing happened. I didn’t even send any letters to G.
, then act like innocent is my suggestion.
If you’re not making any violations to G’s terms or tried your best to hide them
Hi Mert
Thank you for sharing the valuable info. I’ve been stuck with a PR 0 and any ideas or tips will help me improve my PR
Ash
hey Mert,
It always sucks when Google starts acting without explanations…
Hi Mert.
Forget your pagerank – it is not a reliable indication of where you sit in the Googles search results.
Do a search using your keywords and keyphrases and see where you sit in the results. Concentrate on lifting your results placement, not your PR.
Google often puts in a PR penalty but still leaves your search results alone – there are many sites with poor PR’s but hit number one for their keywords – that is the aim of the game.
The best thing everyone could do is turn of their PR meters – all causes is unwarranted stress.
Stick to where you are placing in the search results – that is where the traffic is coming from – not your PR
cheers
les
the radical blogger
@Anne-Marie: It is really funny indeed
Thanks for letting me know!
@Louis: I think you are right, thanks!
@Les: Hi Les, you are absolutely right. Unfortunately still many advertisers/sponsors are taking PR into account, that is why I am losing money/credit. Otherwise, my search engine traffic has increased significantly during the same period. Thanks!
@Ash: You are always welcome
One of my other blog also being penalize from its PR3 to zero, but I don’t care much to try to take it back as since then I’m still receiving applications for direct advertisement on my blog. Maybe if my PR still there I would have more but who cares?
Hi Mert,
Here is the solution to get back your PR. Stop doing paid reviews on your blog. Remove the “Review Me” and “Hire Me” tags from all your older posts.
Hi Rajeev,
Thanks a lot. I will check my tags asap. By the way John Chow has a reviewme page, but he has a PageRank of 4. It is ridiculous to see that the bad boy of blogosphere is still having PR4, whereas bloggers like me are punished. It does not make sense at all.
Excellent post and a great find. Have submitted the website for some SEO advice.
@Mert- Rajiv is right. Stop doing sponsored posts by services like PayPerPost, Social Spark, LoudLaunch or ReviewMe.
First they pay you $10-15 for sponsored posts when you have a respectable Page Rank, only to kill it. And they don’t even ask you if it hurts, when Google spanks you.
Doing sponsored posts is not worth the $2-5 posts you’ll be offered to do, when you don’t have a PR then… thanks to them!
Mert, this is a very interesting post and the replies are helpful to all of us. I think the amount of traffic you are getting is probably the most important. I have a good pr rank but traffic is still minimal. I think I’ll check into the free SEO site too.
Hi Mert,
You raised a good question, but if you look back into John’s blog PR history, you will find that last year his blog’s PR was 6, and as he started sponsored reviews, Google slashed his PR to 4 in Oct,2007 PR update. Since then, John is not able to elevate his blog’s PR even in recent PR update in Mar-Apr,2008.
I hope you got the insight about doing Sponsored reviews.
Did Google give you a reason to why you lost page rank? I’m interested to know the madness behind their decision. Dropping from a pr3 to pr0 sure is a kick in the but! wow!
Best of luck with this issue!