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Google PageRank: What does it tell you?

October 4, 2010 By

(Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes)

Remember the 80’s movie Can’t Buy Me Love? Patrick Dempsey plays Ronald Miller, a geeky unpopular kid who ends up paying a popular girl, Amanda Peterson, to act as his girlfriend so others will think that he, too, is cool. Guess what, it worked!

Now hold that thought…

A while back, I made a post about Alexa Ranking and stated that although she gives you a good gauge of where your blog stands, there are other ways to measure success for your site. As you can guess by the title, Google PageRank is one of them.

If Alexa is your hot female friend, Google PageRank is your nerdy sidekick.

Rather than looking at your average daily visitors and your average pageviews over the last three months, like Alexa does, Google PageRank uses a ballot-type system. Here’s how Google describes it:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.

What does Google Pagerank mean for you?

Well, it means that not all backlinks (inbound links) are equal. If an immensely popular website links to your blog, it will have a much greater effect than a link from a website that was just created a few days ago. It makes total sense though: if CNN links to my site, it should carry more weight then my mom’s personal blog, right? If we get enough of these giants to rub shoulders with, then Google bumps us up their scale. So when you’re looking for people or websites to have links leading to your blog, you might want to choose wisely.

The Google PageRank system is actually a complex algorithm that most of us will never really need to be that intimate with. All you need to know is that every site starts with PageRank 0 and as it gains more important “friends”, it goes up. (A site that isn’t even on the Google radar is PageRank ‘Unranked’.) The highest possible PageRank is 10 but only a small number of sites get there. Even a site with an incredible amount of views like ESPN only has PageRank 8 even though it currently has an Alexa Rank of 78.

Just like with Alexa, you can also get a Google PageRank Firefox add-on so you can see the each site’s score as you browse. I actually use SearchStatus, which shows me both (and other metrics) on my status bar.

Anyway, the point is, don’t just go for sheer quantity of backlinks.

Quality of the links are very important.

I’d rather have a link from a site with a PageRank 4 than a hundred links from sites with PageRank 0. By the way, PageRank 4 is really good, even though it sounds low. That said, if that PageRank 4 site has a lot of links going out, we all lose value.

So which indicator should we use, Alexa or Google PageRank?

You can use both since they tell a slightly different story. One way to look at them is Alexa ranking tells you how popular are you are while Google PageRank tells you how many powerful friends you have.

In the meantime, keep posting fresh material on your blog because every time you add content, Google indexes from your site and that will also help boost your PageRank. And that will save you time over the long term: A decent Google PageRank can save you an hour a day.

But keep your eyes open for Amanda Peterson and when you see her, do whatever you can to make her your girlfriend, even if you have to give up your entire summer’s worth of lawn mowing savings.

Gabe Young Gabe Young is a business professional with an entrepreneurial spirit. Gabe has an MBA and managed IT departments in the Fortune 500, creating strategies and tactics for some of the most popular websites. Visit Gabe at Free Blog Help dot Com.
Filed Under: Getting Started Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Google AdSense: text vs. image ads, which is best?

December 28, 2009 By

(Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes)

Gabe Young scores again with solid information about monetizing your blog with Adsense. Gabe is a true businessman at heart, as well as being an excellent communicator. Visit Gabe at Free Blog Help.

Google AdSense: text vs. image ads, which is best?

-by Gabe Young

Those of you who have tried Google AdSense (let’s face it, who hasn’t?) had to make an important decision at one point — “Should I go with an all text ad or an image ad?” Ironically, many people start by letting Google choose by simply selecting the ‘Text and image ads’, which is the default setting. Is that bad?

Well, yes and no. I get asked that question from time to time and it really all depends. If you do a little research on what has been successful for others, you’ll find a mixed bag. For instance, some say that text ads are more effective because they blend into the rest of the site. Conversely, others claim that image ads bring in more revenue since they are more visually appealing.

Let’s look at some of the pros and cons of Adsense text and image ads.

Adsense text ads

Pros

  • Can be configured to blend in with the site content
  • Almost all advertisers have text ads available
  • Take up minimal space per advertiser, leading to more per ad block

Cons

Looks very bland and generic

Adsense image ads

Pros

  • Can be visually attractive
  • Are larger and easier to see
  • Can tell a story through basic animation

Cons

  • Fewer advertisers can be displayed since one image could replace up to five text ads
  • Some visitors are “blind” to image ads (they have been conditioned to ignore banners)
  • Can limit the number of advertisers since not everyone has an image ad

One way to determine whether text or image ads would be better is simply looking at your market. Niches in glamorous industries would benefit from sexier ads, where image ads excel. Conversely, blogs that focus on topics that visitors just want to read through quickly, text ads are probably more appropriate. Below are some examples of categories where one type of ad may have an advantage over the other type are:

  • Text Ads: Business, Science, Careers, Politics, Self-Help, Making Money, Health, Educational
  • Image Ads: Gaming, Sports and Fitness, Music, Movies, TV, Fashion, Arts, Celebrity News
  • Text and/or Image Ads: Technology, Auto, Pets, Food and Drink

By no means are the aforementioned gospel but it gives you a starting point. You may have a micro-niche that bucks the trend.

In short, the question of text vs. image doesn’t have a clear cut answer. It really depends on what type of site you have, what you’re trying to accomplish with the ads, and who your audience is. Personally, for Google AdSense, I prefer text ads because I already have sponsors with image links throughout the page. I choose to display text ads with a look and feel that’s similar to the rest of the site. Although that has worked well for me, I may still use an image ad from time to time, just to test its effectiveness. Like all other moneymaking tactics, a lot of trial and error is involved. Experiment to see which works better for you.

Gabe Young Gabe Young is a business professional with an entrepreneurial spirit. Gabe has an MBA and managed IT departments in the Fortune 500, creating strategies and tactics for some of the most popular websites. Visit Gabe at Free Blog Help.
Filed Under: Making Money Tagged With: , ,
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