Google Ranks are not about Page Rank or Site Age-The BloggingTips.com example

I wish if no one talked about Page Rank anymore. But clearly, that’s not going to happen in the immediate future..and even worse there are more rumors on Page Rank than ever before. So with a little “oh no…not again” feeling…let’s do it…

What does it mean by increasing a sites page rank ?

That’s a better question. What does it really mean by increasing a site’s page rank ?

Does it mean that you get higher ranks on Google ?

Or does it mean that you get more traffic ?

Or does it mean that you get advantage over the others on any selected keyword?

The answer to the above is a fairly big NO.

An increase in Googe Page Rank, say from 3-5 does not mean that you will get any advantage over another website for a targeted term.

Here’s an example/proof.

Googling for “Blogging Tips” will give you this result. (On Google.com and on Rank Checker)

Numero Uno – www.bloggingtips.com
Who’s next? ME – www.problogger.net

Let’s do some basic analysis here for Blogging Tips v/s Pro Blogger.

Site	Blogging Tips	Problogger
Google Page Rank	5	6
Site Age	2 Years appx	4 Years appx
No. of backlinks	729 (google) 24930 (others)	6530 (google) 513832  (others)
Pages on Google indexed for “blogging tips” in Page Title	87	567
Total No: of pages indexed	3,060	7,540

(Figures may vary slightly)

I’m not going beyond this to analyze on page factors, page rank distribution etc as I think things are pretty clear. Bloggingtips.com is weak in all areas compared to Problogger except in one (or two).

Page Rank

It has a lower Page Rank – And none of the interior pages have higher pageranks except the homepage which ranks better than Problogger on all Google engines.

Pages Indexed and posting frequency

Problogger has more pages indexed, but the ratio with which BloggingTips.com has been posting articles is impressive, it has about half the amount of total pages indexed from Problogger to it’s credit in less than 20 months.

Site Age

Of course, Problogger is older.

Backlinks

Cannot think of a good reason why Darren should fall behind. And he is far ahead by a good margin.

These are just the basics here but the point is that despite Problogger being the authority, with all the edges, bloggingtips.com was able to make it to number one with two core points (in my opinion).

So why does Bloggingtips score over Problogger?

I think the answer is in..

– Domain Name and

– Back link anchor text

I think Kevin’s big big plus is the domain name. Remember this review on JC ? He bought the domain for just $ 1,250 and that was the best investment he made in my opinion.

The domain gives Kevin a perfect domain name match and right away puts him ahead of others. But that doesn’t mean that Google just gave him a number one position for the domain alone. There are other perfect matching domains out there that failed to make it to numero uno. But “blogging tips” was a rare one.

You know, Google weighs the content of a site more than anything else. Or so it should be, that when there’s a perfect keyword match in the domain with a complementary content, it’s like the perfect harmony.

Had Kevin bought Bloggingtricks.com or Bloggerstips.com, he would not have ranked number one for the much coveted “blogging tips”, even if he had kickass content in it.

Another reason that is a blessing is the number of anchor texts in backlinks. If you analyze the backlinks of two sites, you’ll find that ….

since Bloggingtips.com being a blog about blogging tips and has the domain name “bloggingtips.com”, attracted more backlinks with the anchor text “blogging tips”.

I think that this is the one single factor that favored Kevin.

Had he been on bloggingtricks.com(example) and were equally popular as now, he wouldn’t have crossed Problogger because he is not likely to get as many backlinks with the anchor text “blogging tips” even if the content is about blogging tips.

And had he been on bloggingtips.com and wrote on “Karate and Kung Fu”, Google wouldn’t have favored him either. Because the content wasn’t appropriate for the domain name.

Essentially, I’m trying to say that -

- Page Rank does not give you any edge what so ever in ranking for a particular term (it may differ in overall rankings however.)

- Age of a site is not relevant as it was earlier.

- Content of a website matters much, and with a perfect keyword match(to content, not keywords) on the domain – you have higher chances of ranking better.

- Anchor Texts in backlinks are still very, very relevant. If they are contextual and are relevant votes, nothing like it !