Google Ranks are not about Page Rank or Site Age-The BloggingTips.com example
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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 -
Hi Mani,
Interesting review of the sites and your opinion on PR! A very similar example would be..
Search Term: “daily seo blog”
Sites: http://www.dailyseoblog.com/ & http://www.seomoz.org/blog
In this case… bloggingtips.com being you & problogger.net being seomoz.org
Cheers!
Yea, interesting one that – Vinay.
On a side note: In the blogging tips case, I guess Darren isn’t even targeting “blogging tips” anymore. Not found on title/desc !
so, I think i was right about telling someone that SEO=backlinks
Good post Mani. I actually wrote something similar about 16 months ago : The importance of having keywords in your domain name.
You have touched upon some interesting points though. It doesn’t surprise me that I am above ProBlogger as the biggest factors in ranking are domain name and anchor text. The keyword ‘Blogging Tips’ is my domain name therefore that carries a lot of weight. However, most people link to me using that anchor text too so that helps greatly as well.
You also have to bear in mind that Darren Rowse isn’t actively targeting that keyword so it’s actually quite impressive that he ranks so high for it. There are some other blogs which are targeting this keyword actively via anchor text in their incoming links and are not placed as high (for example blogsessive.com/).
For most other competitive keywords ProBlogger will know doubt rank much much higher than Bloggingtips.com because it is a higher traffic site and in most cases, gets more incoming links (ie. pingbacks etc).
Bottom line, anchor text still rules. This is why so many people buy and sell text links and it’s why Google still kicks up hell when people do so as it’s one of the main factors in their algorithm.
Again, great article. A good example of how domain names and anchor text influence a position in the SERPs.
Good analyze with nice example! I thought pagerank is the only matter to get higher position in SERP. But it its really tough to ask others to link through the anchor text! Thanks for sharing!
suprising result.and we are all killing ourselvs in Pageranking and backlinks while inetelligent guys are making efforts in targeted articles.An eye oppening reviews!
Very well laid out…cleared up a bunch in my mind
Cool little article. I have felt this way for a while. I am on the same page about the whole page rank thing too. I just feel it blinds people from the things which really matter in this industry.
Though i do differ on one little thing. You mentioned that since Blogging tips was getting links with blogging tip as an anchor text in them, that was why they were ranking, course that and the words being in the url and content.
True but say that they weren’t getting links with blogging tips in the anchor and had the same domain name. I think they would have been still pretty strong for this keyword solely on the basis of it being in the anchor text and in the content. Probably still above Prp Blogger
I think people underestimate how important it is to have the keywords in the anchor text.
really nice information gathering, can you tell me how often google update page rank ?
Veer, from the trends we can “guess” a three-four months interval before each p[age rank update. However this is solely Googles decision.
I agree. Authority in search engine placement are more directed towards content writing and relevance through blogging since it is the only way google and other search engine has been a landing space for internet users.