By Herman Drost

What is the Page Rank (PR) of your web site? Never heard of it you answer and what difference will it make for generating more sales? It's a little green bar you will see on the Google Tool Bar if you have it installed. Site owners used to watch this bar like a hawk and work feverishly to increase it for their sites to get better rankings. Google doesn't place as much value on it now and you will see a few sites that get high rankings even with a low PR, however most high ranking sites at least have a PR of 4 or higher.

 

Google's Toolbar PageRank feature is used to determine the quantity and quality of the sites pointing to your own. If there are no other sites that point to your own site it'll be difficult to get high rankings in the search engines.

The toughest competition are the top 20 sites that contain the main keywords you use in your web copy and people enter in the search engines.

PageRank Explained

http://www.google.com/technology/

Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. 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." A page that links to many pages with high PageRank it receives a high rank also. If there are no links to a web page there is no support for that page. How to Check Google Page Rank for Your Web Site

Google's Toolbar PageRank toolbar.google.com

This tool displays a visited page's PageRank (PR) as a number between 0 and 10 on a thin green line. The higher the green line the higher the page rank for that page. For example Google has a page rank of 10 which is the highest your site can attain. Google updates its PageRank continually and continuously. It exports new backlinks, PageRank, or directory data approximately every three months. The Google Toolbar can be obtained free of charge for Firefox and Internet Explorer.

How to Increase Your Page Rank by Optimizing Site Design

One highly effective method for attracting more web traffic is to first optimize the design of your web site. This will increase your page rank because search engines love sites that have clean code, are fast loading and contain lots of well written content. This ultimately results in gaining traffic which leads to more sales, a sign you have developed a profitable web site.

10 factors to include in your web site's design that will increase page rank:

1. Do the necessary keyword research so your web copy is filled with words that visitors enter in the search engines. Weave these words throughout the content of your
web site.

2. Create meta tags that include your targeted keywords. Make sure you write an attractive description for your description meta tag. It's what visitors will read first when they have find your site in the search engines. If the description does not capture your visitors attention immediately you will lose your visitor to a competing web site.

3. Create a meaningful Title tag. The title tag is what visitors will see at the top of the browser window when your site first appears. It is the most important tag to consider when designing your web site. Place your main keywords at the beginning of the title tag. Don't place you site's name first. Most visitors will not be searching for your site name. They find you with the keywords they entered in the search engines.

4. Use heading tags for the headings and sub headings of your web site content. Incorporate your keywords in these tags. Search engines give a little more weight to these tags. They also grab your visitors attention faster than normal text.

5. Name files using your targeted keywords. When naming your css, image, javascript files etc, include your targeted keywords. Don't overdo it by using the same keywords for every file. It may be flagged as keyword spamming by the search engines.

6. Include keywords in page and directory names. Instead of giving your pages generic names, be creative and incorporate keywords in their urls.

Let me give you an example:

If your site carried several pages of different types of t-shirts, instead of naming your pages:

www.domain.com/shirt1.html www.domain.com/shirt2.html

rename them:

www.domain.com/custom-t-shirt.html
www.domain.com/spanish-t-shirt.html

This will help the search engines to identify the keywords in your page url. If a site owner links to this page you will benefit by already having your keywords in your web page address.

7. Use keywords in your link text. If the links on your page have relevant keyword text in them, your page will receive higher rankings in the search engine results than
those sites that don't.

For example, a link on your site (or from another site pointing to yours) with the text "custom t-shirt" will cause your site to be listed earlier if a visitor searches for "custom t-shirt" than if the link simply said "click here."

8. Optimize your images. Try to avoid using images to display important names, content, or links. Search engines don't spider images only text. Use ALT tags if any of the main content on your web page can't be formatted in regular HTML.

9. Create external files. Instead of loading your site with lots of css or javascript code, place all the code in an external file between your header tags. This will drastically reduce the load time of your pages and allow the search engines to easily spider your site.

10. Create lots of attractive content. Web copy that is well written will naturally attract visitors. Site owners reading your content will naturally want to link to your site without even asking for a link back.

Tip
Avoid using templates for the design of your site unless you are not worried about getting high rankings. This is because they are often not optimized for the search engines i.e. contain proprietary code, don't validate for correct html, and are slow loading. Get a customized design so you can optimize it during its development. This will help increase your page rank as you market your to the search engines.

About the Author
Herman Drost
Owner of iSiteBuild.com
Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) and Author of ?Marketing Tips? Newsletter
Site Design, Hosting and Promotion
www.isitebuild.com