Home
| Audit your own website - Part 1 - Google Page Rank |
|
|
Before you even begin considering throwing money at your website you should contuct an objective review of your site to determine strengths and weaknesses. Here is how.
The first stage of any pre marketing examination is the audit of the current systems. An objective audit reviews all elements of the sales process to highlight strengths and identify weaknesses or bottle necks. Often the growth of businesses outstrips the processes that underpin them and inherent weaknesses can become compounded over time. Similarly technical change and advancement can leave a company with entrenched systems that are inefficient or outdated. On the other hand successful techniques and processes can be limited through isolated or inconsistent application.
So how do you do this without heameraging money on consultants or wasting time navel gazing? The first step is to use the many free tools that are out there to get an appreciation of how your site is going. Enedia have developed a marketing appraisal methodology to help identify problem areas and focus on delivering visitors through the site to the core areas rather than just focussing on traffic. This is underpinned by the four key areas.
This first article will focus on the tools available to measure your site exposure levels. Step 1: Find out your sites search engine ranking Key Questions: 1. What is Google Page Rank? Google is the main player in the search market and therefore their ranking system is the most important one to worry about. Generally speaking if you can crack Google then you should pick up the other search engines as a matter of course. The Google Page Rank (PR) is a ranking from 1 to 10 that is accrued by websites and in laymans terms is a factor of the number and type of links you have to your page, the structure of the page itself and its age (ie. how many times it has been indexed before). The baseline pass rate figure for PR is 3. Anything less than this and as far as Google is concerned (for the purposes of passing on PR points) you don\'t exist. Therefore the first task is to find out what your sites Google PR actually is. Once this is known you can start to consider what to do to improve it remembering that it is rarely one thing that causes change it is the accumulation of little things done consistently and relevantly. It can take up to three months for all the accumulated information about a site to trickle through and be consolidated into the displayed Google PR. Remember that it is 10 times harder to get to the next PR point than it was to achieve the last. The Google Page ranking works on a log 10 scale. eg. Google pr = 0 (zero to 10 google votes) , pr=1 (10-100) , pr=2 (100-1000), pr=3 (1000 to 10k), Pr=4 (10k - 100k), pr = 5 (100k to 1Mill) etc.. For more information on how Google PR works please refer to the following resources.
2. How can I find out my/some one elses Google Page Ranking? TOOLBARS The best way to a Google PR estimate is to use the Google Toolbar. It will tell you the PR of any page visited and also contains other useful tools for a web marketer. Versions exists for IE (PC) and Firefox (Mac). The only problem with the Firefox version is that the actual toolbar emulator does not include the PR feature. You have to download and install an extra \"add on\" component for the PR figure to appear in the bottom right hand corner of the Firefox browser. PC Users: Download the Google Toolbar. (IE Version) Mac Users: Download the GoogleBar Toolbar Emulator. (Firefox version) Then Download the Firefox PR extension Note: There are potential privacy implications with the use of any toolbar technology as they can collect information on searches and other online behaviour. This should be kept in mind when evaluating any such tool and adjusted according to your individual privacy requirements. GETTING GOOGLE PR WITHOUT A TOOLBAR The following websites provide onsite calculators that will determine current PR scores for entered URL\'s. Some allow bulk entries of multiple URL\'s whereas others require searches to be done individually. PHP Live - Google Page Rank Comparison Tool Compare Google Page Rank on a number of URL\'s at once Traffic Zap Free Page Rank Checker A range of useful tools including search engine submission, Google PR, Link Popularity, SE ranking etc. Good free tools but have to put up with the annoyance of pop up ads. Global Promoter PageRank Calculator Tool Tool allows you to check the Google Page Rank of any given URL. Unfortunately you can only do one at a time Top25web.com Google PageRank Report Bulk Google page rank calculator. Often problematic and inconsistant results More useful tools relating to these issues are available in the Enedia Web Marketing Directory under Audit - Search Engine Performance 3. What your Google PR score means for you. PR = 0-3 Your site is virtually invisible to search engines and will be unlikely to get very good listings for any keywords other than those in very uncompetitive categories. As Google ignores sites with a PR of less than 3 for the purposes of calculating flow on PR votes your internal pages plus any sites thay you link to are not receiving any benefit from your site. This will have implications if you want to enter into any link exchange or other programs to boost traffic. It is likely that your site may have major structural or content impediments that need to be rectified, especially if the site has been around a while. PR Above 4 Then your site is starting to earn its keep. Your Google listed pages will begin to pass on Page Rank to your sites internal pages (assuming they are set up correctly) plus any other sites that you link to. The higher the rank the greater effect. |
