5 Great Ways to Lose Page Rank
Mon, Jul 28, 2008
After a long weekend of reading post after post about Page Rank Improvements and of course lack there of, I decided that it was time for post about how to create a successful blog PB style keeping in mind the top 5 ways bloggers screw up their page rank. So why all of a sudden am I oh so willing to write all of this out? Well… to be honest… some of you guys have been pissing me off with some of these and rather than just put up an “Ugly Stick Beat Down” I decided offering a friendly, informative, “Authority Article” would be more beneficial.
You’re not using a “.htaccess redirect”.
Nothing is more aggravating to people like me who take time to write a thoughtful anchor… then it’s discovered the your domain name is spattered across the web in both “www” and “http://” formats! See, not only does that piss us off… but it weakens the “G-Juice Trickle”. To Google, not using a redirect can appear as if you are referring to two different websites. That said, you not only weaken your own rank, but you weaken the value of the outbound link of the author who wrote a little something about you.
You’ve not Updated Your Ping List Dummy
Yeh, I know someone is going to tell me that they’ve got “ping-o-mattic” and that covers it… ha! Okay… you put all your eggs in one basket why don’t ya! Look people, if you don’t have the notifier list updated in your admin panel, then it could take DAYS for your latest post to be listed in the serps. There is nothing worse than finding links through your referral stats rather than you’re serps feed readers! If the serps aren’t showing the backlink, you’re not getting credit Einstein! Oh, did I forget to mention that I’ve already written a post about the importance of the ping list? Yeh, it includes the latest and greatest services to! NOTE: Being listed in the serps is not the same as being indexed… there is a major difference!
Your 404’s are not Re-Directing Either
Nothing pisses off an author more than discovering that their well thought out anchor text to YOUR blog leads to a big fat 404 error. Do you want to lose some Page Rank? How about some love juice from the big “G”? Or how about that oh so valuable anchor text that you worked so hard to earn? I mean c’mon people, I don’t think that there is an easier way to screw yourself and the people who write about you! LOL… What’s ironic is that people often go back and rename their posts for better SEO… the result is a fatty-fo-fatty 404!
Wanna see it work? http://thepissbiscuit.com/best-blogger-on-planet/ (That page does not exist, but you don’t see no stinking 404 now do ya!) As for the Plugin that can help make it happen? Try the 404 redirect for better SEO!
Comment Chatting Needs to STOP!
Okay number three was the fastest way you can lose rank… but this my friends is the fastest way to lose readers and more importantly… commentators so listen up. If you’ve got the “Subscribe to Comments” plugin installed… I AM TALKING TO YOU! Over the past three days alone, I’ve been notified of about three hundred comments being added to the blogs I post on and subscribe to. Of those three hundred or so comments, 25 or 30 of them were actually something I wanted to be notified about. What I don’t want to read… is comment chatting… useless banter sent within minutes and sometimes seconds of each other.
Tonight on one of the newer blogs that I read, notified me of 19 comments in under 10 minutes which consisted of nothing more that silly fruitless banter like:
“great post”…”Thanks”…”No problem, glad you liked it”…”yeh man your post was great”… “Thanks man, I appreciate it”….”No seriously, it was really great”…” No dude, if only you were a girl”…
I hope that you get my point. Sure, I could go and cancel my subscription… but that requires work, and I’m to busy for that right? What’s easier for me is to either stop subscribing… or stop commenting. Neither option is good for the blog’s author. So what’s the solution? Try holding back your responses a while. When you as the owner, can respond to five or six comments at once… you can reduce the number of “flaky” comments sent out via e-mail by 60% or 70% and give the spiders time to find your fricken post! After your post is crawled… get stupid with comment chatter on occasion. Just remember that your readers should be respected.
You’re not listed in DMOZ
Okay this one is harder than it sounds. DMOZ is the open source directory… the biggie in fact. More so than Google in fact… and while we’re talking about facts… if you’re listed in DMOZ, you’ll likely be auto indexed by Google within days… not listed… indexed! Ya see the DMOZ directory is run by real people. You submit, they review, and if you’re cool enough, you’ll get listed. It’s a cake walk! (Fat joke at myself).
So when should you apply for a DMOZ listing? When you’re blog starts seeing some traffic, comments, and decent posts… it’s probably a good time to submit. Remember that REAL live people edit each submission… you’ve got to impress someone, not just meet some mathematical criterion. Now keep in mind, that this can take a week or it can take 6 months… but because people are involved, you never can tell.
- Don’t want to get “Sandboxed”? DMOZ it.
- Don’t want to lose your PR? DMOZ it.
- Don’t want to be de-indexed? DMOZ it.
Wrapping up my Page Rank Hints
As I mentioned earlier on… I wrote this to not only help you guys and gals… but to point out that good blogging can lead to more than just high PR and Traffic counts. It can lead to a great community, awesome friends, respectful relationships, a useful resource, and a profitable online business. So if all that isn’t reason enough to become a better blogger… go eat a cupcake!Don’t forget to go read my post on “The Best SEO Trick for Bloggers“.
If you like this post, and think it would be a good AUTHORITY article… scratch it… sniff it… lick it… but whatever you do, please Stumble it!
July 28th, 2008 at 4:57 am
At #4 You aren’t talking about me, are you PB? I have done 3 of the above and I’m not too sure if I understood point #4…hehe
YES, DMOZ is one hell of an ‘Authority’ club to be in and it’s only for the privileged fews. In fact, the fastest way to be accepted into DMOZ is when by any chance you know one of the editors.
Talk to you again, PB…I’m off writing a new post before you throw me out of the window.
Yan
Blog for Beginnerss last blog post..The Best Places to Get Quality Backlink
July 28th, 2008 at 6:38 am
Your title caught my attention. Maybe those are some of the reasons why I lose my PR. I must focus on this and improve my blog. Thanks for the tips.
Hussein | Random Blogs last blog post..Sunday Link Love #1
July 28th, 2008 at 7:57 am
Great stuff PB. I must say, some of it I don’t understand, like the 404 redirect or the .htaccess redirect. How can I make sure this stuff is working properly?
Help!
JK Swopess last blog post..IMwithJoe.com weekly update and goals 7-28-08
July 28th, 2008 at 11:00 am
@ JK: You should probably do a search as these are pretty common terms for bloggers. If you don’t know them or what they mean, you should consider doing nothing else until you get it figured out.
That said… your redirect is working fine. However you’v can set Google to only index one extension. That should help. This also takes a little work on your part too you know… you’ve got to be leaving the SAME link where ever you go… don’t mix and match them.
As for the 404 to 301 I gave you the link to the plugin that makes it easier to use. But to test it… type into the browser window your doamin and a page that you know does not exist… example:
http://imwithjoe.com/piss-biscuit-is-the-bomb/
Now when you click that link, what is displayed as the result? a 404 error. The Redirect will point all 404’s to the page or post of your choice.
The only other problem that I see without digging into it to much… is that you deep link via tags. Example: You create an anchor for say the key phrase “PB is the Best”. When that link is clicked, it heads on over to a collection of posts with the tag “PB”. While in initial concept this is okay… in my opinion it’s one of the worst ways to deep link… in fact… it actually KEEPS you from truly deep linking and maybe even slap you with a duplicate content flag.
July 28th, 2008 at 11:05 am
On second thought… it’s not just my opinion. When you look at the behavior of a site crawl… you learn real quick that they act like ants… they follow the food (links) So when a spider follows your Anchored link to an archive page dedicated to a tag… the crawl will again follow at the first link within that page… follow it… and say hmmm… I’ve read this post before. DUPLICATE. Once isn’t bad… but on everything you do is another story.
July 28th, 2008 at 11:17 am
@PB you are dope man! I had set my preferred domain already, but didn’t have a 404 setup. As far as linking my tags, I read somewhere it was cool for deep linking, but you’ve cleared that up for me!
I tell ya man….most of this stuff is commons sense, but some of it, you just need explained once…or twice….or… yeah
thanks man
JK Swopess last blog post..IMwithJoe.com weekly update and goals 7-28-08
July 28th, 2008 at 11:32 am
PB, in regard to the 404 page, I use a plugin that displays a google search form, like this: http://www.noafilm.be/test
Is this any good to use?
July 28th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Robin… it’s not nearly as bad however the plugin you’re using is made for user convenience, not SEO and their robots. Robots can’t type, and they are a little to stupid to simply follow an array of variables set via your Google search tool… so basically, once a crawl reaches that page or hits an error, it stops the indexing process.
If you redirect it to your home page, you not only keep the backlink that has been juicing up your site, but you allow the crawl to follow back to the home page where it has more options to continue indexing deeper within your site.You could also redirect it to your XML sitemap (which is best for SEO strictly)… however, this might look funny as a backlink to your visitors. I think a fair middle ground would be the home page for both users and robots.
July 28th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
To get a separate page tab in mimbo pro I needed to create a category called “blog” and placed all my blogposts under that, due to this change I got a lot of 404 errors in my google webmaster account. I there just installed the redirect plugin and though it looks a bit complicated I managed to redirect a first 404 error back to my homepage! I saw in the crawlstats in google that my pagerank had gone down a bit. Could this be the reason why I was loosing some pagerank?
I also checked the option to start collecting 404 errors in the plugin and it gave some errors like: http://www.noafilm.be/favicon.ico and http://www.noafilm.be/noexist_5dcb2ac2dc4c5a96.html
What could this mean?
Sry for the questions but now that I see what the plugin does I”m getting all excited
Btw, thx for sharing this!
July 28th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Good post, no seriously, it’s awesome, it gave me pleasure while reading it. If only you didn’t have scissor hands….
July 28th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Seriously, though, it was a good post. I had no idea about DMOZ, just put in a submission. It’s a great site, the search results are so much more effective because it’s humans behind the curtains.
July 28th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
@ Robin: Yes, your page rank will suffer from the 404’s. Some of them you won’t be able to clear, but a few isn’t REALLY an issue. It comes down to what you mentioned… spring cleaning… optimizing your older posts… and moving things around. That’s when you feel the wrath of that pissy little 404.
You should have a solid three months before the next PR update so you’ve got time to rebuild. Just keep redirecting and you’ll shoot back up. Do it sooner than later though, so all of those 404’s already indexed can get re crawled prior to the next update… PR is like wine… It gets better with age but you’ve got to have all the right ingredients!
If you enjoyed it Robin… feel free to Stumble and share! I can always use a little more traffic
July 28th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Ha ha ha… I’m comment chatting! LMAO
@ Nick: Thanks for the props… you can Stumble it too
As for DMOZ… it’s a hell of a directory. Takes a while and it’s not fast, but once there… you’re in the bag.
July 28th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Thanks a lot, I was planning to have an English section in my blog anyway and just for you I will make a new category this week and the first post in there will be completely dedicated to how awesome you are(in English), now is that not a grand gesture?
July 28th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
I’m SUPER guilty of comment chatter. However, I have to disagree that you should post one comment to address the readers in front of you. I think that using the “reply” button and responding to the comments individually delivers personal attention that people will appreciate. So although I may be guilty, I don’t think it’ll stop on my end. It’s a bit of a personal touch in an impersonal world.
Bryan Clarks last blog post..Reader Email - Traffic Building Argument
July 28th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
@ Robin: Awesome I can’t wait to read all about it… let me know when you get it knocked out!
@ Bryan: Ahhhh I knew there would be one in the bunch.
Re-read my little explanation of comment chatter sir… it’s useless banter that really erks the nerves of readers… not to mention I’m not saying to reply once… I’m saying that if you put up a post let it sit for a few hours before starting the barrage of gibber jabber. Oh and I’m not quite sold on the one on one response being any better or worse persay. I often manage to leave quite lengthy commentary addressed to exactly who it should be going to.
When you consolidate, your not only making less work for yourself, but you’re respecting your subscribers. More importantly though, from a business perspective, you’ve got to manage your site or blog like a business. For example, if you were to ever sell you blog, there is a really good chance that your potential buyers will research your site’s activity. This includes comments. If an authors comments are considerably more prevalent… it can devalue your site in the eyes of the buyer. If it appears that you’re posting comments to build comment count… you can be as good as done. But you already knew that one.
Remember, this was a post about maximizing your PR potential, so while people do have their own personal preferences… This is twelve years of internet website management and optimization talking. Moral… do what works for you! It’s your blog aint it?
July 28th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
I’m just curious, i understand what you are saying about comments being annoying in for the subscriber. I actually at some point accidentally subscribed to the comments for a certain post (I actually think it was auto checked) on some site that just happens to be ultra popular and never seems to die, and my inbox is constantly inundated with new comments on this thread. So I know what you are saying, but how do the comments drain PR?
July 28th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
@Nick: Great question. Comments don’t actually drain PR. However, they do dilute crawling… in turn indexing… in turn PR. See nothing is more valuable to your blogs Rank than content and PR. To get a good PR… you need good content. For content to be good in the eyes of the “G”… you need to allow proper indexing(crawling). Once you have established page rank… you can let this rule slip to the way side. But initially, in younger blogs… you’d want a PURE post being crawled prior to being blitzed with chit-chat.
Oh and by chit chat… I mean IRRELEVANT banter… see my post for an example. Okay so her’s the summery…
If your site gets pinged and a crawl is initiated with an ass load of useless banter… you slowly begin to dilute the value of the page (the page with the good content)… No matter what anyone thinks… the math behind “Do Follow” is simple. Spiders follow ALL links… other wise, they could never determine what the relation tag is set to. So when they follow… they dilute. By reducing your “Comment Chatter for the first day or so you’re allowing all the update services and spiders a better chance of finding and listing your material.
Need an example? Google search “How to Lose Page Rank”… see where my post comes up. That’s pretty good stuff for being less than 24 hours old… I hope you see where I’m going. Even with “No Follow” it’s getting followed and we as NEW bloggers should do our best to improve that crawl.
July 28th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
I guess I have to agree with Bryan on this issue. I couldn’t have said it better than him; it’s kind of giving personal touch in an impersonal world. Well said.
I am a nobody when it comes to SEO so I know little about diluting the crawl. I’m blogging with a simple notion of if you do have a killer article, people response and you do likewise. I’m not going to reiterate what Bryan has said but being in a category of ‘younger blogs’ we all love to see comments coming in. The more the merrier. It just goes to show that we are doing it right.
That said, I’m too in the same opinion with you on the part where useless banter or comment chatting do exist. It’s unavoidable but still we have all the rights to moderate it if we want to.
I’m sorry, PB. I guess this is the first time we are not thinking in the same wavelength but this article of mine with the highest comments does appear on the page one for the keyword “how to get quality backlink” in less than 24 hours.
So am I doing my best to improve the crawl?
July 28th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
I understand everything you are saying. The reason I asked is because I was of the understanding that PR was basically based entirely on backlinks, unless of, course, you did something they felt was wrong, i.e. selling page rank through text links.
July 28th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Well, here’s the second in the bunch.
Most of the time I respond to comments individually and I like doing it that way and am not going to change it for anyone
In actual fact to add to that, I am one of those sad people who likes to follow ‘comment chatter’. It’s surprising just what you can pick up when you are writing a ‘thoughts on MMO’ blog …
But I do see your point about it messing up your carefully keyworded post. I just add my keywords into each of my comments
And thinking about it, comment chatter is another good reason for not having ‘dofollow’. (I’m considering writing a blog post on the subject, but it could annoy a few people…)
As to all the other excellent tips on 5 ways to lose page rank…
Ping list is there on all blogs .. and apart from that (on my mainstream ones anyway)… nada!
(why does ths work never end…?)
Oh yes, and thanks for the ‘Authority’ link
zanias last blog post..Does Page Rank Help You Make Money Online?
July 28th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
“I am a nobody when it comes to SEO so I know little about diluting the crawl. I’m blogging with a simple notion of if you do have a killer article, people response and you do likewise. I’m not going to reiterate what Bryan has said but being in a category of ‘younger blogs’ we all love to see comments coming in. The more the merrier. It just goes to show that we are doing it right.”
This has been my approach. I’ve had the ultimate SEO plug-in sitting on my desktop for nine months, still need to upload it. It’s worked, but it scares me to think how far I could be if I had tried, and it scares me to think how badly I could have screwed it up if I tried. About the only thing I do is try to title my articles how people would search for them. For example, instead of giving something an obscure and ‘creative title’, like Giants Tackle Goliath, I’ll call it Giants Beat Patriots in Superbowl. That’s it… PR5 maintained for 9 months. The difference is, in my niche people are generally helpful, in the tech and mmo niches people tend to hate each other. So I guess the rules change depending upon the niche.
July 29th, 2008 at 12:06 am
@ All: I think that everyone has taken it personally. Maybe out of self recognition… when it should be taken strictly as advice. Not to mention I myself am guilty of the crime as well. But it doesn’t mean that the crawling issue matters none.
@ Yan: Yeh I think we’ve got to agree to disagree… and no, I’m not saying what you’re doing is wrong. I’m saying that one day, when you are looking for ways to improve the integrity of your blog in a general sense…rather than seek commentators and initial successes (like all of us do)… this information will come in handy. 12 years in the business isn’t for nothing ya know.
@ Nick: As we all already know PR math is a true secret. No number of links or any other non sense will promise a rank. Only organic good old fashioned blogging with a mix of hard work. I think most of us here are doing that already… which is why we’ve all seen great jumps in PR. Again, these tips are to show you guys that there are some small little things to think about that can put your blog over the edge…
@ All(again):Similar to publishing your latest post right before the busiest part of your blog’s daily traffic spike… and then sending out your e-mail subscription at night when people are home lounging around a reading… these are tips. PERIOD!
July 29th, 2008 at 12:42 am
Absolutely, sir. I have much respect for you in this matter, I’m just stating what’s off my mind. The last tip of yours is simply superb and does make all the sense.
Cheers
Yan
July 29th, 2008 at 12:50 am
Lol! PB, don’t stress about it.:)
Those were excellent tips (as was the one you just added… apart from the fact that I have no idea what time it is in Spain when it is peak time for traffic in the US - you have so many different times!)
Good discussion!
zanias last blog post..Does Page Rank Help You Make Money Online?
July 29th, 2008 at 1:08 am
yes PB, just discussing and trying to see another take on things. I never assume I can’t learn something from someone, so that’s why I presented my last question, because that was always my understanding from reading a few blogs. But people like to reguritate shit and this is the one of those rare instances where you get a new point of view, which is a good thing. So that’s why I’m exploring it to try to absorb more knowledge.
July 29th, 2008 at 5:58 am
PB, got one more question about the redirect plugin. I get several strange looking source urls like “/wp-content/plugins/lightview-plus/js/images/close_innertop.jpg” with one of my posts as a referrer. Or something like “http://www.noafilm.be/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?UL=1&ACT=4&BUILD=5606&STRMVER=4&CAPREQ=0″ as source url which had led into a 404 error.
Should I just continue redirecting all those source urls, even if they are not real pages or posts?
July 29th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Those are items like the previewer you have installed. It’s not actually a true referrer, but because the files are sitting in an external script, they “appear” to be actual referrers.
Solution: Update your robots.txt file to disallow following of certain admin directories. For example your text file could read.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /administrator/
Disallow: /cache/
Disallow: /components/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /installation/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /libraries/
Disallow: /media/
Disallow: /modules/
Disallow: /plugins/
Disallow: /templates/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /xmlrpc/
That should help “disallow” robots from trying to crawl individual admin based elements as well as functional elements of the theme.
July 29th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Thanks a lot!
August 1st, 2008 at 7:16 am
eye catchy title to attract visitors …. gud one
superb xplanation in ur article frd … points to b looked after to maintain our sites PR and quality
August 2nd, 2008 at 9:19 pm
ok, what keeps happening to these posts that i swear i see, then i come back to read them and they’re gone
August 2nd, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Life’s a b**** isn’t it,?
You write a post, change your mind about it….
and it’s already gone out to your RSS subscribers!
zanias last blog post..Why I Refuse To Make My Blogs Dofollow
August 2nd, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Nick & Zania: What on earth are you two talking about?
August 2nd, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Over the weeks I have received a couple of posts in my email box - RSS feed updates from the Piss Biscuit.
But when I arrive here to comment on them, these posts are not here and I get directed to the home page.
My thinking was, that you made a post, changed your mind about it (as we all do from time to time) and deleted it, but the feedburner subscription emails had already gone out, so we still got the post.
I’ve seen it happen on other blogs as well.
(The posts remain in a person’s email blox for ever if not deleted by them - scary stuff when you come to think about it!)
But Nick may have seen something different. I don’t know…
zanias last blog post..Why I Refuse To Make My Blogs Dofollow
August 3rd, 2008 at 1:05 am
yup, your “Building an Online Business PB Style” was posted, then taken away 2 days and now reposted again.
August 3rd, 2008 at 1:11 am
Yeh guys and gals it sure was… I was being a bit sarcastic when I asked what on earth you all were talking about.
Fact is that I try really hard to not publish something that I’d like to have retain value during the “dead times”. Dead times are like Saturday mornings… or Friday afternoons. Typically this portion of the week is the worst to post on as people are not really thinking “blog”… in turn, comments will suffer and so will page views.
I do know that my feed burner folks get a copy and that does not bother me really… sometimes you simply realize that there could have been a better time to post.
August 3rd, 2008 at 3:43 am
that post, and the one where you were talking about franchising another business you have out
August 3rd, 2008 at 4:02 am
@Nick: In regards to franchising the other business out… I’m still actively pursuing that, but as I mentioned in a follow up release, I think I fair off better keeping that sort of venture away from ThePissBiscuit.com.
It was brought to my attention that some malicious folks out there might take that as an opportunity to create havoc, or snipe my reputation. As in any business venture, we must choose our battle wisely.
For anyone who DID read that post, and was actually curious about it… after the recent PR update, that site earned a PR4 on the home page and PR3 on EVERY page within the site. As for sales… Ha ha… it’s been going strong. Very strong actually. If it makes any difference, I’m still open to franchise ideas.
August 3rd, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Ummm,
Why don’t you just edit the posting time and date on your posts before publishing them…?
zanias last blog post..Why I Refuse To Make My Blogs Dofollow
August 3rd, 2008 at 12:22 pm
@ Zania: 99% of the time that is what I do. Sometimes, even us perfect people aren’t quite THAT perfect!
Just kidding… I’m just as absent minded as the next person I guess, especially in the in middle of a very hectic day in the office. I’ll figure it out eventually. 
August 3rd, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Best article I’ve read all day! I previously heard of DMOZ but never knew what it was, but now I do, thanks!
Rajaie AlKoranis last blog post..How To Effectively Deal With Negative Comments On Your Blog
August 5th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Excellent tips! I was told that if you have not written at least 100 posts don’t ever think about DMOZ.BTW Congratulations on your PR3 in 7 weeks.
Peter Lee
August 5th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
@ Work at Home: DMOZ is user edited. They do not go and count posts, however, if your site is not very appealing, than having lots of content is a good idea. People like to look at pretty things… just remember that your blogs design is more important than most people give credit for. DMOZ is one of those little, yet very important reasons.
August 12th, 2008 at 11:08 am
I agree about the importance of dmoz and oh my, it is really difficult to get a blog listed there.
As for comment bantering, it can encourage discussion, but you are right to point out the extremes.
jeflins last blog post..Overhead Supply Can Trap Your Money
August 27th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
What a great twist on search engine marketing. This should attract some views
Great blog, I’ve subscribed for more.
Brad Blogging.com - Personal Blog Tips And Blog Helps last blog post..Trying To Understand The New Plugin: Liz Comment Counter
August 27th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
@Brad: Thanks for coming by, I’m glad yo enjoyed the post! Stick around it only gets better!