Postcards from the Funny Farm

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The past 3 days and today (7/26/08) my Google Page Rank appears to be back. I tried playing aloof and I didn’t write a gushing post since I have been wrong before. Sometimes the toolbar malfunctions, this is something I have verified by many sites and blogs out there. More often than not though, it’s correct. The long story made short is that yes, indeed my PageRank has gone back to the PR4 it was when it got spanked months ago. In this post, I tell you in a few sentences exactly what I did to get it back (I’ve been keeping a careful journal on everything!)

Fearing I might be jumping the gun, I emailed one of my blog mentors and friend Derek Semmler yesterday and asked him to verify the PR4 change for me. He’s seen me go through the PR0 ordeal with this blog and even written a few really cool articles about PageRank hits on his blogs. He said that sadly my new rank wasn’t registering on his toolbar. (Thanks again for checkin’ Derek) So, I kind of gave up and forgot about it. That’s why today after seeing it still in my toolbar and verifying the change with some 3rd party sources, I was elated to see it was indeed a true PR4.

My understanding via Matt Cutts’ blog is that Google has “expired” some of the prior penalties. In addition to that, here is what I have done. It’s nothing mysterious but it takes some effort. My attitude toward success has always been that I don’t mind work when I know it’s worth something. Some of you may have seen my fave Woody Allen quote come up once in a while here, “80% of success is showing up.” If you are doing the right things by Google to get PageRank success, I’d even make that an 85 instead of an 80:

1) Guestblog monthly: Set a specific number as a goal. Ask higher ranked blogs if you can guestblog and link back to your index in the post (usually a signature looks the least pompous). I’ve been averaging 5 guestblogs a month in the last 6 months. All my guestblogs are represented by an intro here and you can read them through this link: Those backlinks affect PageRank. You can also invite bloggers to guestblog on yours. You usually get a link from their blog announcing their work. A classic example of this is Chelle’s recent PageRank post on mine:

2) Every sponsored post/link on your blog needs to have the attribute: rel=”nofollow” in its relative links. I won’t bother explaining, just do it. It took me 4 days in between work, wife, and screaming kids to change all mine to this. I pity anyone who has more than say 100. But if you make it a practice, you will never have a problem with this issue. I could say more on this, please ask questions if you have them. My assumption is that most people get this already. Obviously I recently learned it :)

3) Write quality posts to a niche audience (as much as possible) that people read, link to, and comment on. (Reading and inking to parts are way more important but comment have ripple effects for lnkage, traffic, etc.) I’ve written extensively on the value of a blog post but this subject is a bit subjective. I doubt any SEO writers will be subscribing as a result. However, if what you do is kind of like my writing, please check out the series, it was written with you in mind: V.A.L.U.E. of a Blog.

4) Show your indefinable magic as a blogger! How could I leave that one out. Don’t forget to be yourself. Remember that the dead splash page of Firefox, for example, is a 6/10! Who reads that? Blogs started out as WEBLOGS where interesting people shared their research, later their thoughts and quotes, and finally they are now a place where anyone can self-publish anything. Let your light shine.

Folks, it’s been a long rocky road since they spanked my PageRank (man that sounds bad doesn’t it ;). I am enjoying the smoothness now that it’s back. Like it or not, Google PageRank is an issue of economics and you should have it. So I am officially not a hater of Google PageRank, they have done right by me. It seems like there are as many ranks out there as there are acne treatments, but Google has the most clout.

If you want to know more regarding this topic, just ask. I think I’m done for now. This is meant to be in fact a psychology niche blog most the time. Maybe you can persuade me to write some other stuff I’ve done to improve my blog’s rank. Now go jump in the pool (that’s where I’m headed). I’ve also reignited my other two blogs and it’s time to rev some speed. You might say I’ve had 3 car covers on in my blog garage and now they are coming off. Thanks for being a part of this ride.

For at least 2 months now my blog was reduced to a PR0 from a PR4. I don’t know the reason why exactly but I did petition for them to reconsider a while back. I have sponsored posts on my blog and disclose that publicly here. I also have some duplicate content out there, not much but some.

Anyway, after pretty much giving up on Google, it appears they have given my blog a new chance and started me at a PR2 this morning. I am glad they did this it shows they can listen to some reason though I have no idea why I am not at my old PR4 or higher. My backlinks and stats are considerably higher than then.

I guess I will take what I can get from the almighty Google.

I am glad it happened though because as I tried to boycott all things Google over the past two months, I learned that Yahoo! Mail is much better as are many services offered by other companies. One I couldn’t break away from unfortunately was Google Analytics. Based on what I have seen out there, there is nothing as helpful as that. So I still use it. Besides that I no longer use Google Reader and a variety of Google services I used to think were the best, or the “holy of holies.” I think sometimes you need to get pissed off to get out there and see how great the competition is. I have my Technorati rank along with my Feedburner feed stats in my header to indicate to my readers how popular this blog is. I find that more accurate than PageRank anyway. If my PageRank gets back up to its previous 4 maybe I’ll put a badge up for it as well, but for now I’m “once bitten, twice shy” with Google. I’ll be curious to see if my PR grows, stays static or disappears again. Oh and I fully plan on continuing to use PayPerPost and IZEA services in case anyone was wondering.