A friend of mine started a website about a year ago and tried all kinds of advertising to get people to visit it. Some things worked, some didn’t, but at what cost and was it worth it? If you ask him he will say no and I tend to agree.
I agree because your website was for the sole purpose of selling products online and it was not a brick and mortar business. When he came to me for advice, I told him to cut out advertising costs, landing page development costs, etc. I told him that what he really had to do was get a higher PR. He said “are you talking about public relations?” I said no, what PR means in the internet world is Page Rank, specifically Google Page Rank.
He stood there like a deer in headlights and had no idea what he was talking about. I’ll tell you what I told him. First learn what Google PR is. Google Page Rank, PR for short, is the scale that ranks a website from zero to ten (10 being the highest) based on its importance to the topic (or what Google thinks it is) about. . The higher your PR, the higher up the search results ladder you will appear when someone searches for keywords that are on your site.
He said, “Okay, I understand, but how can I increase it?” I told him that there are a variety of ways to do this, but I recommend that he do the following three exercises, as they take up very little time and have the most impact.
The first way is to exchange links with similar websites or websites that are at least in the same scope of what you do. For example, he sold power tools for woodworking; therefore, you should exchange links with carpenters, carpentry websites and how to use tools websites etc. Exchanging links means that you will put a link to someone else’s website on your website and they will do the same for you. It is more commonly known as reciprocal link exchange. I told him to contact no less than 5 websites every day and request a link exchange and don’t be surprised if you get no for an answer or no answer at all. It’s just the nature of the internet.
I then told him to join in online discussions about carpentry, power tools, or anything else related to the field. I told him to check out message boards, social media, and trade show websites. When you join any of these sites, they will likely allow you to have a signature line. In that signature line, you can enter something like “Joe is the owner of XYZ Power Tools and can be found online at {web address here}.” Every time you participate in a discussion and submit your post, your signature accompanies it. This does two things: it gets you a link to your website more often, and it allows others in the discussion group to take a look at your site. If they like it, your prices or whatever your website is about, they will tell their friends and now your website has gone viral.
The last thing I told him was to become a writer. He looked at me strangely and asked me what he was referring to. What I said was that every day you need to write an article about power tools. The article should be informative and educational, like table saw safety procedures or ten cool things to build with a router. At the end of each article, you’ll create what’s called a resource box. In this resource box (much like your signature line in discussion groups) you will let people know who you are and how they can contact you. Once complete, submit your article to article directories. They are free and they crave your articles because they have tens of thousands of daily visitors looking for your information.
So how do these three tips help increase your Google Page Rank? Well, just put that Google rates a website based on its popularity on the Internet. The more people talk about your website and more specifically link to it, the more favorably Google will view it and, in turn, increase your PR.
There are a variety of tools where you can check what your Google Page Rank is at any time. Just do a Google search to check page rank and you’ll find several of them. Basically they all work the same. Just keep in mind that Google indexes websites 2-4 times a year, so don’t be surprised if in January you’re a PR of 2 and in May you’re still a PR of 2. The internet is big and Google takes time. index each unique website.
