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This is the third part in a four part series of articles on customer service.

In part one we looked at a example from Starbucks customer service, where a simple free beverage voucher left a lasting positive impression on me. You can read this article here - Reputation Management: Starbucks Offers A Simple Lesson In Good Customer Service.

In part two I walked you through the typical “growing pains” of a solo entrepreneur running an Internet business attempting to deliver personal customer service and how often as a result of success, things start to fall apart. You can read this article here - Growing Pains: How To Manage Customer Service As A One Person Enterprise.

In this next part of the series, as promised, I’m going to give you a behind the scenes tour of how I handled customer service through various different Internet projects I’ve owned in the past eight years. My system today is far from perfect, but it’s definitely much better than what it was. My current set-up allows me to have time freedoms and still look after my most important constituents (most of the time anyway!).

Starting From The Beginning

To fully put this into perspective we have to take a trip down memory lane way back to the beginning of my Internet business timeline (still one of the most popular article series on this blog and overdue for an update to add the last couple of years).

My first true success online was my popular Magic card game site, MTGParadise.com started in the late nineties. I created that site as a true newbie. I learned how to FTP, code HTML, create basic graphics and spent countless nights changing my website.

To start with I wrote content for the website myself and learned some basic Internet marketing techniques to bring in traffic, which pretty much amounted to link exchanges and regular participation in popular Magic newsgroups (this was a LONG time ago, back in the Usenet heyday when newsgroups were the Internet).

My site grew slowly, but with no benchmarks to really compare against I was happy enough with my few hundred daily visitors, adding another ten or twenty new readers per month, treating the project purely as a hobby.

Eventually I started to receive guest articles from other people who played the card game, which helped lesson my writing load. I spent most of my time back then struggling to make HTML do what I wanted to do and did not write nearly as much as I do now as a blogger and information product creator.

My Magic site didn’t become a big success until I added a forum to it. I made the decision on a whim because Magic players, at least in Australia, were used to using email newsgroups to communicate with and spent the rest of their time reading static websites. There wasn’t a forum out there at the time for Australia magic players because they were content with newsgroups, which had a critical mass of users.

I didn’t exactly see this as a business opportunity at the time. What I was interested in was playing with the forum script and seeing if I could get it to work (I was a real glutton for punishment back then, wasting time trying to make technology work when I wasn’t a coder). I certainly did not expect what would happen next.

My First Taste of Success

One of the reasons I enjoyed Magic had nothing to do with playing the game. What I loved was to trade cards. As an entrepreneur at heart, sometimes I preferred the act of performing commerce rather than playing the game, so I did see the potential for my forum to become a hub for card trading. I just didn’t expect it to become THE card trading site for Australian Magic game players - but it did.

Within a few months the forums began to really take off thanks to the increasingly active card trading community.

If you can create a site that is based on user generated content fueled by a strong hook - a reason for people to come back to the site every day - well, then you have struck gold in Internet business terms. Many multi-million dollar web business today are based on this principle (think eBay, Facebook, YouTube).

My Magic site did not become a multi-million dollar business, but it did carve out it’s own little corner in a very specific niche. As a result my traffic grew to over a thousand visitors a day, which I joked was probably the entire online population of Magic players in Australia (it’s a popular card game, but Australia doesn’t have a large population). I made my first real online income thanks to advertising sponsors on MTGParadise.com.

If you are interested to learn more about how I made money with my Magic site, see - How to make money from your website using advertising.

The Empire Starts To Grow

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I have a confession to make. Ever since I installed the SearchStatus extension into my FireFox browser I have discovered a new addiction to go right along with my healthy love for PageRank - it’s close cousin, AlexaRank. In this case the bar is blue, and unlike PageRank the statistic AlexaRank represents has more to do with traffic and reach than search engine ranking authority or incoming links, but like PageRank is probably best interpreted as a “fun tool” rather than a definitive way to evaluate a website.

The image above is a snapshot taken from the bottom right of my browser. Those bars change for each site I visit. PageRank (green) changes on a per page basis while AlexaRank (blue) is fixed for the entire domain. As much as I try not too give much weighting to those two metrics, I find myself looking at the bars every time I visit a site to help me determine whether the site is worth watching, how well it ranks and how popular it is. If both bars are high I tend to care more - I want to assess why a particular site is doing well.

Before I continue, if you have no idea what PageRank is read this article - PageRank Explained - Keeping SEO Simple. If you have no idea what AlexaRank is, then read on…

What Is AlexaRank?

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I’ve mentioned the namesqueeze technique previously on this blog. It’s a very popular technique in Internet marketing circles and I’ve been itching to try it out myself. With the launch of Blog Traffic King I finally had a reason to test the namesqueeze and so far, I’m impressed, it works really well.

Squeezing The Email Address

The namesqueeze is most often used to collect email addresses from prospective customers. The idea is that visitors to your website, if they find your offer compelling enough, will opt in to your mailing list. Sometimes the offer may be an email newsletter with helpful information about a specific topic (in my case, a blog traffic newsletter), or a free report or 7 day e-course, mini e-book or downloadable audio. Sometimes the namesqueeze is used as a gateway to enter the main website so visitors have to give their name and email address first, before gaining access to the content.

From the marketers point of view you gain the all important contact point and can continue to soft sell your products or services. Namesqueeze pages generally bring in targeted visitors because for a person to give their email address they must be interested in what you offer.

It’s About Focus

If you have ever done any online marketing you will know that your conversion rate is probably the most important statistic (along with cost per conversion). The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your page that “convert” and do what your page is designed to make them do.

Traditionally conversion rates online tend to sit at about 1-2% as an average. Namesqueeze pages on the other hand generally enjoy double digit conversion rates and can approach 100% if the offer is compelling and the traffic targeted.

The explanation for such high conversion rates is focus. Namesqueeze pages focus on a single action - the email opt-in - and all the copy on the page is focused on convincing the visitor to sign up. There are no distractions, no outgoing links, no sub-pages - just a simple process that convinces the reader to join.

Compelling Copy

Namesqueeze pages rely extensively on the power of words to sell. Audio may be included to help the process but simply tells visitors to follow the written instructions and sign up. Images may also enhance the presentation but without powerful words with a compelling message and clear call to action a namesqueeze page doesn’t work.

Targeted Traffic

The other key ingredient for a successful namesqueeze campaign is the right type of visitor. The methods used to send traffic to a namesqueeze page must ensure that readers are interested in the topic. Pay per click advertising is the most common method used to send traffic to namesqueeze pages because you can tightly align the message with keywords.

How I Built My Namesqueeze Page

With Blog Traffic King I did the work myself. I visited some other namesqueeze pages and asked for feedback from some Internet marketing friends but that’s all the outside assistance I required. The good thing about namesqueeze pages is that they are small, focus on the text and don’t need to be pretty. It’s all about making the message as compelling as possible.

I coded the page myself mostly by grabbing the HTML from some of my other pages I’d built in the past. I used a text editor to work on the raw HTML code. I recorded the audio using Audacity, and converted it to streaming audio buttons using Wicked Streaming (a program no longer available - you can try BYO Audio or Instand Audio). I created the graphics using Paint Shop Pro and some photos I had taken with my digital camera. I host the page on my reseller account and registered the domain with Yahoo! Domains.

To bring in traffic I set up Google AdWords Pay Per Click campaigns which I continuously refine and test to maximize the conversion rate. I use the conversion tracking tools provided by Google to track the conversion rates on each keyword. I use AwStats server statistics to see what keywords are bringing in search traffic and source new keywords which I can plug into AdWords to test for more PPC traffic.

I also advertise the blog traffic newsletter on my blogs and link to the Blog Traffic King namesqueeze page in my signature profile in any forums I frequent.

My Conversion Rates

When I first started my AdWords campaign my conversion rate averaged 40% across the board. As I broke down my campaign into groups the conversion rates started to fluctuate but they are consistently in double figures. Some low traffic keyword phrases have a 100% conversion rate.

My best day had over 35 sign-ups (this came after posting about Blog Traffic King on this blog) and I consistently average 10 new sign-ups per day, which I consider fantastic given this is only the start of my promotional campaign. In total I have had three people unsubscribe with the justification usually being “not enough time to read emails anymore” (I can understand that!), which is a near-zero unsubscribe ratio.

I’ve received more than ten direct unsolicited positive feedback comments from readers who state they are receiving a lot of value from my newsletter, which is fantastic. Positive feedback tells me that I have the right type of people on my newsletter - those who stand to gain the most from what I offer now and in the future - the perfect win-win relationship, and of course that I am providing value, which is very important to me.

Try A Namesqueeze

If you plan to sell online and you want to build a contact list of somesort the namesqueeze technique is a must. It’s beautiful in it’s simplicity, has a clear focus and consequently enjoys high conversion rates. At the least you should consider testing this method for your niche.

Once you have a successful namesqueeze in operation it’s very easy to tweak it to improve your conversion rates. By isolating key variables such as headlines you can test changes and monitor your results. By optimizing elements you can slowly increase the conversion rate. Then all you need to do is send more targeted traffic sound in the knowledge that your namesqueeze page will work hard for you to sign-up new prospects.

Yaro Starak
Online Marketer

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I mention the 80/20 rule frequently in my writings so I thought it was about time to write a proper introduction to the concept. I believe it’s fundamental to every business person - to every human being - so if you have never heard of this rule, please read on and absorb everything I’m about to tell you, it could potentially change your life.

The 80/20 rule sounds like a statistic and in some ways it is. Personally I’m not a big fan of maths and beyond basic web statistics like pageviews, impressions, unique visitors - and when I stretch myself - conversion rates and split testing, I try and avoid all complex numbers. I work better with feelings, ideas and concepts.

The good thing about the 80/20 rule is that you don’t have to understand statistics to be a believer. Yes it has foundations in economics and yes, it was “proven” using statistical analysis by a man named Pareto, but it is not meant to be understood only by economics professors.

Here’s what the Wikipedia has to say about it:

The principle was suggested by management thinker Joseph M. Juran. It was named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed that 80% of income in Italy was received by 20% of the Italian population. The assumption is that most of the results in any situation are determined by a small number of causes.

I can’t remember exactly when I was first exposed to the 80/20 Rule but I know when it first really hit home. I was in my local bookshop and I picked up a copy of Living The 80/20 Way by Richard Koch. Koch took the 80/20 Rule and made it his own by writing a series of books on the topic. Living The 80/20 Way fit me well because it discussed living life productively seeking maximum satisfaction by focusing on your passions (Koch has written other books focusing on the 80/20 Rule for business and managers that I didn’t enjoy quite as much). At the time I sometimes accused myself of being lazy for not “working hard” but I realized what I was doing was living an 80/20 lifestyle and in fact probably being a lot more productive than those working harder than myself.

What Exactly Is The 80/20 Rule?

By the numbers it means that 80 percent of your outcomes come from 20 percent of your inputs. As Pareto demonstrated with his research this “rule” holds true, in a very rough sense, to an 80/20 ratio, however in many cases the ratio can be a lot higher - 99/1 may be closer to reality.

It really doesn’t matter what numbers you apply, the important thing to understand is that in your life there are certain activities you do (your 20 percent) that account for the majority (your 80 percent) of your happiness and outputs.

You may have expected me to say that 20 percent of your activities produce 80 percent of your financial rewards, and that is true, there are probably a handful of activities you do each week that produce your income. You can definitely apply the 80/20 Rule to most aspects of your business or working life, however I believe your overall happiness and satisfaction are much better variables to focus on. Money certainly plays an important role in your happiness and your money is influenced by 80/20 relationships, but it is only a component that leads to your overall well being, which should be your primary concern.

80/20 Examples

There are many economic conditions, for example the distribution of wealth and resources on planet earth, where a small percentage of the population controls the biggest chunk, which clearly demonstrate the 80/20 Rule. There are business examples such as 20 percent of employees are responsible for 80 percent of a company’s output or 20 percent of customers are responsible for 80 percent of the revenues (or usually even more disparate ratios). These are not hard rules, not every company will be like this and the ratio won’t be exactly 80/20, but chances are if you look at many key metrics in a business there is definitely a minority creating a majority.

At a micro level just by looking at your daily habits you can find plenty of examples where the 80/20 Rule applies. You probably make most of your phone calls to a very small amount of the people you have numbers for. You likely spend a large chunk of your money on few things (perhaps rent, mortgage payments or food). There is a good chance that you spend most of your time with only a few people from the entire pool of people you know.

I’ll present to you how the 80/20 Rule applies to my life and how I have used the concept, although not always deliberately - it’s just the way I construct my life (for maximum pleasure!) -to improve the efficiency of my output and enhance my overall lifestyle.

My 80/20 Life

In my life I’ve noticed plenty of 80/20 ratios and generally they relate to my core competencies and passions. I really enjoy writing articles such as this, recording podcasts and interacting with other business people through Skype and blogging. In terms of rewards, the two-to-four hours or so per day that I spend writing - when I’m in the creative zone and my best work comes out almost effortlessly - is my money time. My articles and podcasts work hardest to generate income for me, create business opportunities and allow me to express myself creatively. I get the most financial and intrinsic satisfaction from this time.

I expect you could tell me a similar story about your life. During times you really enjoy yourself your output is at its peak. Your passion activities probably don’t pay your bills at the moment, which unfortunately means that you can’t sustain your life by indulging only in what you enjoy. I’ll talk more about transforming your life to a financially stable and personally fulfilling 80/20 format later in this article.

During some times in my life I struggle and waste time performing activities I don’t enjoy or I am not good at. For example bookkeeping is not high on my fun list. I don’t always like managing keywords in Google AdWords campaigns because I don’t have the patience to thoroughly test the variables and track the numbers. The same can be said for things like Google Analytics. These activities are more numerical in basis, I’m not a numbers person so when possible I leave these tasks, along with other activities like programming, graphic design and proofreading to other people, the specialists who enjoy them.

Some of my time is spent procrastinating or working inefficiently doing activities that provide very little benefit. This often occurs when I am tired or below peak physical condition. I sometimes lack the mental throughput to motivate myself to be productive (and boy, my writing stinks when I’m tired!), but I’m working on it and getting much better at reducing time wastage. When I’m in this state it’s smarter for me to study - read books and ebooks - because I’m not capable of producing quality output, but taking input - learning - is a good use of time when I am not there 100 percent mentally.

80/20 Business

When I look at one of my businesses, BetterEdit.com, it’s very clear that a small handful of repeat customers account for most of the income. The customers who become longterm users, who gain the most from the services and fit well demographically and socially with the business model, are key. They provide 80 percent of the value but only represent 20 percent (or much less) of the overall people that use the business. My job is to determine the best way to attract and convert more customers into longterm users.

With blogging I learnt (and teach in my Blog Traffic Tips newsletter) that there are a handful of activities that I do every day that produce the most results. Breaking things down further, there are usually a key 20 percent of elements within an individual blog article (think article headline) that have the most dramatic affect on results. The numbers of course are not clean 80/20 ratios but there are definitely dominant factors at play.

In a business sense, finding the 80/20 ratios is crucial for maximizing performance. Find the products or services that generate the most income (the 20 percent) and drop the rest (the 80 percent) that only provide marginal benefits. Spend your time working on the parts of the business that you can improve significantly with your core skills and leave the tasks that are outside your best 20 percent to other people. Work hardest on elements that work hardest for you. Reward the best employees well, cull the worst. Drop the bad clients and focus on upselling and improving service to the best clients.

How You Can Live An 80/20 Lifestyle

When you start to analyze and breakdown your life into elements it’s very easy to see 80/20 ratios all over the place. The trick, once your key happiness determinants have been identified, is to make everything work in harmony and avoid wasting time on those 80 percent activities that produce little satisfaction for you.

The message is simple enough - focus on activities that produce the best outcomes for you. This applies to both your business/working life and your “other” life (I think they are all part of your “life” but people often prefer to distinguish them). The problem for most people is how to make a living from what you really enjoy, so lets focus on that…

I’m sure you have heard the phrase “struggling artist”. The stereotype where a creative person, musicians, actors, writers and artists, struggle to get discovered and work long hours on horrible day jobs, often in retail and hospitality, until hopefully they finally break out, get discovered and become famous. It shouldn’t surprise you that the ratio of struggling artists who actually become famous enough to live off their craft also follows an 80/20 Rule - only a small few of the overall total manage to get that far.

The same can be said for entrepreneurs. How many of you now reading this article are working day jobs, jobs you probably don’t like much, while you work hard after-hours to get your dream business up and running?

In truth, and this is a sad fact, most people in the world work jobs they don’t like and only truly live their passions on weekends and outside of working hours. Only a small sample actually live their passions day in and day out, how they want to and when they want to. If you want to become one of the special few so you can live your passions on your terms there are a few things you can do.

Focus On Your Passions, Not Material Possessions

The simple fact is not everyone can be a famous artist. Not everyone will start a million dollar business. I’m not going to tell you stop striving for those goals, I’m working on them myself, however you can work smarter TODAY to find greater fulfillment, and that is what living an 80/20 lifestyle is all about. Best of all, your likelihood of becoming one of the famous artists or entrepreneurs is enhanced if you tweak your life to follow the 80/20 Rule because you tap into what you do best more often.

The first thing you must decide, and this is often the hardest step, is to determine what it is exactly you have passion for. Some people can answer this question easily - “I want to be a famous pianists/singer/poet/author”, “I’d like to run my own real estate agency/coffee shop/advertising company” etc. Others may have a general idea “I don’t want a day job” or “I want to run a business” but the specifics are not sorted yet. If you are not sure what your passions are all I can suggest is test yourself. It’s usually easy to determine what you DON’T like so keep doing that until you find what it is you DO like.

Outputs Vs Inputs

I’d like to make a point about outputs vs inputs before moving on. Most humans are good consumers - we are good at taking inputs. Chances are you can easily rattle off a bunch of things you do enjoy about your life: eating out at nice restaurants, consuming junk food, reading books and magazines, going to parties and dance clubs, watching movies and DVDs, listening to music, meeting new people, surfing the net, having sex, playing sports and shopping. All of these activities more or less are inputs which means you consume the outputs of other people.

You may consider the activities I just mentioned passions but it’s hard to find a sustainable passion if all you do is consume. To foster an 80/20 lifestyle you need to locate activities that are passions for you because you create output for others to enjoy. Yes you can get paid to have sex, watch movies, eat at restaurants and read books, but chances are you won’t find it fulfilling or sustainable for very long OR you will be required to provide something back as part of your involvement - that’s your output, the value you create.

It’s okay to love eating out at restaurants and claiming your passion is food, if your intention is to also create output by starting your own restaurant, or a restaurant reviews website or a newsletter or magazine or becoming a chef. If you enjoy listening to music you might also enjoy producing your own music or covering the music industry as a journalist on your own blog.

Only by producing output for other people to enjoy or make practical use of can you expect to convert a passion into a sustainable income. You should understand this already as I suspect the times in your life that you have created something for others or worked on something that benefited other people you experienced the most fulfillment. If you suffer from a lack of direction now, if you are depressed because you don’t even know what your passions are to start applying the 80/20 Rule to, you need to do one thing - start being creative and giving back - produce output! You won’t find fulfillment only by consuming.

An 80/20 Lifestyle Blueprint

To start living 80/20 today you have only to do one thing - focus your energies on what you enjoy.

Part time work - Part time passion

Many people work a full time job and work after hours on a business or hobby or creative talent. If this is you I suspect your ratio is not 80/20 and probably closer to 20/80. You spend way too much time at a job you don’t like, you are probably not very motivated to do it well so you don’t fall into the vital 80/20 employees for that company, and by the time you get home you are too exhausted to spend time on your passion. You feel like you are getting nowhere fast. This lifestyle is not good for anyone since all the relationships fall into the 80 percent that produce 20 percent of the value. You get very little from it and the people you work for get very little from you.

If this currently describes your situation what you need to do is start changing those ratios. Reduce the amount of time you spend at a job you don’t like and increase the amount of time you spend on your passion. You may say you can’t do that because you need the money but I suspect you don’t really need as much as you think you do. Most people can live off part time work but choose to work more because they want more things. You may see your peers enjoying material goods which creates desires in you. Your wants start to outweigh your needs, which is probably the biggest pitfall in our modern, advertising driven, materialistic society.

I’m not saying you have to live like a pauper but I know that your real happiness comes from spending time doing things you enjoy the most, not from earning more money. Chasing the dollar for the sake of the dollar does not work. Chasing passion often leads to a greater income because the quality of your output is so much higher. Focus your energy on increasing investment in your core strengths and you will reap rewards.

Drop your working hours to three days per week and spend more time attracting more clients, booking more singing gigs, finding more time to write your novel or to develop your invention or code your software or find investors or whatever it is you really want to do.

For those of you who have no intention of turning your passions into money generating enterprises this is still a good option. If money isn’t your primary concern but your music is, why do you spend so much time working to earn more money than you need? Yes you need to plan for the future and build assets, but clearly for your musical soul it’s not something that needs to take the majority of your time and energy. You can be happy without that mansion by the sea and you never know, if you spent more time on your music the eventual album sales may one day lead to that mansion by the sea. If not, at least you will be a lot happier for following your enthusiasm rather than the dollar.

If financial freedom is important to you and a big part of your plans look at this step as phase one and work to convert your passions into income generating propositions. Grow your business client-by-client, gig-by-gig or sale-by-sale. keep adjusting your work vs passion time ratio as your business grows to support you and you no longer need your job income. Look for 80/20 activities in everything you do and drop any inefficiencies as soon as you can.

Don’t Let Fear Stop You

The biggest factor that stops most people from chasing their dreams and working towards their real goals is fear. Fear of the lack of security, the reduced paycheck and of the unknown future keeps people locked into routines that are not satisfying. That path leads to sadness, depression, poor health, low income and ultimately an early death. Who wants that!

Don’t let fear be the reason for not achieving your goals. Stop, reassess your real passions, remove the money equation long enough so you can think without worrying about finances, and make plans to move towards your 80/20 lifestyle activities. Maximize what you are good at. Find the activities that produce the most results for you and your business and put your energy where the big rewards are.

Yaro Starak
80/20 Optimizer

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What is Google’s PageRank? If you have ever done any reading about search engine optimization or were just curious how you can get your site to the top of the Google search engine results, understanding PageRank is vital. I’m going to introduce you to the basics of PageRank and also provide a brief discussion on how much you should really worry about PageRank if you are running a website or Internet business.

Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, invented PageRank and it forms the basis for how Google works. Google didn’t become the best search engine in the world by chance, it became the best search engine because it provided the best results. PageRank is in fact the technology that gave Google its competitor-killing edge, a way to greatly improve the accuracy and validity of a search response to a user query.

In essence PageRank provides a means to determine the value of a website for any given search term or keyword phrase. This value is determined by how websites link together with the more popular (and theoretically better) sites receiving more links. It’s these incoming links that help the site have a high PageRank value and thus display higher up in search results.

Let’s read how Google explains their PageRank system:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, 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.”

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.

The key rule to understand is that it is a combination of variables that determine how well your site performs in Google. These are the most important variables to worry about:

• Incoming links to your site.
• The relevancy (to your site’s theme) of the pages linking to your site and the PageRank of these pages.
• The keywords that other sites use to link to your site.
• The keywords on your website in particular in places like page titles and headlines.

Some of those factors you can control, others you can manipulate but not directly control. The important thing to understand regarding PageRank is that all those variables will determine how high your site shows up in search engine results. PageRank is the name for the technology that ranks sites and includes all those variables and many more.

PageRank Numbers - The Little Green Bar

If you install the Google Toolbar into your browser you can choose to switch on the PageRank display (it’s in the options). This will make a little green bar appear above web pages you visit. The green bar represents the PageRank of the page you are viewing in your browser. The ranking starts at 0 (no ranking) up to 10, the highest ranking and can be blanked out completely if the page has been banned from Google. If you don’t want to use the toolbar you can try this free PageRank lookup tool to find the ranking for any web address.

Google created quite a storm when it launched its green PageRank bar. Webmasters became obsessed with methods to increase their PageRank and high PageRank sites started selling text links for hundreds of dollars. A link from a high PageRank page, from a PageRank 7, 8, 9 or 10, has been known to make lower PageRank pages increase a full number, even two if the incoming link is from a PageRank 10, and there is no doubt it is good for search engine rankings.

The problem with PageRank being displayed in a little green bar is that it is very hard to really gauge how valuable a ranking is. The Google PageRank technology is complex containing many variables, some of which I mentioned above, and to interpret a number from 0-10, especially when only Google really knows how it works, is difficult. Worse still, the visible representation, the green bar that the public can see, only changes on a quarterly basis, while the real PageRank of a page changes on a daily basis. Most of the time you are looking at a very outdated ranking value.

PageRank paranoia is an issue that every webmaster may fall victim to. There are rumours that Google will be changing the PageRank system because they are not happy with how it is being manipulated and interpreted. As a rule of thumb, watch the green bar with interest but don’t take it too seriously or spend too much time trying to force it to increase (staring and yelling at it will do you no good, trust me on that one).

The Randomness Of PageRank

Search engine optimization experts actively track PageRank and investigate things like page backlinks to try and work out what the top search engine ranked sites are doing right so they can replicate and then surpass them in the rankings. This is a very good strategy for any person running a web business looking to improve their search ranking. There is no need to reinvent the wheel - copy what works and do it slightly better than the competition.

This is all good in theory, but unfortunately there is a good amount of randomness in PageRank and search engine results. Google of course would argue that it’s not randomness and their PageRank system is merely using algorithms that we don’t understand, and no doubt that is true, but for the human webmaster trying to get traffic, PageRank and Google can be baffling sometimes.

There are instances of high PageRanked sites having little to no backlinks. Given that incoming links are one of the most important variables used in PageRank calculations you have to scratch your head and wonder how a site with no links could have a big green bar. Google’s own backlink lookup tool (see this article - Beginners Guide To Backlinks - for details) is another phenomenon that search engine experts often choose to ignore rather than try and evaluate.

Thankfully the randomness of PageRank can result in positive outcomes as well, with your sites jumping high into search results in places where you wouldn’t expect it. The only consistency is randomness but there is logic that can be followed and smart search engine optimization practices that when implemented well will work. Just don’t expect it to work precisely how or when you want it to.

What You Should Know And Do About PageRank

This advice I offer from experience as an avid PageRank chaser and search engine optimizer. The key to gaining PageRank is to ignore it and focus on the variables that control it.

Having people link to your site has always been a good thing and PageRank was in fact a result of this. Don’t get confused with the order of things, first came the Internet and links and then came PageRank. Focus on amassing quality incoming links from quality sites relevant to your site. This practice will naturally improve your PageRank and also increase the amount of visitors coming to your site. Don’t get bogged down chasing links from only high PageRank sites or waste energy adding links from just any site willing to link to you. Do things naturally and your site will grow naturally.

Learn about the importance of keywords. My SEO articles will help you with this. Keywords play a crucial role in bringing the right type of traffic to your site but you should never spend half an hour in front of a computer trying to come up with the perfect title for your article. Name your content logically and think about what search words your audience would use to find your article and you can very quickly and easily develop good keywords without spending hours and hours tweaking every little phrase and heading. See what your competitors do in regards to keywords if you are completely lost.

If you build a good website with good content, always keep in mind your important keywords and proactively work every day to earn and create new backlinks to your site you will improve your PageRank. The best sites with the highest PageRank never worry about PageRank, they simply keep churning out content that people love to link to. This is a strategy that every webmaster and Internet entrepreneur should emulate for success online.

Yaro Starak
Internet Business Coach

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