The PageRank Newbie 101 Guide PR & Hits vs Visits?

If you have not heard of the term "Page Rank" then you could be missing out. If you do not know anything about Page Rank then it's likely you do not know much about search engine optimization, and your at the right place to find out more about it.

Page Rank results from a "ballot" among all the other pages on the World Wide Web about how important a page is. Each hyperlink to a page counts as a vote of support. The Page Rank of a page is defined recursively and depends on the number and PageRank metrics of all pages that link to it ("incoming links"). A page that is linked to by many pages with high PageRank receives a high rank itself. If there are no links to a web page there is no support for that page, and it usually ranks low. Now that we know what it is and how it works we need to know how we can find our PR. Google assigns a numeric weighting from 0-10 for each web page on the Internet; this Page Rank denotes your sites importance in the eyes of Google! Usually page ranks are higher for the "home page" of a website, and the ranks are lower on the sites sub pages. If you see a web page that has no page rank that doe's not mean it's a bad page, it means that Google simply has not ranked it yet, and that could take months! Page rank grows with a sites age as long as the webmaster keeps the site alive with quality content. This is why keeping your web pages updated is very important.

A website that is not properly optimized is a website that sits at the bottom of the search engine results pages and they typically have a low page rank. Some specialists believe in the importance of having a high page rank, and others do not. The SEO world is divided on this subject so you should be careful and make your decisions based on what you feel is right. Personally I believe it is worth it to work for a high page rank as long as you do it without cheating. High Page Ranks do not come easy, and when you get them legally then you truly earned it. In the SEO world there are NO guarantees, and your Page Rank can be dropped at anytime. When and if this does happen you will learn from it, and you again will climb to the top. This is something that no serious site owner would ever give up on. Below is a sample of what a standard Page Rank bar would look like. This bar shows us several rankings for one site. The rank Google is giving the site sample below is 6/10 (6 out of a perfect 10). A PR of 6 tells me the site is on its way to bigger and better things because it has become a contender in the markets for advertising and more. The site now has some value. However, before I jump the gun and do anything silly I need to check this data to make sure it is actually correct, and not a fake page rank.

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It is very important that you do not always accept and trust the page rank number that toolbar is showing us. Why not? Is Google lying to us? No, Google is not lying to us, but the site owner could be running scams and stealing other peoples page ranks to build up their own rank.

Page Rank Tricks The PR Scam

I will state here today that I am 100% legit and proud of it. I like a challenge and will get to the top all on my own without fakery. The truth is that those that like to cheat they are looser's in the end because Google will find them and handle them as they see fit and that usually means de-indexing and or banned.

WARNING: The information below is to educate honest webmasters and advertisers on the hazards of using PR as a base to finding "good" sites on the Internet. This information is not for you to try to fake your own ranks. Do Not even try to fake out Google because they will catch you!.

The next thing you should know is that over time webmasters have found ways to fake out the page ranking system, and some webmasters like to use these unfair methods to gain PR. This is where you ask "How are website owners doing this?" Well, it is pretty simple actually. They do this by redirecting spiders to web sites that have high page ranks so that the data centers will record them as having that high page rank. This is very easy to do, and unfortunately it is done all over the internet today. I will explain this so that you do not make these mistakes.

They do it by Cloaking which is a search engine optimization technique where the page content shown to the search engine spider is different from what is shown to the users. This may get a site banned from search engines so I do not advise anyone to do this. There are legitimate reasons for cloaking, such as optimizing your flash website's for the search engines. However, this may not be as necessary these days.

Why would anyone cloak without a legitimate reason? cloaking is used to trick the search engine into giving it a higher ranking. However using this can and will get your website(s) banned from the search engines.

Should you do it? The real question is "do you have a reason to do it?" If you have no clue then you do not have a reason to use cloaking. PERIOD. Newbie website owners without experience, or desperate advertisers will go out searching for high ranking website's that offer relevant content. They notice the high ranking webmaster is charging less than average so the Newbie thinks they hit the jackpot because they see the high page rank number and consider it a worthy site to advertise on cheaply. The fraud ranked site will send the Newbie faked statistics and the details on where to send payments to. Once they take your money the Newbie will not know that they have been tricked for a while. That is just one reason, and that reason alone is good enough to make sure you research a website very carefully before paying a dime. Just because a website has a high rank, it doesn't mean its the best out there. Make sure you review all relevant sites that you may want to advertise on before hitting up the high ranking sites. I want to note that a PR 3 site can be better than a PR 7 site, and of course that would be due to the type of content and how well related it is to yours. The main point is to make sure you're dealing with the true people and statistics.

Another VERY important point I would like to add about Page Rank and statistic centers. Example if you went to domain tools, Alexa, and most other website stat sites they almost NEVER show the correct statistics. They seem to lag behind anywhere from a few months to year. Example at the time of this articles birth, Domain Tools states this site sees around 12000 unique visits a month, and to be as blunt as I can be this number is absurd! So whatever Alexa and Domain Tools is saying is likely to be incorrect most of the time, but again that is due to a lag. So, if you want to consider that information at those types of centers go for it, but use that information just as a guide only.

Hit Scams How It Works

This page have talked about fakery and scams so I feel it is important to explain things so that you understand how the scams work. Have you ever found a website that states they will get you thousands of hits if you sign up with them? The answer is likely yes that you have found website's like this before. Unfortunately it is nothing but a scam.

Why is it a scam? Let me explain a few things first. You sign up on the premise they promise you traffic, and you think to yourself "Hey, that is just what I am looking for." The reality of this wonderful sounding traffic system is nothing but hogwash. Let me explain...

1. Pay for the traffic: You sign up and pay for traffic. How much you pay depends on how much traffic you want. Just sit back and you will see your hits increase. Where does this traffic come from? Answer: read #3 below.

2. Click for the traffic: You sign up with a system where you click on links to view advertisements. Each advertisement had a point value assigned to hit and you typically do not know what the point value is. Example you see a link about baking bubbles, and you click on it and find out it was worth 1 point. Now you click on a link called yellow pickles and find out it is worth 3 points. You now have earned 4 hits to your website. Where does this system get their links from? Answer: read # 1 above.

3. Pay Per Scam traffic: Have you ever found a website that will pay you 0.01¢ per click if you click on advertisements? Well many people have found those sites and they sign up and click on thirty or so links a day. Earning 0.30¢ a day does not seem to be worth it so to keep you around they tell you if you can get people to use their service you will get a reward. So you get excited thinking you will start making hundreds of dollars, and they offer you a link so that you refer others to sign up under you. Once you have a referral signed up you will earn ½¢ more for each of their clicks. So if you clicked your thirty links and they clicked their thirty clicks you now made fifty cents that day. Imagine having 50 active referrals under you. You could end up making an extra $100.00 a month or more this way. This is why people tend to click away. Again where do they get the links in the first place? Answer: read &1 and #2 above.

The question is "Is the above considered quality traffic?" The answer is NO! That type of traffic is nothing but garbage! The people clicking on the links have no interest in you or your website. They only want to get their penny for the visit. Typically they do not even look at your website because they have programs out there today that will click for them. Is that the type of traffic you were hoping for? If you noticed your hits went up over 3,000 hits a day you would be very happy with that wouldn't you? Sure why not! Well, what if I told you that only 1 of those visits actually read your web page would you still consider those hits valid? No, I wouldn't and that is why it is important for advertisers to be very careful when choosing a website to advertise on, based on hits alone.

There are some sites that do benefit from these types of systems, but they typically are scam sites anyway and that is why I will keep to my original claim that it is all a SCAM! A serious webmaster wants quality traffic!

Are you now thinking more about Quality traffic? If so then you're learning fast!

Hits - Visits - Unique Visits: The Reality of Statistics

What is a Hit: it is a single request to your Web server for an item that is actually on your Website. This item can be anything that is served from your website such as an PHP, HTML, images, movies, sounds and more.

What is a Visit: it is a visit to your site from humans, spiders, or other website tools such as scanners. When they visit it is counted, but we cannot forget it will also count the hits for each item it requests. If the visitor went to this page it would show 1 visit, but it would show the hits for every graphic, sound, and more that had to load on this page. If I have 30 graphics on this page it would show one visit, and 30 hits just for this page alone. So it turns out that this one visit had 31 hits.

HINT: One page can bring you a double hit just for the page alone. How is this possible? Look at my main URL www.michelespaintshop.com/ if you were to visit that url it would load my home index page and it would count in the hit pool. Now look at this URL www.michelespaintshop.com/videotutorials/dropshadowcutoutpsp.php. Take note of the forward slashes in the URL's listed. Each forward slash is considered a hit because it is loading another page within my site. This could mean that you had only 10 unique visits to that page, but it could list as 30 hits.

What are unique visits: a unique visit is just that. It only counts that actual visitor and nothing else. This is the true source you should consider when putting value on a website.

The entire point of this is to explain to you that you should not always consider Visits and Hits being a solid valuable source of information. It is simply average, and only average if you consider the values above.

The bottom line: we cannot depend 100% on Hits, Visits, and even Unique's from just one source. We can only estimate from a single analytic source. When it comes to a website's true value you need to have two to three analytic trackers tracking your website's activity, and when you do your homework from that data, you will then be able to value a website.

What is your Page Rank? Let Google Tell you

The value of a website to you should be based on the quality of the information it offers and most of all how relevant the information is to you and your visitors. Some say PageRank is not important, but I feel that Google gives out these ranks based on the encyclopedic value of the web page itself. I also believe if you see a great page with a low rank you need not even consider the rank because you yourself put the value on the page because you liked it and found it useful. So, in the end PageRank is just a stepping stone to calculating the value of a web page.

The only tool I would trust is using Google Page Rank toolbar directly from Google themselves. This is a great little tool so that you can check website's yourself.