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Paid for SEO, still have PageRank 0: Was I Ripped Off?

New to the web, paid a company back in March to register my new website with all the search engines. As I am now reading your book (Growing your Biz with Google) in August, I see that my website has a 0 page rank! does this mean that I am not even registered with "Google"? Did I get ripped off?

If you could check and see if I am even in existence with Google and Yahoo, that would be great. If not, please tell me how I can fix this problem as fast as possible, as I am currently working on a "review website" with Microsoft Front Page 2003, that I plan on using to load up with links back to my main website, and I would assume I am spinning my wheels if I am not even registered? If you can let me know if this tactic (creating a review website of various other home business opportunities) will work, I would be most appreciative! I have had my site up since March and it just sits stagnant!

Do you think this will breath some immediate life into the site? (ie: traffic?) Thanks in advance, Dave. Love the book so far! Also, when you agree to add other links to your website, where do you put them? Should I create an entire page just for links? And where is the best place to get into reciprocol linking when your site is relatively new? Does reciprocol linking work as well as building a review site? (ie: one way linking?) and lastly, how do you suggest registering a new website in the future so that I don't have this problem again?

Dave's Answer:

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First off, let's start out with a definition. The sandbox is where Google puts new Web sites for anywhere from one month to three months or longer; their intent is to avoid having new sites pop up out of nowhere to be top o' the page results for a specific search. It's one way that Google maximizes the quality of its SERP (which you'll recall are search engine result pages).

For people building a new site, however, this is a real drag. Buy a domain name, build a nice site, get a bunch of inbound links from other sites, and you could still be "stuck in the sandbox" for months, waiting to show up in the search results.

One way that I've found for dealing with this is to put up something, anything, related to your new domain name as soon as possible, even if it will be completely replaced by your real site once it's built. It leads to some interesting PageRank situations, of course, where your home page is ranked (for previous content, but that's okay) while secondary pages aren't ranked at all, even though they're just one click away. If you have the Google toolbar installed, check out the weird way that PageRank works at my findability.info site currently: it's exactly that situation as I write this.

But don't panic! Not having PageRank doesn't mean that you don't show up in search engine results! In fact, they're pretty much independent of each other and pages with zero PageRank frequently show up in searches, while pages with high PageRank are sometimes impossible to find in a search engine.

To see if Google knows about your site at all, you need to use the special search pattern of site: followed by the domain name. To see about findability.info, for example, I'd use site:findability.info. Then look on the top right to see how many pages are indexed:

You can see that Google now knows about 34 pages on the site, which is good since they're only about four days old. That's really the value of PageRank: it increases your priority with Googlebot, their spider, which means that your new content is found faster when it changes. One important factor: how often do the other pages on your site change?

(I talk about this at length in the Google book).

In terms of your site, Concepts From Home.com, when I do the same site: search I find that Google only knows about two pages and reports them as having similar content. The one page it actually shows is your faq.html page (not even your site's home page). Looking on your site, it appears you have about ten unique pages or so, however, and if they've been up since March, that's rather inexplicable, making me wonder if there's some bad SEO stuff that's triggering something inside Google.

Nothing jumps out, though - perhaps you have too many keywords in your meta keywords field, but most people believe Google ignores that anyway, you have two "head" tags, but that's not a grievous error, - so we're left with a common puzzle: what doesn't Google like about this site?

But rather than answer it specifically, let me say that I believe that the important question here is one of business strategy. Your site is focused on home business opportunities, but that's a staggeringly busy category. Do a search for that on Google, for example, and you'll find 134 million matches. With a category that busy, you'll basically never make it out of the mire, even once Google knows all your pages. Instead, i would suggest that you need to pick a specific subcategory and really take to heart what I talk about in the book: put the time in to become a credible expert on the topic, share your expertise with the community, and then leverage that to grow your online business.

So my counsel would be not to build a reviews site with a tool like Microsoft Front Page, but rather to ask what you could contribute to the home business community, then consider a site that encourages you to make frequent contributions. I'd think about a weblog that critically evaluates home business opportunities for military spouses, for example, just to pick one area where you could perhaps focus a bit more and gain traction in the marketplace. Then apply for other opportunities and review them. Write about your own too, fairly and honestly, and then work on putting in the time - not hiring an SEO "expert" - to gain visibility in your marketplace.

A few final answers too: never put reciprocal links on your home page - I prefer adding a new page to a site that's "links" or "sites I like" or similar. In terms of reciprocal linking, a good strategy is to search Google, MSN, Yahoo, AOL, etc., for specific searches that are those that your customers would be doing, then ask the sites that are matched to swap links with you. Put their link on your site first as a show of good faith and given them 7-14 days to respond to your email request. Don't be surprised if less than 10% say yes, though.

You had a lot of great questions as you're trying to get a handle on doing business online, and I hope I've answered them all. my key advice to you is the same I offer everyone who wants to do business online: join the community and become a contributor and subject matter expert. Time is your ally, so make a long term commitment and don't look for results in 30 days, but think strategic and you'll enjoy ever-increasing success online.

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Categorized: Building Web site traffic , Search Engine Optimization (Article 4108)
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Comments

>...then ask the sites that are matched to swap links with
>you. Put their link on your site first as a show of good
>faith and given them 7-14 days to respond to your email
>request. Don't be surprised if less than 10% say yes, though.

Many people consider any email about link requests spam. While links between sites can be valuable to both sites, unfortunately, the idiot spammers out there asking me to link my personal hobby site to their "poker-tips," "drugs-for-sale-without-prescription" or "other-stupid-scam" site make me ignore all requests to exchange links. Also, since the site you're asking to link to you is already established in the category, why should they help you, one of their competitors?

It is definitely much better to build up the content of your web site. A strong focus will help a lot. Good luck.

Posted by: Michael Clark at August 8, 2005 7:38 PM

Just my 2 cents. If we are talking about updating website on daily bases I would say that putting RSS feeds to your website could really help.

Oleg www.seo-r-us.com

Posted by: Oleg at October 27, 2005 8:08 AM

Great advice Dave, particularly on picking a niche and becoming an expert in it. For the somewhat more advanced who really want to learn about improving their search engine rankings I would also recommend Fallon & Jenkins "Stomping the Search Engine" program.

Posted by: Law at May 22, 2006 11:38 AM

I read that using that addurl on google actualy penalizes you, and that you should start with one or more links, from other indexed sites, and if the site linking to you is PR5 you get indexed in 2-3 days, PR6 in 24hours or even under 6... On my first site ofcourse, I did the mistake of using addurl.

Also, stay away from those link farms :(

Posted by: Pet Pictures at May 31, 2006 8:36 AM

Hi,

I started a new site in Oct, 2007 and paid to have a SEO site called ineedhits.com to optimize and submit my site to Google. I paid for a Premium Submit and it said that my site was guaranteed to be submitted and crawled in Google within 7 days. But I still don’t see my page rank.

They said that the process was done but here it is January, 2007 and I have not yet seen my page ranked by Google. I have a Google tool bar on top of the browser on my computer and it still howed a white bar. I even have a couple of AdSensed advertisements from Google on my homepage.

Do this mean that Google has not crawled my site yet and that I might have to wait until March, 2007. Is there any way that I can find out what’s happening?

Thank you,

Carol

Posted by: Carol at January 27, 2007 6:06 PM

Good tips, I recommend you read these reviews to know the best directories to submit your blog: http://blog-dir.blogspot.com/
Many Blog Directories will link back to your blogs but others are only trying to increase their own PR (page rank)by requesting inbound links and they don't link back!

Posted by: Nico at March 7, 2007 1:37 PM

Is it best to have all of our pages in the same folder...ie the index folder...and have them all linked that way, or is it best to have pages in other folders and have them link to the index page.

Thanks,
programmingchicago.com

Posted by: E at March 15, 2007 12:50 PM

I started my free dating site in January
my keywords don't show up in google or yahoo but they crawle my site and have alot of backlinks but no google page rank what can I do to get my keywords to show up.

Thank you,
Http://www.myidate.com

Posted by: Kevin at March 24, 2007 5:26 PM

Hi Dave!I find myself coming back time after time when I do a search it always brings me here. I just wish I had a tinge of computer knowledge that you have. Anyway My question is I made a website like 3 weeks ago, When I do a search its there but I have to
do it by my webpage's exact name on then Im #1 on the search. If I put in Teacup Poodles then Im #434 on the search engine. My question is..Im happy Im listed buy my Page Rank is 0. Would you look at my site and tell me what I need to do to make it at least rank? Thank you Dave! Look forward to hearing from you.Oh and Does it just take time to get a rank?

Posted by: Jo at April 17, 2007 9:35 AM

Congrats on the solid results, Jo. You're right, sometimes it just takes time to "rank" but really, you should be paying attention to your search engine results placement (SERPs) and not the PageRank value. The former is what brings in customers, while the latter is just some relatively random, mysterious figure. :-)

Posted by: Dave Taylor at April 19, 2007 12:04 PM

Thank You for answering me!!
I know the answer about getting higher ranking is already answered..I guess I need alot of High Ranking Pages to Link me..But is that what brings your Website to a better # on the search engine or is it based on "Hits" on the page? or Age what factors?

Thank You Mr Dave!

Posted by: Jo at April 19, 2007 12:31 PM

Hi Jo,

Take a look here:
http://www.seomoz.org/page-strength/

I think this will answer some of your questions once you run your URL through it!

Slav.

Posted by: Slav from Abc Car Parts at April 27, 2007 11:21 PM

I find this whole area confusing. I have a new articles site, which uses in large part subscription based content from a common source. My toolbar page rank shows as being grayed out (not too worried if that is because the site is new) but when using a tool such as that offered by prchecker.info the rank shows as 0. Given that I have accrued nearly 4000 articles in 4 weeks from the subscription service it is difficult to check for outbound links to "bad neighbourhoods". I also worry that the site is growing too fast. Could this be a problem?

Posted by: Lewis at August 6, 2007 1:36 AM

You need to just Wait, and if you have not been crawled, you need to submit, or post your url to a site that is indexed daily or weekly, like posting to blogs or forums, so the search engine can find you! i am currently in the process of waiting..... tick tick.......

3Mushrooms

Posted by: 3Mushrooms at March 27, 2008 1:19 PM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!