Well, the past two months have been interesting to say the least. I feel I work hard and read a great deal on E-marketing topics and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), participate in SEO forums, and read SEO related books and blogs, and so much more.
So while I completely understand that Google PageRank (that little green bar on the Google toolbar) is definitely not a good measurement of your efforts or value of a web page, it is an ‘indicator’. It indicates how Google feels about that specific web page based on certain criteria, which Google will change from time to time making an SEO’s job that much tougher. As soon as we think we’ve figured out the equation, it changes.
So with that said, I try not to pay too much attention to it. However I still find myself glancing at that little green bar every so often. If nothing else, it tells me Google is aware of the web page in question. If it’s a zero, then I can be pretty sure I’ve got some work to do.
A couple months ago, a past client’s site went from a PageRank of 4 (nothing too great) to a ZERO. Now I don’t get paid to maintain these sites, only to do updates once in a while. But I still carry a great deal of pride in these sites and definitely feel some responsibility for their ‘well-being’. I wasn’t as concerned about their PR as I was about search engine positioning – which by the way, fell immediately from fairly good spots on target keywords/phrases. I went through everything I knew and quickly determined the problem. After a few corrections and a few hours work with Google’s tools, the site has started to return to it’s normal positions after only a couple weeks. Duplicate content issue – duh!
The lesson I learned here? I guess if I hadn’t been paying attention to that little green bar – it might have taken a great deal longer to even notice a problem had occurred. (or better yet, be more careful with potential duplicate content issues!)
On the flip side, last Friday of all days (my favourite day of the week – I got the whole weekend ahead of me – to work at my own pace)… the site I AM getting paid to maintain dropped from PR 6 to ZERO! Even some secondary pages were ranked 6 and they had dropped to zero as well. Now I know this is LIKELY a Google PR update, I’ve read about them before,… but how do you really know! I immediately checked all SERPs for a number of targeted keywords… so far nothing has changed… but will it?
I think I had a panic attack as my heart dropped into my stomach,… I got on to the Search Engine forums and started grilling ‘the experts’… most said ‘just relax’… but hard to do when you feel your company’s future is potentially at risk. If customers can’t find you, sales will definitely plummet!
Well I can end this long-winded story on a happy note by telling you I got in Monday and at first, PR was still a big ZERO. But, after a couple hours (to my delight) it returned to 6… on all pages that carried this PR previously. I checked the Google data-centers immediately and found it had returned on all servers. Pheeeeww… big sigh of relief. Chalk this up to a learning experience, guess I’ll get used to this as time goes on… but for now, these little scenarios still have me teetering on the brink of insanity.
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