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Yesterday, in part 1 of How to Improve Search Engine Placement of your Squidoo lens, we talked about the SEO optimization techniques you should use to make sure your Squidoo lens is optimized to be search engine friendly. After all, we love the search engines, right? They are our source of free organic traffic =)
In Part 2 we are going to begin the process of OFF-page optimization. Did you know that what you do OFF your Squidoo lens can be as important….. no wait, it can be MORE important than what you do to the Squidoo lens itself?
Before we begin, lets start with these two terms:
- Search Engine Rank
- Page Rank
They’re the same, right? That little green PR bar is an indicator of how well your site is ranking in the search engines….right? And when you lose PR, you MUST be losing high-ground in the search engines, too?
Right?
WRONG!
Did you know that where you rank in the search engines has to do with two things:
Your ON-page content and SEO
Your OFF-page optimization and SEO processes.
So, what the heck does Page Rank mean?
PR (Page Rank) is an indicator of your back-links. Yes, it is as simple as that (pretty much). PR tells how popular you are. The more sites (from good neighborhoods) that link to your site (or Squidoo lens) the higher your Page Rank. Now, this is a painfully basic explanation – but that is the gist of what PR is.
How Does Google Decide Search Engine Placement (or rank)??
Let’s get the answer straight from Google. I found this handy piece of information here.
When a user enters a query, our machines search the index for matching pages and return the results we believe are the most relevant to the user. Relevancy is determined by over 200 factors, one of which is the PageRank for a given page. PageRank is the measure of the importance of a page based on the incoming links from other pages. In simple terms, each link to a page on your site from another site adds to your site’s PageRank. Not all links are equal: Google works hard to improve the user experience by identifying spam links and other practices that negatively impact search results. The best types of links are those that are given based on the quality of your content.
Got that?
Let’s see if you got the same out of it as I did.
I read:
Relevancy is determined by over 200 factors, one of which is the PageRank for a given page.
So, a Squidoo Lens, or a Blog post, or an entire site has it placement in the search engines decided by over 200 factors… and Page Rank (PR) is just ONE of those 200 hundred factors.
Interesting!
Ok, I also read this:
PageRank is the measure of the importance of a page based on the incoming links from other pages.
There it is, that ‘gotta be popular’ thing… it’s High School all over (says the band geek)!
So, I can just go get a ton of links to point to my site and my Page Rank will sky-rocket, right? Wrong!
Not all links are equal: Google works hard to improve the user experience by identifying spam links and other practices that negatively impact search results.
Well DARN!
So, what is a GOOD link to my site that will increase my Page Rank and help me with that ONE factor out of 200 that helps me with my search engine placement?
The best types of links are those that are given based on the quality of your content
Hmmmm…. based on the quality of my content? What does that mean to us today?
Links are ‘it’, kids. Good, high-quality links that have content-related anchor text. These links will not only help the over-hyped Page Rank (PR) of a site or Squidoo lens……
But these high-quality links TO your Squidoo lens or site are the KEY to improve your search engine ranking.
Please, don’t kill yourself going into your lenses and frantically trying to keep them overly-fresh. Yes, ‘tweak’ them, but do NOT spend more SEO time ON your lens than you do OFF your lens.
Read yesterdays post to be sure you know how to SEO optimize a Squidoo lens before you set it loose on the world.
Then – get to work on link-building.
Oh, and stop worrying about PR so much! Let’s focus on search engine rankings…not that green bar. =)
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