What does google page rank give to your blog?

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The next google page rank update is round the corner. No no no…easy, now don’t bug me on IM asking when is the date, I honestly have no clue. The grapewines say it’s around in April mid/last, so let’s watch and see.
Everytime there’s a page rank update the most excited would be the bloggers who started their blogging venture is less than three months earlier. This is the time when there are more searches for the term “when is the next google page rank update” and the related long tail ones on Google. Rest of the best, the boring daily bloggers wouldn’t be as excited as the young blogger because he’d have gone through the  update – downgrade – upgrade process by now and (probably penalized) lost his affinity to the green bar.
Now, the enthusiasm of the young bloggers is something that’s universal. Everyone is worried about whether their blog will get the green bar filled or not.
My question is – How much value does Google page give to your blog?
So you are a young blogger with a blog less than an year old. You have around 100 posts and gathered a few links from around the blogosphere. Hell, you’ve even submitted to directories only to know that they are a waste of time. I’m sure some of you might have even bought links from others in the blogsphere for as chaep as 5-10 bucks. So what value is Google Page Rank going to give you once you are calibrated?
You might sell some links? But Google will penalize you.
You might show off the page rank to potential advertisers? But they are more interested in your subscriber count.
You might show off your PR to a fellow blogger? They might have a better one.
Essentially, Google Page rank does not give you any value what so ever other than a fancy green bar.
It is just a publicly available visualization of Google’s own standards of rating sites to gather information.


And yes, please do not mistake that if you get a higher Google Page Rank you’d get better search engine rankings. That’s a mistake.

Google Page Rank has got no effect whatsoever on the search engine rankings position of a site. It is just an internal metric of Google to grade sites to make it convenient for them for data collection (or something similar).
So this time around, rather than fretting over the green bar, try gathering one way incoming links to your blog and developing unique content rich pages. Those two things can earn you lot of respect from Google, this page rank update.

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Fraud v/s genuine SEO – make them out from their claims

I had to write about this. There are lot of fraud SEO‘s around. No doubt. Many of them somehow downloads a pirated copy of some popular SEO book ( there are many around ) and becomes SEO’s overnight (That’s not my idea – I read it on the DP forums ). Now they go on to set up a one – page website with a Google, MSN and Yahoo logo with a dart picture (un-licensed) saying something like “The world’s best SEO – Rank No.1 guaranteed “. Have you seen one?
It’s easy to make them out as frauds from their overly detailed testimonials and super-duper client list (Some even have Yahoo on the client list – what the..?). It’s essential for genuine SE optimizers to make aware the public on these frauds and hence this post.
This post is inspired from this article by Philip Lenssen. I thought this post might enlighten you to make out between fraud SEO’s and genuine one’s from their claims. Though Philip has mentioned many white-hat terms here, I think it’s OK to assume that many of them are used by fraud SEO’s than genuine ones.
He says

In the SEO industry agencies, experts and even bloggers have adopted a special mode of speech not to say slang that might be misunderstood by outsiders like clients, website visitors or the general public. To help you understand what search engine optimization experts really mean I devised this real glossary of SEO speak:

And here is the article –

What they say…
What they mean…
We offer Search Engine Optimization/SEO
We assume you are the Google bot and want you to index this page for both keywords
We offer Search Engine Optimisation
Our SEO company is based in the UK
Guaranteed top positions
We place Google Adwords for you
We do SEO, SEM, PPC to increase your ROI
We do not want you to know what we do
We stick to the Google Webmaster Guidelines
We only break them in a way that we assume Google won’t notice
We tell you how to make money online
We want you to click on our ads
10 ways of making money onlineThose are our 10 affiliates, please click on the respective undisclosed ads
We offer social media optimization
We got several accounts banned at Digg
We offer link baiting services
We want to put those drunk naked ladies video on your site
Our network
Our link farm
Authority sites
Sites that do no SEO
Black hat SEO
We do anything to get rich quick, even if your site gets banned
White hat SEO
We only cheat Google where we have to, others do it too, come on!
We optimize for Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask
If we fail in Google you still have to pay
Search Engine Submission
We need your mail address, those guys offered us $$$ for each 1000 verified addresses
Partners
People we never heard of until we exchanged links
PageRank optimization
Sorry, we just started doing SEO and do not have a clue
SEO India
We offer 1000 links for 30$
Alexa optimization
All our employees have the Alexa Toolbar installed, it really works!

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Steps Migrating from Blogger to WordPress

Back to some basics today. For some time now, I haven’t written about blogger(blogspot.com) even though I get emails once in a while asking about things like migrating from blogger to wordpress and the like. In fact, there’s been repetitive questions on Blogger to WordPress migration. So here are some of my thoughts, ideas for Blogger to WordPress migration you’ll find useful.

Ensuring a smooth migration from Blogger to WordPress

Before the migration

1. Getting the domain name.

I assume you’ve bought a great domain name.
Make sure that,
a. If you have a site that needs promotion ( above the natural organic search )
- Get a “brandable” domain name with good recall value.
b. If you have a site that has a natural pulling through organic search through your content,
- Then get a domain name that matches with your niche.

Ensuring a smooth migration.

2. Don’t delete the old blog, build the new one first.

I assume that you already have some traction with the traffic on the blogger account. Now the most important step to take before moving to the WP account is to make sure that you don’t lose your traffic.
For this, before deleting your blogger.com account, set up your WordPress blog on the new domain, and import all the blogger post using the import function. Find more information about importing here.

3. Get the new blog indexed on Google.

Now, make sure that you get the new blog indexed through a valid external link. During this time, I’d advice that you block all the google indexing to the inner pages/articles either using noindex tags or password protecting those pages. And only let the main domain name be indexed. The reason is that if you let the content get indexed now, it may result in duplicate content.

4. Issue a 301 redirect on the old domain.

Once the new blog gets indexed on Google, install a 301 redirect on all the pages/main domain of your old blogger.com account. This will make sure that all the old posts will be “deleted” from Google and replaced with the new blog. I’d also advice that you create URL structures on the new domain to match the old one and therefore make redirecting easier and less complicated. Also make sure that you’ve lifted the “noindexed” tags and “unblocked” all the inner pages/articles from the new domain. More information on 301 redirects from blogger can be found here, here , here and here.

5. Watch the traffic closely for a few days, see for fluctuations.

For every migration, things take their own time, although if we have done things right, we should be able to expect a quick change over. So watch the traffic to the new blog carefully and see if you’re getting the same traffic as much as the old blog. If not, don’t worry, there might be some temporary glitches so hang on, you need to worry only if things don’t get right in a week or so.

6. If the traffic is okay, drop the old blog.

If you’re getting half as traffic as the old blog, things are fine. So its safe to drop the old blog. But wait, hang on for some more days until you get the traffic steady.

7. Check the SERPS.

If the SERPs still show the old blog URL, please contact Google Webmasters and request a manual deletion. But if you’ve done things right, it should already have replaced by the new one.
That pretty much summarizes it, but make sure you don’t skip any step in between or things can screw up. One grave mistake I’ve found many people repeating is that they delete the old blog even before the new one is indexed on Google. They import the contents on to the new blog and just delete the old blog thinking that things will get automatically fixed from there. Actually in all chances, there may not be screw ups, but you might as well see a major dip in traffic so much as to zero while the new site is being indexed. So, do it slow and steady, things will be alright.

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How to build a sitemap for blogger and large websites?

                               Today, let’s see more about sitemaps. Every webmaster must have a sitemap ready for his site and submit it to google in order to get all the pages listed on Google.Sitemaps are of two types, as you know the HTML sitemap you use to navigate a site and second the sitemap used to help crawlers crawl the pages more effectively.


Why are they necessary?
Sitemaps are not necessary.(Yep i said that) Even if you don’t have sitemaps the crawlers will crawl your pages and
find the content. But, it is like letting them crawl in a dark room. What if you had a well lit room with all navigation and helpers around which will take them to each room? It will be more effective right? Sitemaps serve this purpose.
It has the site structure ready giving indication to the crawlers as to which are the folders/files that are important, which are not, which are the folders/files that are to be visited frequently, and which are the ones to be visited only once. This helps the crawlers to undersand your site more effectively.


Now, how to build a sitemap for blogger?
It’s very simple in Blogger. It only requires you to go to the Google Webmaster Central and add your site feed and the sitemap is automatically created. Make sure that you submit your full feed and not the partial one.


Which is the best sitemap generator program around?
There are lot of free online and downloadable sitemap generators.
Here’s a simplified listing of what is best.


1- Python Scipt – This is the most difficult one to install. But if you are familiar with python, then this is the best one around.It’s automated and requires no additional support.I don’t recommend it for a beginner.Requires technical knowledge.


2 – Online sitemaps- This is best for small websites. It’s easy, simple and online.Just go to this site and submit your url.Fill in some basic details like time and priority settings for the files and click go!The whole sitemap will be generated online.You will get both ROR file and the Google sitemap XML file.If you are interested only in Google, use the XML sitemap.The format is according to Google sitemap protocol and is faultless.
Best choice for beginners and small websites of less than 500 pages.


3 - Gsite Crawler - This is a downloadable application. If your website is a bit large and you have time to tweak some settings and is serious about sitemap, then i would recommend this guy for you.
It requires you to give the website url, then select the types of files to be scanned from it, priority settings are automatically detected, and you can create bot Google sitemap and Yahoo url.
It has report generation as well that will give you an idea of how many urls were crawled and broken links etc.This is very useful while handling large sites.


How to make sitemap for large sites?
If you have really large websites for instance a one million page one, then it’s really going to be tough creating a sitemap. Practically this is possible with the Python script but if you are not okay with the technical stuff then you got to depend on sitemap generator programs.(If you don’t have a really large website the follwing piece of information may not help you.)


Step 1 - Download a free sitemap generator program like Gsite crawler.


Step 2 - Use it to crawl each folder of your website as separate projects.Make sure that you create a new database each time a new project is opened.


Step 3 - Now you have separate sitemaps for each folder.
Ex:- yourdomain.com/folder1 has a sitemap called folder1.xml and yourdomain.com/folder2 has a sitemap called folder2.xml


Step 4 - Download this simple index generator program.


Step 5 - Copy paste all the folders (containing the sitemaps) from thh projects folder of Gsite crawler(C:program files…) and put it into one single folder.


Step 6 – Run the index generator program against this parent folder.


Step 7 – Now a sitemap index would be created with links to all the child sitemaps but one problem, since in Gsite Crawlers projects folder(C:Program Files) each crawled folder will be named with underscore replacing the forward slash.
Ex:- yourdomain.com/folder will be named as yourdomain.com_folder
Therefore the sitemap index produced will have the links too this way.


Step 8 - Use notepad/wordpad to open the sitemap index file. Find and replace all the underscores with forward slash.


Step 9 - Upload the child sitemaps in the respective folders online.
Ex: – yourdomain.com/folder1..folder2 etc.


Step 10 – Upload the sitemap index file to the root folder and submit it to google.
Bingo! There you go you have now created a sitemap index and child sitemaps for a large website

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Google Promises Android 4.0 For The Nexus S, “Theoretically” For Gingerbread Devices, Too

With a few hours of Ice Cream Sandwich familiarity under our belts, the looming question in everyone’s mind is: when will the Android 4.0 update roll out to existing devices? Well, nobody knows. But after talking with a few authorities on the subject, we at least have a few hints.
Google’s Android Product Manager Gabe Cohen and Android User Experience Director Matias Duarte have promised Ice Cream Sandwich for the Nexus S, and hinted that all other Android 2.3 Gingerbread devices should “theoretically” get ICS as well. Here’s the official quote: “Currently in the process for releasing Ice Cream Sandwich for Nexus S. Theoretically should work for any 2.3 device.” According to Engadget, there still isn’t a clear plan for the Nexus One.
HTC has decided to rest heavily on the fence for this one, saying that they do hope to release ICS to the masses, but will have to figure a way to lay their Sense UI on top of it first. Just like Cohen and Duarte, HTC refuses to give a timeline.
In my quest to dig up some answers, I decided to reach out to the big four carriers as well. T-Mobile never responded, while the rest had either no comment to give, or no information regarding the ICS update schedule.
Many owners of Froyo devices purchased early this year are still waiting on Gingerbread, so hopefully the carriers and phone makers have a more efficient plan for Android 4.0.
But I wouldn’t bet on it.

• company: Google

Website: google.com

Launch Date: July 9, 1998

IPO: NASDAQ:GOOG

Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information....

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