Google's PageRank™ (PR) system continues to ever-more
dominate the internet! It seems that Google's skyrocketing influence on
all-thing-internet matches the upward trajectory of its common stock shares.
So, how does a website end up with a high (or, conversely,
low) Page Ranking from Google? Even more importantly for high-end website
owners is how to meld together all of those expensive "Flash" movies
with the system Google uses to determine PR.
First, though, a brief explanation of what Page Ranking by
Google is all about: Google itself says that its PageRank™ system is at the
very heart of its search prowess. It adds, "PageRank relies on the uniquely
democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator
of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A
to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably
more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it
also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are
themselves 'important' weigh more heavily and help to make other pages
'important.' Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages'
relative importance."
The PR system runs from 0 through 10, with 10 being the
highest possible PR achievable. Even if your website is ranked from 0-2, which
is the lowest range for established sites, it may not matter because of some
low-ranked sites nevertheless get good search engine placement for their
keywords and phrases - that is, unless, the ranking is 0 due to Google
blacklisting a site for SEO Blackhat spamming of one sort, or another.
Otherwise, a low-ranked site owner can buckle down and work on creating links
and improving site content.
PR 3 can work alright in some cases but does not bode well
for a site that is involved in a competitive industry and work should go into
improving both the SEO characteristics of the site and the breadth of its
content.
PR 4 is an above-average rating and indicates that there are
sufficient Google "votes" for the site to make it reliable and that
the site has good content. It is difficult for a new site (one that is less
than 6 months old) to get a PR 4 without putting forth a lot of effort.
Getting above 4 is very difficult, especially for a new site
unless it is debuted with a lot of fanfare such as an IPO, or a government or
educational institution's backing.
Getting into PR 5 is a milestone in any website's path to
profitability. While some web gurus such as Mike's Money-Making Mission opine
that 5 is "attainable" even poor Mike is only ranked PR 3!
Additionally, a PR 5 indicates that there are many quality inbound links to the
site, that it is both respectable within its industry and has very good
content.
PR 6's are at best reserved for mega-sites and sites with a
long operating history. A PR 6 is usually major corporate, government and non-profit
web sources and is very difficult to obtain without much linking effort and
broad, exhaustive content or, in the alternative, a unique system. A good
example of a PR 6 is Legal Zoom which is a mega-source for low-cost legal
services started by a group of lawyers and nationally advertised on TV, radio
and the net.
PR 7's and 8's are usually earned only by institutions of
some sort or other, or, major corporations such as General Motors or Delta
Airlines.
In the stratosphere of 9's and 10's, it appears that politics
can be played! For example, while Google ranks itself as a PR 10, rival Yahoo!
is only given a PR of 9! This ranking brings many chuckles, as it should.
With that system in mind, and the fact that both onsite
optimization plus offsite quality linking go into generating a PR, how does a
website built in glorious Flash get ranked? For example, a "so-call"
SEO guru and expert website cries on its home page, "Don't Have A Flash
Website If You Want Search Engine Results". This self-anointed expert SEO
site goes on to add that "Search engines do not like flash sites."
However, the site is only PR 3 despite its bravado and lack of Flash.
With SEO gurus saying not to use Flash, can Flash be used
anyway and still get good PR rankings? The answer is an affirmative "Yes!"
A recent example is Crown SEO's all-flash website which
earned a PR 4 in just 60 days after launching. How did Crown SEO do this bit of
search engine optimization? First, the entire site is presented in a robust
Flash movie embedded on a page that also contains detailed Meta Tags to
describe exactly what the content of the movie is. The Flash includes all of
the typical wiz-bang animations that Flash is so loved for plus the movie
emphasizes a text-based orientation rather than uncluttered animations so
common in Flash sites. But, in addition, below the Flash movie is a complete
navigation bar that any search engine (including Google, obviously) can use to
spider the entire site since the navbar leads to a simple text page that
restates everything in the movie. Also, Crown SEO put in an extensive sitemap
that links up both to the movie and to the text in a bit of search engine
cross-checking, as it were. As a result, there is no search engine that could
miss the sterling quality of the site's content.
Thus, good content (called onsite optimization) along with
good offsite efforts such as search engine registration and link building can
easily result in a high PR for anyone's site who cares more about content and
user satisfaction than they do about paid ads and link farms - even if they
employ an all-Flash site.
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