PageRank update on 6th December 2013

Amidst all predictions and Matt Cutts saying - he will be surprised if there is any PageRank update in year 2013, Google finally rolled out its much awaited PageRank update on 6th December 2013. Some webmasters achieved more than what they expected while some of them were disappointed by the results.

What is PageRank? 

PageRank is a 10 point grading scale from Google to measure the importance of a page. It was initially an important factor in determining the search engine ranking of a page in Google Search Results. Google has gradually sidelined its importance as a ranking factor however Google still says PageRank is one of the more than two hundred ranking factors.

How to check PageRank? 

There are numerous websites that may tell you your PageRank. Google used to provide a PageRank toolbar which has been discontinued lately. So, these sites are the only options to check your PageRank.

You can check your PageRank pr checker.

How to Improve your PageRank? 

PageRank is a less important factor these days as a ranking factor, however it still is. The major concern for new bloggers is to improve their PageRank.

PageRank is all about Link building. The more inbound links you have from high PageRank websites/blog, the more you will get your PageRank.Writing high quality content will result in these high PageRank sites linking back to your content. The most natural way to improve your PageRank is to create genuine, quality and unique contents.

You can do it manually too. You may search for high PageRank blogs that accepts Guest Posts and submit your articles to them. Guest posting allows you to put your links in either the content itself or in the Author Bio section.

You can also do it by searching Do Follow commentLuv enabled blogs and commenting on them.

So, what's your rank? 

PageRank was updated on 6tht December 2013. How much you got out of 10?. Share along with your blog's address in the comments.
Since, I am using Blogger's default comment section chances are that putting links in comments may land your comment in spam folder. Don't worry about it. I will restore it as soon as I discover it :)

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PageRank News - Is PageRank Obsolete?

With Google saying it will no more announce any PageRank update this year, most webmasters are feeling that it may be the beginning of the end. PageRank has been an importance metrics for any blog and somewhat affects the search engine optimization process too.

According to WikiPedia,

PageRank is an algorithm used by the Google web search engine to rank websites in their search engine results.

PageRank worked on the backlinks factor. If a site has more number of links pointing to it on web than another site, this algorithm will rank the first page higher than the second one.

Google PageRank- is it the end?

The major problem with PageRank was that it was prone to manipulation. Bloggers all around the world in order to achieve high rank created thousands of back links overnight with free or paid services.

In order to fight this black hat link building technique, Google introduced algorithm where poor links were penalized. However, the process still went on.

▌ Is it the end of PageRank? 

PageRank has been a major factor of determining site's popularity. May be, its an end of PageRank. However, Google said it is still a ranking factor along with more than two hundreds other factor.

No one can't really predict whether its an end to PageRank. May be, Google will redesign it and improvise it some way.

There are other metrics that is replacing PageRank. Moz's Domain and Page Authority is one such factor. 

What do you think about it? Do share your views and guesses.

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Google Penguin 2.1 updated on 4th October.

 Matt Cutts tweeted on 4th October:

Penguin 2.1 launching today. Affects ~1% of searches to a noticeable degree. More info on Penguin: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html …

Penguin algorithm

Google updated its Penguin algorithm for the 5th time and named it Penguin 2.1. According to Matt, the change is going to affect about 1% of searches to a noticeable degree.

Penguin was first implemented by Google on April 24, 2012 affecting about 3% search queries to fight web spam.

Penguin basically was released to fight with Keyword Stuffing, Black hat link building techniques and Copied Contents.

▌ Previous Updates: 

Penguin 1: April 24,2012

Penguin 2: May 26, 2012

Penguin 3: October 5, 2013

Penguin 4: May 22, 2013          (Referred to as Penguin 2.0)

Penguin 5: October 4, 2013      (Referred to as Penguin 2.1)


Google is constantly working on improving its search results. Google recently updated its algorithm and named it Hummingbird algorithm.

It is important for you as a blogger to practice only white hat seo techniques and stick to original and unique contents. If you  have been hit by Penguin, you must already been seeing its effect by a drop in your search engine traffic.

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Google's Hummingbird Algorithm and Its Effect on your Blog.

Yesterday, Google announced the largest update to its search engine algorithm since 2001, and called it Hummingbird. The update had already been rolled out a month ago and it was announced yesterday.

Hummingbird is not same as Panda or Penguin. Panda and Penguin updates were only a part of algorithm that was updated and not the entire algorithm. Hummingbird update is an entire algorithm update and is a major one since "Caffeine" in 2010.

Hummingbird algorithm update will concentrate more on phrases and meaning behind the words rather than keywords only. It basically will try to return a page to you which answers your query in a better way than a page which just includes keywords of your search query.

Is it going to affect your Search Engine Rankings? If it had not affected till now, then perhaps you are safe from it. The Hummingbird update has been live from a month, and you don't really need to worry about, if you have no drastic changes in your search engine results.

The only way to keep Hummingbird or alike updates not to affect your search engine rankings is Original Content and High quality genuine backlinks. Many of the webmasters were severely affected by Panda and Penguin in the bast due to their negative Search Engine Optimization practices. The best way to rank "always" well in search engines is the same old thing. If you are writing original and useful contents, Google will always rank you well.

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How to Prevent Blogger Redirection to Country Specific URL

Google has introduced country specific redirection for all the blogs hosted on Blogger platform. So, if you are opening any .blogspot blog in US, it will redirect to .co.us subdomain, for Indian visitors, it will be .co.in and so on. Now you may ask whats the problem in country specific redirection? Its the Google problem to handle all these complicates and no matter who opens the blogs from any part of the world, it is av

▌ Problems with Country specific Redirection

♦ SEO effect: The same content is hosted on more than one domain. www.abc.blogspot.com and www.abc.blogspot.co.in are two completely different URLs and content duplicasy has a negative effect on SEO. 

♦ Rankings: Alexa too sees .com or .in domains differently. So, if you are getting 100 visitors for these both of the domains, you are actually dividing your ranking factors into two.

♦ Advertising: Advertising services such media.net verify each site for showing ads. That means you have to register each domain .com, .in, .co.us and perhaps hundred more in order to utilize all your traffic. This decreases your chances of making money from Blogging since your blog is not generating the complete earning due to partial approval.

▌ How to prevent Redirection

Although, Google has been working in order to reduce the effects of redirection, its not really possible to remove all the disadvantages. So, here are some methods by which you can prevent custom redirection for Blogger blogs.

♦ Buy a custom domain. The best way to prevent the effects of redirection is to buy a cheap custom domain. Country specific redirection is not applicable to custom domains. Custom domains have much more benefits and there are several cheap domain registration services like GoDaddy.com providing domains in less than 10$/year. There are several other cheap domain registration services like www.1and1.com which provides domain in a $ for the first year.

♦ Using NCR property. NCR is No Country Redirect. if you add /ncr to all of the links of your blog, then there will not be any country specific redirection. However, this process is much tedious process.

♦ Using javascripts. There are several javascripts avaialble which prevents redirection. Here is one.

<script type="text/javascript">
var str= window.location.href.toString();
if ((str.indexOf('.com/'))=='-1') {
var str1=str.substring(str.lastIndexOf(".blogspot."));
if (str1.indexOf('/')=='-1') {
var str2=str1;
}
else {
var str2=str1.substring(0,str1.indexOf('/')+1);
}
window.location.href =window.location.href.toString().replace(str2,'.blogspot.com/ncr/');
}
</script>

♦ Backup your blog and go to edit template.

♦ Noe search for <b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/> by pressing CTRL+F.


♦ Paste the above javascript code just below the above tag. 

♦ Preview your template and see if everything's fine. Now save your template and you are done. 

I personally suggest buying a cheap domain from GoDaddy or any other your-choice Domain registration providers. 

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Make money with Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger

A good number of bloggers see pay-per-click programs as a very slow process of earning and rather take up affiliate marketing to make money from blogging.

Affiliate marketing, rather than paying for impressions or clicks, pays you when the ads shown on your blog make some sales. You are given an amount/sale which is usually in 5-10% of the cost. That means, if someone buys a laptop of 500$ thorough the ads shown on your blog, you will earn between 30-50$.

The best part of the affiliate marketing is that you don't need really great traffic to earn significant
amount. You should be good at reviews and compel your audience to buy things.

Lets understand the difference between pay-per-click and affiliate marketing.

With 1$ cpm (cost-per-mile), and 10,000 traffic, you will make 10$.

And if you the ads generate even 5 sales of items with cost price 100$, you will earn 50$ with the same amount of traffic.

▌Google Introduces Affiliate Ads for US.

Google earn about 96% of its money through revenue programs - AdSense and AdWords. With bloggers switching from older ppc or cpm advertisings to affiliate marketing, Google cannot take risks of Ignoring it for a long time.

Google Affiliate Ads

Google recently launched Affiliate Ads for US users. To get started,

Go to Earnings tabs on blogger dashboard and click Get started. You need to have an AdSense account in order to show affiliate ads. If you don't have one, sign up for AdSense account.

When you publish an article of review of any brand or product, the Google Affiliate Ads for blogger widget will help you display an appropriate affiliate ad in your blog, either text link, image or banner.

When someone make a purchase from the affiliate link, you will earn a commision per sale. Your earning is not restricted to clicks or impressions anymore.

▌Google Affiliate Ads for UK now.

Google has extended its Affiliate Ads programs to United Kingdom.

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Google Banned my AdSense account.

This is mine story. How Google Banned me account.

For this present blog, I applied for an AdSense account. As per there norms, I created an ad unit and implemented it on my blog for review. I got final approval from them and ads started showing up on my blog. That was great. I mean getting AdSense is a dream for much of the bloggers with more than 100 articles and 500visitors/day.

I got an account with 27 articles and about 200visits/day.

AdSense worked for 2days. And then I got an email that I have been banned. The reason was not at all clear. Here's a screenshot.

Google didn't explained me as to why and how my AdSense account will pose a significant risk to their advertisers?

And If my blog has kinda problem, why they approved me after all? There mind changed within 2days?

And if they know that my account is posing "a significant risk" to their advertisers, why not they mention it out me?

Just because I am getting a few hundred visitors only and earning some cents per day and is not contributing to your revenue significantly don't mean you need to ban me. You should have not approved me at all.

Search on the internet for the AdSense ban. There are thousands and thousands of such incidents where Google ban blogs without giving any reason.

If you say there is an invalid activity, Mr. Google it would be great if you tell us that activity and we can correct us. Don't you feel so?

▌ MakeMeNoise.com story.

I have a college friend Avinash Mishra, owner of the website www.makemenoise.com. He is the best blogger in Jaipur according to the IndiBlogger and is in blogging world for more than a year. His blogs has always served as an inspiration to me since I personally know him. One day, I got to know that his AdSense account has been disabled from Google.

He was neither a new publisher like me, nor a small one. He has got decent traffic and that too mainly from Search Engines. His blog is great in Contents, Design, and traffic.  He has a huge readers base for his blog.

So what makes Google ban his account?

▌ What to do next?

I am forgetting about AdSense. Going to concentrate on building my blog as a brand and optimizing it for traffic.

I will rather go for direct advertising as there is not really any AdSense alternatives that pays as decent.

For you, don't put all of your eggs in one basket. Don't rely on AdSense alone. You may wake up someday and find that your account has been banned and that you will never get to know the reason.

Search for alternatives.

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Time to Replace Google Friend Connect on Blogger.

I have been using Google Friends Connect Widget on my blog from a long time. However, I got a mail today from Blogger asking me to replace it with Google Plus Follower widget. The mail looked like this.

Increasing your Google+ follower.

You have the option of replacing the Google Friend Connect widget with either Google+ follower widget or you may alternatively put a subscribe to email list option. 

▌ Add Google Plus Followers Widget to your blog.

♦ Go to Blogger Dashboard > Layout.

♦ Add a gadget and in the "basic" list of gadgets, you will find Google+ Followers gadget.

♦ Click on "Add a gadget".

♦ Reposition your Google Plus Followers widget according to your site design. 

♦ After implementing, the widget will look something like this.

▌ Benefits of Google+ followers widget. 

♦  People visiting your blogs will be able to follow you with a single click without even the need of knowing your Google Plus profile. 

♦ A large number of followers means a large number of reach :)

Google has been trying to mix the Blogging and Google+ thing, like Showing your follower counts in search results.  This new mail from Google makes me think that Google+ will someday will play a major role in Search Engine Optimization.

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