In case you haven't noticed, the latest Toolbar PR rollout has been abnormal and slow. In the grand scheme of things, Toolbar PR is close to meaningless (Argument From Absurdity: it tells us that Performancing is more important than the DrudgeReport).

Yet as things go, hundreds of thousands of bloggers and website owners are attached to the hip of this stale, useless tool. Why?

Simplistically, the story goes like this.

Google literally came out of nowhere (a garage) to dominate the search space. The reason? They filtered search results not just by on-page text but by off-site "voting" in the form of links.

PageRank is the term that Google invented to describe their "importance" metric. While their filtering systems have changed dramatically since their emergence into search dominance, PageRank is a simple icon of Google's successful formula.

Despite the fact that Toolbar PageRank is often 3-9 months stale, and despite the fact that Google now intelligently buffers the importance of raw links based on a number of smart factors, Toolbar PageRank is still the king of the hill...the center of gravity for thousands of web publishers and seo artists.

Because of this, a massive virtual economy has built up around PageRank in the last half-decade. Some web publishers make upwards of 5 (and for all I know, even six) figures per month simply by selling this awkwardly valuable commodity.

Rightly so, Google sees the buying and selling of PageRank as a negative manipulation of their once innocent metric. In reaction, Google has implemented a number of temporal buffers to deter the text link ad market. So far, they have not been successful.

But as rumors build that Google is either completely dropping or radically altering the way they tabulate, update and display PageRank, lots of people are scrambling to adjust their web publishing business models. Whether its site consolidation, ad diversification, or complex SEO subtleties like anchor text variation, deep-linking or post-level link buying, it is clear that Google has succeeded in stirring a whole slew of people from their slumber. And that should be expected. We are, after all, talking about people's livelihoods.

Having set the stage, I now want to address the two issues I raise in the title of this article.

1. Does persistence always pay off?
2. Preparing for the busting of a fairly silly virtual economy built around a meaningless metric

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This post was written by Matt Jones, the author of Blogging Fingers

As I'm sure you know it's that amusing time of year when the displayable Google Page Rank is about to be updated and bloggers run about like headless chickens making sure everything is ready. There are always those that mock the bloggers who get over hyped up about the update, but deep down we all know they are exited too. It's like a special Christmas just for bloggers and webmasters to enjoy.

I decided to ask, "What have you done to prepare" over at the BlogLight.ning forum where I received some interesting responses.

"I've done a lot of commenting on high PR 'dofolllow' blogs, and I've made sure to keep posting every possible day, often more than once."

Jeremy Hobbs, who is hoping for a PR3 or above.

"I wrote some good articles that caught some attention links, I did a few link exchanges a while ago and also got mentioned in some high PR websites ."

CristianR, who is hoping for a PR4 or above.

"The only thing that I have really done is participate in a few memes/trains that were making the rounds. To pay the favor back to others, I've continued with my weekly Speedlinking feature to spread the link love out to other blogs as well."

Derek Semmler, who is hoping for a PR5.

What Have I done?

1. Purchased a single PR5 link, but only because it was an absolute bargain. I don't normally buy any links.
2. Taken part in Probloggers group writing project, which is a great opportunity to gain links, traffic share knowledge and discover new blogs.
3. Posting at the Digital Point Forums, with a link to Blogging Fingers and BlogLight.ning in my sig. Forum sigs are worth little in the eyes of Google but it's a good way to spend those idle moments.
4. Continued the same strategy as usual. Guest Blogging has been a key part of this and so has 'networking' and making blogging contacts.

A Note about Page Rank Agreements

It seems that every 3 months when the Page Rank update comes about, people start squawking about how it does not increase traffic and we shouldn't get so obsessed with it. There’s always 1 person who 'cleverly' points out that PR is constantly being updated behind the scenes anyway.

While I agree obsessing over a single statistic (or any statistics) is a bad thing, its a fact that the higher your displayable page rank you have the more you can charge when selling sidebar links, in post links, reviews or even when selling the entire blog. Other than traffic, Page Rank is the most important factor in deciding how much money can be made from your blog.

What have you done to prepare?

I'm noticing very, very odd things about Google page ranks lately.  There has always been some minor differences about the way Google ranked pages based on keywords and their order within the search query, but lately, the differences are huge.

Take, for example, my political blog, DragonFlyEye.Net.  If you search for the term "rochester liberal politics," you get my site as the number one ranked page.  However, switch the terms around to "rochester politics liberal," and I rank 28th; switch them to "liberal politics rochester," and I rank 39th!  What gives?

This makes no sense to me at all, in terms of the user experience.  You mean to tell me that simply by rearranging the words in the query, a user implicitly wants different things?  If anything, this proves that whatever Google changed about it's ranking lately is profoundly flawed.  Now, if I want to rely on Google to find the information I'm looking for, I have to not only put in the exact words I want, but do so in the exact order that will provide me the usable results I want.

Whoa.  That's bad.  And it's even worse for those of us who want our page rank, because it means a three-word search term will give you three separate page ranks. . . . for the exact same page!  By splitting those searches up, it ruins your page's rank overall and means that some people will miss you altogether.

Wake up and smell the inconsistencies, Google!  You're not doing anyone any favours with your new search!

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There are many factors that determine your site's authority, trust and general ranking. One of them is Google's PageRank, though not everyone subscribes to this theory. I believe Google PR has a great deal of value as a metric for gauging the success of your blog. That's especially true since many ad networks and "pay per review" services determine your earnings per unit using PR, amongst other metrics.

Google PR itself is determined by several factors. This is a very light treatment of Google PageRank (PR) and should not be construed as gospel. I don't profess to know the entire algorithm as its nuances are a mystery to most outside of the search engine team, no doubt. But a general look at how PR is built up should help you understand why some new blogs take longer to rank than others. If history is any indicator, you have less than 90 days before the next PR rollout, so your link building efforts should start now, especially if you have a new blog.

Understanding PR buildup will also help you understand some of the reasons why your new blog is taking so long to get web traffic. I'm trying not to clutter the discussion with too much technical description. What's important is that PR can be used as a loose, relative measure of success. It's not enough in and of itself, but it's something concrete. Here's a loose summary of my thoughts on PR.

Read the rest of this entry

Speaking of persistence, just the other day I realized that I had a major social voting niche profile page with Page Rank 6. I honestly didn't use any trick. I didn't even try to build up the profile page. It just happened (as do most of the good things that I encounter on the web).

Well, it's not quite true that "it just happened" - there's a simple explanation. And it's an explanation that anyone can duplicate: persistent voting.

Every day, I submit articles and vote at a handful of social voting sites. About half of them are niche sites and the other half are general (reddit, digg, netscape).

I participate in social voting for the sole purpose of building traffic and acquiring links (as you know, eyeballs pay the bills). But as an unintended consequence of persistently submitting to these handful of social voting sites for about 10 months now, almost on a daily basis, I now have several PR 5 and PR 6 profile pages. For those of you not in the know, that translates into leverage and power.

By persisting and doing what works on a daily basis, as an unintended consequence, I'm now able to wield quite a bit of power with each vote (and pass PageRank right back into my sites).

Anyone else have some examples of how the side effects of persistence have paid off?

It's obvious from the latest Page Rank update that Google is strongly buffering the effect of certain kinds of links. What kind of links? That's a complex question, but I think I can answer it with two words: undiversified links.

The key to linkbuilding in 2007 is diversification. Below I explain five ways to diversify your links moving forward.

1. Stop pointing incoming links to your homepage

Let me set the record straight. At this point in time, if you focus 80% of your linkbuilding into non-homepages of your site, you're going to get a lot more bang for your buck. After the last PageRank update, I had the intuition that Google was severely buffering the PageRank of sites that had an inordinate ratio of links going into the home page as opposed to those going into sub-pages. It's much harder to manipulate deep linkage than homepage linkage, and Google has noticed this. The majority of my linkbuilding efforts (whether TLA, social voting, linkbait, whatever) are now aimed at pushing pagerank into the domain through the backdoor.

I can't emphasize this enough. Even if you only pick 2 or 3 subpages of your domain to focus your linkbuilding efforts, you'll get much more bang for your buck. The evidence is pointing to Google considering and weighting *whole domains* as units of measurement as opposed to single pages. Now more than ever, by building into subpages, you are helping your entire domain. The good news is that PageRank seems to flow a whole lot better throughout a site when you bring it in the backdoor.

2. Diversify the location of your links

Stop putting all your links in sitewide sidebars and footers. If you run a WordPress blog, consider doing targeted sidebar links per category as opposed to site wide. Also, consider throwing links around in old posts. Post level links are the most powerful, but take the most work. Text Link Ads now offers the chance to buy links at the post level, and I think it's a great idea.

If you're savvy enough with CSS it might help to change the semantics of your stylesheet div sections. Instead of "footer" you might use "the-end-is-near" ... instead of "sidebar", you might use "we-recommend" ... and instead of "entry" you might use "juicy"

The most important thing is to diversify the location of your links. Sitewide is fine, but only if complimented by a nice dose of post-level links.

3. Diversify your anchor text

The worst thing you can do at this point for linkbuilding is get five sitewide links, all pointed at the homepage, all with the same anchor text. That's a recipe for severely diluting the value of the links you acquire.

Instead, you might get three links into your homepage with anchor text like "Widgets for Wingnuts" , "The Best Widgets" and "Professional Widgets" and then get two links into each category of your site with variations on the category like "Sports Widgets" and "Widgets for Athletes." Doing something systematic like this is a recipe for successfully avoiding the Google Link Buffer.

4. Get article level links from strong sites

Promote your site at places like Digg, Netscape and Reddit. Right now, I have a little secret in this regard that I discovered by being patient. Nothing mind blowing, but it works. I'm willing to share the "secret" with anyone who sends me a private message.

Pssssssst...another secret....Performancing is a strong site that rewards good content with free article level links. Give it a six month try and you're golden.

5. Comment at other blogs

There's good reason to believe that comment level links with the no-follow directive still pass linkjuice. But that's not the reason to comment at other blogs. The real reason is to get noticed, and to get linked to from other participants who think you're one of the cool kids. If you have useful things to say, you'll gain respect and respect almost always turns into free links.

One of the best places to start off with your commenting career is at the Link Nazi's Blog. Lots of people take him seriously, and lots of the cool cats make posts over there. Friends tell me that a single quality comment can yield your site dozens of respectful glances.

I was going to title this article "5 Ways to Use Performancing Selfishly" but decided to avoid the negative connotation. Still, at the end of the day, every one of us is looking for ways to improve our little corner of the webernets, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Performancing exists for the sake of "helping bloggers succeed". Enabling high-octane performance in high-octane bloggers. That's all well and good, but you may be wondering what in particular Performancing has to offer and how you can use Performancing to take your blog to the next level.

1. Performancing as leverage: A free PR 5 user profile and PR 5 blog

My good friend Raj Dash has been a steady contributor to the Performancing community. By staying actively involved, and making regular posts, his user profile has a natural PR 5 as does his Performancing blog. Raj shares useful information with the Performancing community and gets naturally rewarded for doing so.

If you notice, Raj is able to link out to several of his websites from his user profile page, and if relevant, he can also link out from his blog entries.

The key to Raj's success at Performancing is consistent, steady and useful contributions to the community. We all trust what Raj says. We pay attention to his articles. Each one shows up on the front page.

Not everyone will get a free PR 5 profile and blog, but those who consistently contribute useful information should be able to do so quite easily. And I don't know about Raj, but I see traffic flow from my Performancing pages to my other blogs on a regular basis.

2. Establish yourself as an authority

The road to success on the web goes down one road: establishing yourself as an expert/authority. This is no joke. One great thing about the web is that it's an equalizer. If you can perform, you'll be noticed. Whether it's YouTube and MySpace for aspiring musicians and entertainers, or Performancing for aspiring bloggeres, here's your chance to prove that you've got what it takes.

Performancing has an open blog format. If the editors like what you've got to say, you're blog entry gets on the front page. This gets your name in front of thousands of people...people with power...people who could give you the gig you've been looking for.

Oh, and did I mention that if we like your stuff, you get promoted to the front page which has a PR 7, which will boost your Performancing profile's Page Rank.... (see 1. above)

3. Get free blog analysis

The Performancing community can provide you with blog valuations, tips on improving the usability of your blog, suggestions for layout and design and more. Just ask a question in one of our forums and expect an answer within hours, not days (we'll try!).

This coming week we'll be restarting the "reboot your blog" program. Each week we'll pick one blog to provide thorough design, usability and SEO suggestions.

Of course there's also pMetrics for blog stat-analysis. pMetrics will give you the tools for identifying where your traffic is coming from, how to improve your content, and whether your traffic building programs are working.

4. Monetize with Performancing

We currently have 3 primary ways to directly monetize through Performancing. First, you can get AdSense revenue from the blog and forum posts you make on this site. Second, if your article is promoted to the front page, you make $10. Third, receive referral fees for our pMetrics premium package. In addition to these three methods, we'll be offering several new monetization options, including theme and plugin development contests.

5. Use our community resources

Is it time for a new blog design? Check out Performancing's free WordPress themes. New themes will be released on a regular basis. Want to sell a blog? Try out our Blogs for Sale forum. Need help promoting an article? Try out our forum dedicated to free article promotion.