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November 2009 Google Page Rank and Algorithm Update

Guest post by: Brandon Leibowitz

Article Overview: Google’s latest algorithm and Page Rank update for November 2009 has major changes in store for webmasters. Fresh, original, updated website content is a key factor to increasing page rank and search engine rankings.

November 2009 Google Page Rank and Algorithm Update

Google has once again updated their search engine algorithm and Page Rank. This has cause great joy for many webmasters, while others are scrambling to find out what happened to their websites page rank. Goggles newest page rank update, occurring late October/ early November 2009 seems to favor new pages. New pages are pages that have recently been added to your website, or have undergone major changes in content. Existing pages with no updates or slight modifications had a loss in page rank, while pages that are new have passed on the link juice from the homepage to deeper pages. This is consistent in many sites I personally manage for myself and existing search engine optimization clients.

This just proves that Google loves to see fresh, new, original, updated content on webpage's. Stale, old recycled information should be changed frequently on your website. Not doing so means that your pages will suffer from lower search engine rankings than desired. Even if the URL has been changed, but the content has not been changed there will be no PR for the page. This is just an observation upon many of new, recently modified or updated websites.

Simply changing the layout, template, images, etc will not cut it. This is because the search engine spiders cannot read or comprehend these. The search engines can easily read text, but images and website layouts are more challenging. Alt tags, alternative text, allows for the search engines to get a few word sample of what the image is. This can drastically improve a website's search engine optimization. Therefore, changing your template will not suddenly push your page rank through the roof. The textual content is the key factor to increasing website page rank in Goggles eyes.

In order to improve your Google Page Rank you must really change your website content. This does not mean simply adding a few lines of text, reordering around your content, or using auto generated content. Major changes to the text should be made, even if this means starting from scratch or rewriting all of your existing copy. This is a daunting task and cannot be performed on every website. E-commerce sites would have trouble updating their product descriptions multiple times throughout the year. In this case, occasionally changing the content or adding slight modifications can help preserve the page rank.

The new website copy should have the proper research done before implementing the changes. What this means is that you should search out profitable keywords for your page. Profitable keywords are keywords that have a lot of searches, yet little competition. This means going after long-tail, niche keywords. Once these keywords have been identified, they should be inserted into the websites title, meta description, and meta keywords, header tags, alt tags, and the content. Make sure not to overdo it as the search engines will view this as spam, negatively impacting your website, or even getting you permanently banned from the search engines.

A websites should also have a flat navigational hierarchy. This means that your homepage, which typically receives the highest Page Rank from Google, should like to the most important pages in your website. The more pages the homepage links to on your website, the higher those pages will rank in the search engine. This is called passing on link juice from on webpage to another. Imagine a tree table, in which there is one main site linking to many interior pages. The other pages on your website that are not linked to the homepage will not receive as much link juice.

In essence to avoid losing page rank your website should update its content 3-4 times a year. This is because Google performs major page rank and algorithm updates 3-4 times a year. The updates usually occur around the same time, so expect to see another huge update in January of 2010. So start writing, or hire a copywriter to help write SEO friendly content for your website.

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Article Tags: Algorithm Update, content, Google, keyword research, November 2009, page rank, pr



Related Forum Posts
Page Rank Changes - Hi Kevin - there is a lot of speculation as to why so many websites lost Page Rank. A few new sites that I've been following also got Page Rank for the first time. Every time Google does a Page Rank update there are websites that get caught in the crossfire and have to work to get their rankings back up!
Page Rank Update - I'm looking forward to the next Google Page Rank Update. On the last one my site moved to a PR 6 and we're getting some nice traffic. It's been a while since the last update - I'm hoping it comes soon - and ranks our new Entrepreneur Forums!
www.tobuso.com and www.paperrollshop.com - Please take a look at these and tell me what I should do. I am too close to them to see it objectively at this point. The main on is the tobuso.com one. The other is just a paper roll side bar project. I have had a guy working on tobuso.com for about 2 weeks or so. I really dont understand why it doesnt have any Google Page Rank yet. I am starting to move up in the rankings for my targeted keyword but I am lacking in the google Page Rank and cannot figure out why. I guess it may just take more time. See if that is what it looks like to you.
Re: Specific Strategies To Raise PR Levels? - After re-reading through the posts in this thread it seems to me like there might be a little confusion as to what Page Rank (PR) really is. For those who don't know... PR is a number between 1 and 10 that Google assigns to a web page based on it's importance. With 10 being the highest and most important. It's mainly determined by the number and quality of inbound links to the web page but there are other factors as well. It is NOT the ranking your site has in the Google search engine or any other search engine. If you are ranked #3 on google for "home business" that does not mean you have a PR of 3. They are completely separate things. Furthermore, PR does not determine how high a site ranks in the search engines. It's possible and very common for a site with a low PR to outrank and site with a higher PR for the same keyword phrase. If you want to raise your PR then you need more backlinks. Higher PR backlinks will pass more link juice to you and help raise it much easier. On that same note, if you want to increase your search engine rankings for a particular keyword then you also need more backlinks with the keyword you are targeting as the anchor text. When it comes to that, Page Rank and Search Engine Ranking Positions are very similar but that is it. People often think that they need high PR to get good search engine rankings and it is not true. They also tend to think that just because a site has high PR then it is better than a site with lower PR, that is also not always the case. One final thing about this is that the PR you see on your Google Toolbar for a web page only updates a few times per year and is not necessarily the actual PR for that page. The actual PR is stored at Google and is updated constanty, and is not shown to the public. Only they know what it really is. I hope that clears up some common misconceptions about Google Page Rank (PR).
How to get Page Rank - Google won't reward you with Page Rank if you're not getting links for your site so it looks like the work you're putting in is paying off - congrats!


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