What affects search engine indexing and page ranking?

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   Beth100posted 11 years ago

   Alright, this is a very basic question (yes, I know it is, but.....) I thought I understood this but the other night, someone told me that indexing has no affect on page ranking.  He went as far as to say that he has purchased page ranking from Google, etc.  I have not heard of this.  Am I wrong to believe that page ranking is still based on the number of hits which provides the indexing which in turn churns out the page ranking?
   
   Thoughts and explanations would be greatly appreciated.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Sounds like you're getting bogged down in jargon! 
      
      Pagerank is a score assigned to your web page by Google.  many people say it doesn't mean a lot these days, but there are still plenty of "pagerank checkers" if you Google it. 
      
      http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/google-pagera … hese-years
      
      People also talk about where a site ranks in the search engine page results (SERPs) - that's not the same as pagerank.  Pagerank is a score, not a position.  Pagerank has some effect on where  your Hub ranks in the SERPs, but it's far from the only factor.
      
      Google uses a very complicated algorithm to try to judge where your Hub should rank in the SERPs.  It includes the overall Panda score for your sub-domain, and things like how many "Likes" or Twitter mentions you've had, how many backlinks, and various quality indicators on the Hub itself.
      
      I suggest all newbies sign up to a free trial of The Keyword Academy, if you can get in.   It might not be worth joining once the trial is up, but their "core lessons" give a nice straightforward explanation of all the latest thinking in how to find keywords, how to promote effectively etc etc.
      
      Edit:  I see you're not a newbie!  However, things have changed so much in the last year, it's probably even more important to spend some time on TKA to get your head around all the new stuff.

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         Beth100posted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Marissa, a BIG THANK YOU for your explainations!  Understanding that page rank and SERPs are the not the same thing is a huge point of clarification for me.  The puzzle pieces are falling in place for me! 
         
         Yes, I am not a newbie to the writing part of things, but I have not really spent much time planning or thinking about SEO, SERPs, page ranks, indexing and so on.  It's only now that I'm comfortable with my writing that I am tackling the meat of the matter. 
         
         Your suggestion to spend time on TKA is really appreciated.  I have not heard of this site -- didn't even know this was offered!  It will definitely help me.
         
         Again, thank you!!!

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      aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      You can't buy ranking (either page rank or how you rank on in SERPs for a particular keyword) from Google, but I wonder whether you heard about "buying" didn't actually refer to buying adverts. 
      
      You can pay Google to be a "sponsored" result in search, so basically your site shows up at the top of page1 (if you're the only advertiser, or you paid more than other advertisers).   Perhaps that's what your friend meant when he said he bought rank from Google.  The problem with this for us is that we would probably end up paying more, than we would earn from the extra traffic.
      
      The thing to remember about ranking well in SERPs is that it is competitive, if you are lucky and you find a keyword where the competition is pretty bad, you might find yourself on the first page, without having backlinks, purely on the goodness of your on page factors.  Of course most keywords with low competition don't have a big search volume, and they are not easy to find.

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         Beth100posted 11 years agoin reply to this

         He wasn't referring to the Ads.  I thought he was too, but when I asked him if this is what he was talking about, he said no. 
         
         But, thank you for pointing this out.  Maybe if I show him a screen with the Ads, he might fess up that he was mistaken? 

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      Your admirerposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Hubpages will get better pagerank than your website because of better SEO, onpage factors, and link building. So, google indexing will be faster.

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   Paradise7posted 11 years ago

   I wish somebody who knew would address this topic in the forums.  I know there are all kinds of hubs about this very topic; so many, in fact, with some conflicting information, that I'm really confused, even though I've read just about all of them.

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      Beth100posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Same here.  So glad I'm not the only one in this boat!! 

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   Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years ago

   Hi there - You cannot purchase page rank from Google - What you *can* do is purchase spammy links to your site through 'Black Hat' indexing means; this is risky as if Google find out, they will downrank a site in the search engine results.
   
   I have been studying and reading up about SEO techniques for a couple of years and have put together a hub all about the main ways to get traffic to your website. It covers positive SEO (on page and offpage) and negative SEO.
   
   You can find it here: <link snipped>

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      Beth100posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      It's against TOS to post your links in the forums.  You're link has been snipped, but I'll mosey on over soon to check out which hub it is.  Thanks.

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         Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Yes, I noticed that I guess I deserved the snippage!

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   psycheskinnerposted 11 years ago

   Your url's page rank is determined by the number and rank of pages linking to your site.
   
   You cannot purchase page rank.

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      Beth100posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      If it's based on the number and the rank of these pages linking to the site, then how am I ending up on the first page, some with first, second and third ranking, when I have not linked the hubs to any site?  This is why I am confused.
      
      I thought that page number is based solely on the number of hits/visits to that page, which in turn, determines the ranking.  More visits and hits, the higher the numbers, the higher the page ranking.
      
      Help?  I'm lost.....

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         Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Your search engine rank is not based solely on the number and rank of pages linking to you, that's simply *offsite* SEO; it may be that you have really good *onsite* SEO (non-competitive keywords, great content, good descriptions, headings etc.)
         
         Also bear in mind that links to your hubs from elsewher on HP (e.g. topic pages, related hubs etc.) do count as exernal links, so they will provide some link juice.
         
         Hits and visits to a page don't have any effect on its ranking in search engines, as far as I know. It's also not about you linking the hubs to another site, but other sites linking *to* you. If you take a look at the article I mentioned previously, it goes through all of the key factors.

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            Beth100posted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Thank you Paul.  I will stop buy and read your article.  It will be a few days down the road, but I will come by.  Thank you for helping me out.

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         wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         There is a difference between page rank (how many backlinks there are) and the ranking in the search engine results.
         
         There used to be a pretty strong correlation, and you could increase your rank in the SERP by buying backlinks using blackhat methods, but that correlation is increasingly tenuous as google works on the problem of ranking from actual value rather than from page rank.

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            Beth100posted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Thank you for clarifying this point.  I didn't understand (yea, not a newbie, but still really one when it comes to this stuff) that there is a difference.  This means that what I write in content and where I media-work it will have great impact on my backlinks and search engine results.  I'm think I'm starting to get this.

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         Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         How do you know you're on the first page?
         
         These days, not everyone gets the same results when they search on Google.  Google keeps track of what you're doing, and tries to personalise your results based on your history.   If you've previously looked at a Hub, Google remembers that - so if you search for that topic later, Google will offer you that Hub in your search results.
         
         There used to be a site called Scroogle where you could check the SERPs anonymously and get a true picture - it got shut down.  There are other checkers but I'm told the free ones are all very unreliable.

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            easyguyevoposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            I believe signing out of google before performing a search would fix this problem

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               Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

               Not entirely.  Google tracks the search history from your IP address even if you're not signed in, and even if you choose not to be tracked in your privacy options.

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                  easyguyevoposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  Ohh, sounds stalkerish but most of us have dynamic ip addresses will that still apply?

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                     Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                     I think you'd be surprised how many people still have fixed IP addresses.

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                        Beth100posted 11 years agoin reply to this

                        Stupid question, but how do you know if it's fixed?

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                           logic,commonsenseposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                           They are not able to reproduce! 

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                              Beth100posted 11 years agoin reply to this

                                you make me laugh soooo hard!!!  I've missed you!! xo

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                  Beth100posted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  scary thought......

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         psycheskinnerposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         It is based on pages that link to you, not pages you link to. And all hubs have pages that link to them. And this is the only thing that determines your underlying page rank.

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            Beth100posted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Where do these links come from?  Social media sites? But where else?

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               mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this

               The links come from all sorts of people who found, read and enjoyed your article, so chose to post a link to it on another site, whether a private site, a social media site, a blog or wherever.

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               psycheskinnerposted 11 years agoin reply to this

               Mostly they come from hubpages itself to begin with.

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                  Beth100posted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  Thus, the importance of spending time reading others' hubs and commenting.  I suppose this is how most of the writers here not only gain their following, but increase their probabilities of obtaining links.
                  
                  thank you for your explanations and patience. 

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                     Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                     Links within HubPages.com are likely to count for less than links from other sites, because they're all within the same domain.
                     
                     You get links automatically from other Hubs because of the "related Hubs" feature on each Hub, so leaving comments, following etc doesn't make much difference.   Far more important is getting links from outside HubPages.
                     
                     It's important to note that even if you get fifty links from another site, Google only counts the first one or two links - so there's no point starting blogs to promote your Hubs. You need to do things like guest blogging (writing posts for people's blogs in exchange for a link), posting on forums where you can have a link in your signature, and leaving comments on blogs.

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                        Beth100posted 11 years agoin reply to this

                        Thank you Marisa.  Despite being on this site for 3 years, it simply proves one thing to me:  there is plenty to learn!!   
                        
                        I have content to proof and edit for a couple of companies, then I'll be back on the wagon to apply what I've learned.
                        
                        In the meantime, have  a terrific weekend.

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   easyguyevoposted 11 years ago

   Hi beth
   
   You receive a webpage ranking depending on how relevant your page is to a search term. The relevancy of your webpage is determined by both onpage and offpage factors.
   
   Onpage factors being how many times the keywords appear in your text; Synonyms to the keyword, anchor text, links to related sites etc. Basically everything that makes you page relevant but not spammy.
   
   Offpage factors are mostly backlinks and social media. In theory the higher the page rank of a page linking to you (the pagerank formula is patented therefore if you google it you will find the formula along with an explanation) the better the link is but there are other factors to consider such as the type of domain it is (trusted or spammy). If is an edu,org or gov site. The relevancy of the content on the back linking site to your site.
   Also how far the link is from an authority domain which is basically a bunch of sites that google has appointed as 'authority' sites.
   
   If a link passes through 5 sites between your site and the authority site link to the first domain as opposed to 12 times in which case the least number of links between the authority site and your site would be the better link.
   
   Also the page rank of a page is not used to calculate its ranking. It might help some users to see if they want to trust a sites information by viewing the pr of that site. You webpage page rank will automatically grow as you get links but it itself is not a ranking factor.
   
   Anyways hope this clears up a bit?

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      Beth100posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, this is helping easyguyevo.    One question - what are anchor text?  I haven't heard of this term before now.  Also, the shorter the hop from the main domain to my page, the better the link.  Correct?  Thank you for your explainations.  They are helping to clear things up for me. 

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         mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Anchor text is the text you use to embed a link in. So say you posted a link within a dog care hub of your own to, for example.. one you had on clipping your dog's nails, you might choose to highlight a piece of text within the dog care hub e.g. it is important to 'clip your dog's nails' regularly (you just highlight the words 'clip your dog's nails') then you would click on the 'paperclip icon' above the text capsule and then select or enter the link you want that text to lead to. Remember this doesn't have to be an article of your own, it can be another site, an external article etc (following HP's TOS of course). The anchor text in this case would be 'clipping your dog's nails'.

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            Beth100posted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Okay.  Thank you for explaining what anchor text is.  It's basically the highlighted hyperlink text. 
            
            I really appreciate your help and your explanations.  I think I'm out of the fog finally! 

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   LindaSmith1posted 11 years ago

   Those you find at the very top of search engine pages that are in the colored boxes ARE SPOTS THAT ARE PAID FOR.  They pay Google a pretty penny to be there, essentially advertising space.
   
   The rest of page is organic searches.

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      Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, I am a PPC advertiser on Google (I pay for the ads on the search results - Nothing to do with HP, it's my other business) and it certainly *isn't* cheap!

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         Beth100posted 11 years agoin reply to this

         I checked this out for one of my other writing sites, and backed off quickly due to the costs.  I couldn't justify spending that kind of money when I am not SEO savvy.

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   khmohsinposted 11 years ago

   As many of you are probably already aware, Google ranks a page according to the number and quality of links leading to that page. If your page has 100 quality links leading to it, it will rank higher than another page that has only 20 links pointing at it. Quality links come from pages that are themselves "important" (Google's own terminology).

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