WiseBlogging.com

Looks like Google is giving an early toolbar PageRank update of the year 2008. In fact, I noticed the data center was reset to zero while I was doing a random check yesterday. I thought it was a system glitch or something, so I didn’t pay much attention to it until I realised today that one of my blogs read a PR of 5 (from PR4) on the Google PageRank extension in my Firefox. I’m not sure if the toolbar PageRank update is confirmed, but there are certainly several reports across webmaster forums about the update.

I then did a PR check on all my blogs, and very much to my surprise that WiseBlogging was also updated to PR4 from PR3, although not much of linking work was done. Whereas, the other two blogs of mine remained at PR4. In conclusion, I’m now having a blog with a more respectable PR5 and 3 blogs with PR4, not a bad start for the year 2008. This early PR update allows me to reorganise my editorial calendar and restrategize to maximize the earning of my blogs.

Remember during the last PR update when many websites had their Google PageRank reduced due to paid links and cloaking, Google also booted them from the index. I’m expecting to see more sites being ripped off their PageRank value in this update. If yours was penalized, I’m sorry to hear that, but PageRank drops doesn’t really mean anything. Who cares what Google thinks about your site quality. It might negatively affect your ad revenue, but hey, who says you can’t make money without Google? Always explore other monetization options that do not require an outdated quality indicator like PageRank. Frankly speaking, most advertisers do not even look at PageRank value of your site, and some of them do not even know what a PageRank is. =p

Has your PageRank been updated? What does it mean to you? Share with us.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Google has finally decided to update the long-waited PageRank after some rumors about Google’s possible move to abandon PageRank mechanism. The last update was back in Apr’2007, and it took Google almost 6 months to update this time. I wondered why, but I really don’t care much about PageRank anymore. I’m already sick and tired of PageRank update, after months of fruitless waiting and checking.

This latest update has, in fact, stunned many of us as hundreds of established blogs like Problogger.net and JohnChow.com have been penalised for selling text links on their sites. Their PageRank have significantly been reduced from PR6 to a mere PR4. What a pity! However, PageRank isn’t really that important after all, if you know how to monetise your blogs. There are many other monetisation methods that don’t really even look at PageRank.

This blog has finally gone from PR0 to PR3 in this latest update, which is of no surprise. Several of my other blogs have jumped up to PR4 from PR0. I’ve checked the PageRank for some of my “newbie” friends, and it still stood at PR0. No worries, friends, as I said, don’t care about PageRank, it’s really not that important. Just keep up writing and blogging, I’m here to show you how you can earn a substantial amount out of your blogs. Stay tuned.

If you wanna find out at where your PageRank currently stands, use the great PageRank checker tool from SmartPageRank.com

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Your blog can be accessed either through www.yourblog.com or yourblog.com, how convenient it is! However, it also means that your blog has two different PageRanks. Go to SmartPageRank.com and see it for yourself. Google and other search engines often regard www.yourblog.com and yourblog.com as two different blogs, and therefore, some of the inbound links may point to www.yourblog.com and others to yourblog.com.

Example:

• www.rockyourvote.net has a PageRank of 4
• rockyourvote.net has a PageRank of 2 is having PageRank 4 now

People don’t always link to your domain in the way you want them to. From an SEO perspective, this could hurt your hard earned search engine rankings and link popularity. How to solve this not-many-people-know issue?

The best solution to this situation is to signal to search engines that both domains are the same blog/site by implementing what is known as ‘301 redirect’ or ‘permanent redirect’ from one of your domains to the other. By correctly configuring a permanent 301 redirect, the search engine rankings might improve as all inbound links are correctly counted for the website, thus, your PageRank is theoretically redirected too. It also helps to redirect your visitors to the domain that you want as well as to clear up duplicate content in search engines.

Before implementing a 301 redirect, you should decide which version you want it to be, www. or non-www, then stick to it. In my case, I chose the www. version. A 301 redirect can be done in many ways, but I’m going to only show you two simplest methods that I recommend:

1. Using a Wordpress plugin
2. Using htaccess

1. Setting up a 301 redirect using a Wordpress plugin

If your blog is on a Wordpress platform, you’re lucky! Justin Shattuck came up with a wonderful plugin called WWW Redirect plugin. This easy-to-use Wordpress plugin allows you to set up a 301 redirect few clicks away. Go to the plugin page here, download the plugin, extract and upload the file to your plugins folder, activate it in your Wordpress admin control panel, go to the ‘Redirect Options’ on the sub menu of the plugins menu and update your preferences. That’s all, you’re done. Your domain is now redirected to the other domain from now on. You can check your redirect validity on Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker

2. Setting up a 301 redirect using htaccess

For those on blogging platforms other than Wordpress, don’t be disappointed, you can still set up a 301 redirect using htaccess. Doing it using htaccess is highly recommended as it’s easier to manage – copy, paste and save. It’s also the safest method without having to worry about being penalized by search engines. In my case, by adding the redirect code to the .htaccess file on my server, I redirect my visitors to reach my blog at www.wiseblogging.com instead of wiseblogging.com, and below is how I did it.

The 301 permanent redirect code:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^yourblog.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourblog.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

For Blue Host user

1. Login to your Blue Host control panel
2. Select ‘File Manager’ under ‘Files’ session
3. Click on ‘.htaccess’ and select ‘Edit File’ and you will get the screen below
4. Insert the redirect code into the field indicated, remember to replace ‘yourblog’ with your own domain and lastly save changes.
5. Done. Your domain is redirected to the other domain from now on. You can check your redirect validity on Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker

For other web host user

If you are not a Blue Host user (advertisement : Reliable, Affordable Business Hosting from Bluehost.com.) , you should still be able to locate the same file ‘.htaccess’ on the root directory of your blog but if you can’t locate it, create one and name it ‘.htaccess’. Here’s how to do it:

1. Open up your notepad or any text editor that you prefer
2. Copy and paste the redirect code into the notepad, replace ‘yourblog’ with your own domain and lastly save it as ‘.htaccess’
3. Upload it to the root directory of your blog and make sure the name remains as ‘.htaccess’
4. Done. Your domain is redirected to the other domain from now on. You can check your redirect validity on Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker

If you have a relatively large blog, you will likely not see the big shakeup overnight, as it takes time to move your rankings and pass your PageRank, however, implementing the 301 redirect is definitely going to benefit your blog in the long run.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

PageRank effects:

• Getting sick and tired of checking and monitoring your blog’s PageRank when the PageRank update is around the corner but always popping up late?
• Can’t wait to be the first person to know the latest PageRank of your blog when it gets updated?
• Waiting for the next PageRank update so that you can start your next move?
• Getting irritated by PageRank false alarms?

Let’s face it, Google’s PageRank has become the determining factor of a ’successful’ blog. Who doesn’t look at PageRank before paying you for an advertisement or a text link on your blog? However, checking and monitoring your PageRank can be an irritating and tiring job at all time. I used to check and monitor my PageRank whenever the PageRank update was near, but I finally crumbled. I hated PageRank for making me to check up on it more often than my bank account balance. If you are like me, Smart PageRank has the solution for you, you can finally stop monitoring for PageRank update every now and then. Thanks to Smart PageRank, now you can get notified the moment your blog’s PageRank changes.

Smart PageRank is a new website that allows you to check the live PageRank of your site/blog. The real draw of it is of course the service that will email you when your blog’s PageRank gets updated. Head over to SmartPageRank, punch in your blog’s url, provide your email address, sit down and relax while waiting for the notification from Smart PageRank. How cool is that?! Best of all, it’s FREE.

SmartPageRank seems to be one of the best SEO tools out there. Apart from showing you the live PageRank of your site from 26 datacenters (you may choose to view up to 67 datacenters), it also displays some useful information like:

• Age of your domain
• Alexa rank
• DMOZ and Yahoo Directory links
• Number of backlinks
• Number of indexed pages from 5 major search engines
• Estimated value of your site/blog

Besides, it also offers a valuable collection of SEO tools to help you know and improve your site better. These great SEO tools are:

• Backlinks Analyzer – displays the PageRank of your incoming links. I love this tool! It shows me how strong my incoming links are.
• Whois Tool – shows you the domain information.
• Domain Lookup – shows you the availability of a domain in realtime.
• Bulk PageRank Checker – allows you to check the PageRank of up to 10 websites at one time. This tool is especially useful for those who have multiple blogs.
• Multiple Datacenter Pagerank Checker - allows you to check your site’s PageRank on up to 67 Google datacenters at the same time.

Although SmartPageRank is still in Beta, it already has an Alexa rank of 15,739 and PageRank of 4 in just 6 months, at the time of this writing. SmartPageRank is definitely going to be the next big thing. Fellow bloggers, let’s get buzzed by Smart PageRank of your next PageRank update, which is going to happen very soon. *fingers crossed*

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!