Dave Smith gave me the heads up that Google reshuffled the Page Rank deck for the second time this year. As I’ve said before, Page Rank Matters, even if it’s for purely superficial reasons.
Mary McKnight, of RSS Peices set off on a mission to improve the PR of several of her clients by starting PR5 Club:
“The club, which meets once a week for the 5 weeks following a PageRank Update focuses heavily on high level SEO strategies that WILL ensure that these bloggers hit a PR5 within the next two PageRank updates.”
With one reset down, they’re all in need of a strong finish. I don’t pretend to be an expert on improving PR, but I do like to watch.
Here are some observations concerning my blogs:
Blog Fiesta maintained it’s rank. I don’t even try to promote this blog. Frankly, I’m surprised it ranks as well as it does.
Brainious went from 0-2. I’m happy it made some progress, I’m just now getting around to focusing on this blog. Podcasts are coming in the next week!
Denver Modern is still a 4 & Lenderama is still a 5. They both made some progress though. Both sites are now displaying “Site Links” in limited circumstances. Dave is extremely jealous (see comments), so I guess that’s progress.
The Secret Diary of Greg Swann is still a 4. You might remember, Fake Greg Swann attained a PR4 in less than one month. That’s insanely fast. Much of the conjecture was that Google took a snapshot of FGS during all the commotion it stirred. Here’s the interesting thing though, the blog has been dead since the last reset. It’s still a 4.
So what does it all mean? I don’t know, but I’m happy to guess. I think Google’s trust in a domain name is more important for PR than all the little things that bloggers attempt in trying to boost it. I think lenderama, Blog Fiesta and Denver Modern are benefiting from the Google’s trust of mariah.com. Fake Gregg is getting the same traction from wordpress.com. I think there’s an opportunity here for new bloggers to jump start their PR. Here’s what I’d do if I was starting a real estate blog from scratch.
1. Start with a free WordPress.com blog. It think FGS has proven that Google trusts wordpress.com as a URL.
2. At the very same time, register your domain name for at least a few years.
3. Set up your domain name to forward to your WordPress blog. Go Daddy calls this Domain Forwarding. It’s like call forwarding. Now you can use the new domain name for your cards and stuff, but the blog’s true address is still yourblog.wordpress.com. For an example, try lenderama.com.
4. Blog your heart out. The great thing about this is that your total cost is just a few bucks for the domain name registration. Obviously, all the things you will want to do here are not covered in this post. Here’s a list to help you with that.
5. Once your PR hits 3 or 4, map your domain name to your blog. This is a guess on my part, but I think you’ll maintain your PR. I did something similar for Loan Bark before I sold it, and the PR was maintained. Domain Mapping only costs ten bucks a year.
6. After everything is all up and running, you could then consider leaving WordPress.com for more flexibility.
Will it work? I don’t know. Mary ensured her methods would work. So if your looking for guaranties, PR5 Club might be a better bet.