fischervanlines

I think someone sabataged my web-site. Page rank went from 3-0, and it was predicted to be a 4. I thought I was following all the rules. http://www.fischervanlines.com
Please respond
Thank you!

jdegerstrom

Visit URLTrends and your site is shown as PR3

http://www.urltrends.com/viewtrend.p...vanlines .com

If you were "following all the rules" and not using deceptive practices or bad linking schemes, you are probably ok.

This PR prediction shows zero, so you need a closer evaluation.
http://www.pagerankprediction.com/?t...ict+Pag erank

Please describe your SEO techniques of how you promote your site, and perhaps we can find if something is wrong.

Jim

__________________
Jim Degerstrom, Small Business Resource Center, Web Design and Graphic Artwork
Custom Web Design | Small Business Advice Blog | Small Business Advice Podcast
Be kind to strangers. Here's one reason. Read Hebrews 13:2

jumpenjuhosaphat

It's highly unlikely that someone could sabotage your PR ranking. Just about the only thing that can effect your ranking in a negative way are techniques that you use on your site. Off site links won't(shouldn't) have a negative effect on your rank.

__________________
Storage Sheds
Lost Forum

fischervanlines

Thanks for looking into this. My webmaster I was using used many different techniques. I am still a novice (a work in progress). Is there any way you can do an overview of my web-site and help me with this. What are your prices? Thanks again. Jeff

airwolf

I checked on LIVEPR it shows 0 on all Data Centers check http://livepr.raketforskning.com this is bad, you don't have any backlinks

__________________
Hawaii Five-O DVD | Brooklyn Bridge DVD | Hardcastle And McCormick DVD | Hart to Hart DVD

jdegerstrom

Hi, Jeff,

I believe you can get enough free advice here for what you want to accomplish. I cannot find anything in the code of your pages to explain the change from PR3 to PR0 as "punishment" for an infraction. The good news is your rating has changed in the PR toolbar since you first posted yesterday.

Your pages are now PR2, including the home page. Google has multiple data centers that rank pages, and differences or fluctations are not uncommon. The next update is supposed to be in April but not this early, and it's not instantaneous, so people will be drooling waiting for their new numbers.

Were you told it was PR3 by the ex-webmaster or did you see it personally?

For you, the PR may not be important, and it will take some work to improve. I was surprised by the age of your site. The design style looks 10 years old, yet the www domain was registered in Sept 2006, and for one year only. Strike one is the age of the site (less than a year) and strike two is the length of registration (one year). Strike 3 for any significant pagerank improvement is your lack of text content. It is very weak with very little text on many of the pages.

Trusted sites are more than a year old and may not get serious attention even when the site is crawled. Multiple year registration is another factor search engines consider to indicate your commitment to being online. There are short term schemes some site owners use with disposable sites, so legitimate sites like yours get put in the sandbox until proven over time.

Proper grammar and spelling are important so your site is accurately indexed. As one (minor) example, the "More" page includes the phrase "Are Warehouse is centrally located..." and should be "Our warehouse..." etc. That will hardly affect search engines but visitors might cringe.

What is the real test? If your business is doing well and you're happy with the website, leave it alone. PR is overrated by some website owners, and it's just one indicator of importance. You have quite a few photographs on your site, and they tell a story that should be put in words. People will see you are established with a nice fleet of vehicles for a favorable first impression. Put a description in words that the search engines can index.

I liked one phrase in particular, and feel it could be reworked into a nice slogan "People have said we are the best move they ever made".

Keep in mind you provide a localized service, so you're not looking for traffic to your site from a long distance away or internationally. Think about your expectations, and let us know what you want from your website. People will line up to help.

Cheers,

Jim

__________________
Jim Degerstrom, Small Business Resource Center, Web Design and Graphic Artwork
Custom Web Design | Small Business Advice Blog | Small Business Advice Podcast
Be kind to strangers. Here's one reason. Read Hebrews 13:2

jethrotul

What's liverp? Never heard of that or used it before...

fischervanlines

Jim-
Thanks for generous response. Your words will come in handy, I will change the text levels. Do you think switching to CSS will encrease our P.R.? For almost 4 months we were at a P.R. of 3. I kept tabs on that myself through many different reputable PR Checkers. I signed up for analytics through my Gmail account and put a retrival code on all my web pages for google to confirm and 2-3 days later it was a Zero. We are local only for now, but we have big dreams of expansion, so our goal is a 6 or 7. 60% of new Clients are comming from the web. Is there anyway to ask google itself why they shot us down? The funny thing is our web-site pops up 1rst page google on the most popular keywords "denver mover", go figure, I am not complaining about that. I put 100's of hours into getting us up there at a PR of 3, I just hope we don't loose that because of our dramatic drop.
Thanks again-
Jeff

airwolf

Nothing mysterious about LivePR, One good thing about this tool is that you can check your PR condition on all google data Centers

__________________
Hawaii Five-O DVD | Brooklyn Bridge DVD | Hardcastle And McCormick DVD | Hart to Hart DVD

jdegerstrom

Hi, Jeff,

I'm quietly amused by novice (your word to describe you) website owners who are fixated on pagerank numbers. Your SERP listings, or Search Engine Results Page evidence of page one for "Denver mover" is something most site owners only dream about for key words that describe their product or service.

PR is very overrated unless you're developing a site you want to sell. For a small business owner, having results with 60% of your business coming from your website is fantastic. You did that in 6 months!! Once we drag you out of novice status you'll look back a year from now and realize the significance.

The REAL audience for your site are the visitors looking for moving services. Google encourages website owners to avoid over optimizing for SEO, especially to the point where it becomes non-sensical for visitors. By Google definition pagerank is their "measure of the importance of a page". If you're not important, you won't be on page one.

Lesson: You can be important and page one without a high PR number. Why is that you ask? Importance is relative to the number of companies that have pages about the same thing you offer. If 10,000 companies offer moving services, only the top dogs will have a PR of 7 or higher. You may never make PR7, but if your revenue doubles or triples, it doesn't matter. If you can stay on page one for "Denver mover" it doesn't matter.

Adding quality content to an attractive site to make a favorable first impression with some basic SEO principles applied is all you need. Pagerank or even traffic is meaningless unless you convert visitors to customers.

SEO and PR depend on the underlying code used to create and display your site. Converting your visitors to customers depends on what they see displayed on their screen, and on a factor that I call my 5 second rule. People will decide within 5 seconds of landing on your site whether they will stay or exit immediately. The first impression, quality of your content, and other information related to moving will combine to get them to stay (and buy).

Search my last name and "5 second rule" to find the full article published in quite a few places online. It applies to printed materials, also, and the focus is entirely about first impressions.

PR and search engines will bring you traffic. Your site and sales staff does the converting, so concentrate on improving the visitor experience. Natural linking and fresh quality content will enhance how you are perceived by visitors looking to move. Improving the quality of your site and making customers the first priority will lead to better ranking naturally, but more importantly a favorable first impression affects your revenue.

The question about CSS is therefore a better question than how to increase PR. I replied earlier that I first thought your site had been online about 10 years because the style was typical of older techniques. That was a polite way of saying the first impression leaves much to be desired. I viewed the current code and saw all the analytics. CSS could be part of the solution, but your code already includes CSS. Knowing about your visitors and analyzing site traffic is important. Finding visitor paths and how long they stay on a certain page will help you tweak content, and sometimes adjustments can be made immediately.

Here's another interesting link http://www.dlperry.com/what_search_e...iders_see.html where you can input your www domain (check all the boxes then click "scan now") and see what search engines see. It's not bad. Adding H tags should help improve your ranking for key phrases. You may want to submit your site to the section here for Website Reviews and get some feedback on "the look" from a variety of visitors. Ultimately you may stay with what you have and just add pages and fresh content which act like a search engine magnet.

I must apologize if I'm gone 1-2 weeks before returning to check replies. It's happened before when I get busy. If you want more immediate feedback feel free to visit my website and email me from any page, or ask here and there are plenty of experts to fill in the gaps.

You're on the right track seeking answers and trying to improve your website. Don't be side tracked by PR as the only measure of your success.

Cheers,

Jim

__________________
Jim Degerstrom, Small Business Resource Center, Web Design and Graphic Artwork
Custom Web Design | Small Business Advice Blog | Small Business Advice Podcast
Be kind to strangers. Here's one reason. Read Hebrews 13:2

fischervanlines

Jim-
Thanks Jim, you are a prime example of an altruistic man. We greatly appreciate your help.
-Jeff

fischervanlines

It appears our web-site has magically gone back up to a PR3. Thanks Jim & All Others who helped. Still interested in converting to CSS, but keeping the look, just centered.
Thanks Again-
Jeff Fischer
Fischer Van Lines

pelinga

jdegerstrom,
very interesting ...

__________________

airwolf

I like your post jdegerstrom though its quite long.

__________________
Hawaii Five-O DVD | Brooklyn Bridge DVD | Hardcastle And McCormick DVD | Hart to Hart DVD

wombleme

Odd.. guess the datacenters still havent stabalised