Learning By Example - Questions

Whenever I find a small site on the web that seems to have a high page rank,
I try to lean a little from it. I was looking at this website today written
by a young man:
http://www.principleofdesign.com/ - Flash intro with a PR 5

http://www.principleofdesign.com/home.html 'real' index page, most likely
the one used for submission.

I was pretty surprised at the flash entry page rank, so I looked it up in
Google - 10 backlinks - none of them from sites that I would consider
extremely high ranking. The home.html page has even less backlinks. He
does not have alt's on the images used for the menu, but he uses the word
'design' many, many times. Could you guys take the time out and use this
website as an example for me so that I can learn? Can you tell me what it
is that this young man did that got him this PR? Thanks.
--
Take Care, Sharon Lane
http://www.rare-cancer.org

"Sharon" <me (AT) privacy (DOT) net> wrote

Whenever I find a small site on the web that seems to have a high page
rank,
I try to lean a little from it. I was looking at this website today
written
by a young man:
http://www.principleofdesign.com/ - Flash intro with a PR 5
Can you tell me what it
is that this young man did that got him this PR? Thanks.

Sharon - From the way you word your question, I suspect you do not fully
understand what page rank is. Page rank is derived from the number of back
links and the page rank of those pages, it is not dependent on the contents
of the page, the size of the site or how it has been SEOed. (Larger sites do
benefit from internal links, provided they are linked properly.) This site
has a number of PR5 backlinks from the cheerleaders site, and those alone
are probably enough to give it PR5 - a single PR6 backlink can give you a
PR5 (or sometimes even a PR6).

Page rank is only one element influencing the SERPS. In the case of this
site, it does not do very well on its keywords. "Principle of design" does
ok, because it's the anchor text of the back links and in the title - and
not so competitive. "Web and graphic design", also in the title, are very
competitive keywords and this site does not make it in the SERPS with them
even though many sites with a lower PR do appear.

David

"Ron Burk" <rlbusenet (AT) hightechinfo (DOT) com> wrote in message

Go to alltheweb, search for all backlinks to this domain. Click on
each "more results from" link to see *all* the inbound links alltheweb
cares to tell about. Add up all that PR. Should be entirely plausible
that he's got PR5, and the fact that he controlled the anchor text on
most of the links ain't hurtin' either :-).

Ron, Can you take a minute and explain some things to me? I can see what

you mean by all of the inbound links. And that leads me to the next
question about SEO that I may not be understanding. How many inbound links
from PR5+'s would a person need to get a PR6? The only PR5 was the
cheerleaders, and may have been several from that site that didn't show, but
is it possible for a number of PR5's to give a site a PR6?

The second thing that you said that left me confused was the 'controlled
anchor text' comment. I truly believe that I am not understanding the term
'anchor text'. I thought that anchor text was me using my keywords, and
linking to another page (or in this case to how own page). From what I saw
he had a few on each page linking back to his own pages and using his
'keywords', I assume. How heavily does this type of anchoring count?
Thanks for any insight you can give me.
--
Take Care, Sharon Lane
http://www.rare-cancer.org

"Sharon" <me (AT) privacy (DOT) net> wrote

"Ron Burk" <rlbusenet (AT) hightechinfo (DOT) com> wrote in message
Go to alltheweb, search for all backlinks to this domain. Click on
each "more results from" link to see *all* the inbound links alltheweb
cares to tell about. Add up all that PR. Should be entirely plausible
that he's got PR5, and the fact that he controlled the anchor text on
most of the links ain't hurtin' either :-).

Ron, Can you take a minute and explain some things to me? I can see what
you mean by all of the inbound links. And that leads me to the next
question about SEO that I may not be understanding. How many inbound
links
from PR5+'s would a person need to get a PR6? The only PR5 was the
cheerleaders, and may have been several from that site that didn't show,
but
is it possible for a number of PR5's to give a site a PR6?

The second thing that you said that left me confused was the 'controlled
anchor text' comment. I truly believe that I am not understanding the
term
'anchor text'. I thought that anchor text was me using my keywords, and
linking to another page (or in this case to how own page). From what I
saw
he had a few on each page linking back to his own pages and using his
'keywords', I assume. How heavily does this type of anchoring count?
Thanks for any insight you can give me.
--
Take Care, Sharon Lane
http://www.rare-cancer.org

As rough approximation to get a page to PR=6 you would need 80 incoming
links from 80 pages, each with PR=5 and each with 8 outlinks. Alternatively
approx 10 links from 10 pages, each with PR=6 and each with 8 outlinks. The
problem of inaccuracy is that you don't know the PR of the page exactly.
The Google toolbar only shows the PR on a scale from 0 to 10 and bit, using
integers. Each step up the PR scale is really about 8 times higher than
the step immediately below, so there is scope for big errors. PR is only
one factor of many - a page may have received many votes but that does not
mean that it can help solve your specific problem. It is just a indication
that the page has attracted attention.

Incoming link anchor text does help, particularly for middle aged pages.
The anchor text appears to be added to the target page for relevancy
analysis. Whether or not the page satisfies the visitor is still the most
important long term critera to aim for however so do put most of your effort
into writing content that will satisfy your hoped for human visitor.

Best regards, Eric.