Scott Fillmer » milestone

What Happened to My Google Page Rank, Another Goal Reached?

Scott's Misc — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 19:23:59 +0000

After all the posts I read this week about the page rank update I told myself I wasn’t going to post anything about the topic. I thought it had all been said enough (and that is still probably true), until I noticed my page rank actually went up. [A little disclaimer here, before last week I had a PR0 and now I have a PR2. So, I had no place to go but up.]

There are other examples surfacing now that also show increases in PR’s like, PageRank update in process, this time for real, where AdesBlog talks about a few of his sites that have increased their page rank. Another recent post from ProBlogger also touches on several of these current topics in, The Google Page Rank Pendulum Swingsâ€¦. Again, and if you are still interested, there are hundreds (if not more) of posts on the Page Rank update.

Some PR’s Are Going Up, Some Down

In a recent post I did on the goals of this blog, Reaching a Set Goal and Working on Others, a the Page Rank was not even listed as one of the top ten because I thought it was pretty much out of the question for the age of my domain, and the fact that I was still trying to build quality content on the site. Little did I know, all I needed was an update to Google’s Page Rank system.

Here it is only one week later and I have gone from a PR0 to a PR2 this weekend. I started looking at some of the other sites I own, and it was a mixed bag. Most of these domains are either new (mostly content based), or developed storefront pages (non-content based), and they are sites I either own or work extremely close with on a daily basis.

chipseo.com – PR0 to PR2 [content / blog based] | NET +2
islandzephyr.com – PR0 to PR1 [mixed info / content] | NET +1
ki4wlr.com – PR0 to PR2 [content / blog based] | NET +2
site 4 – PR0 to PR2 [content / blog based] | NET +2
site 5 – PR4 to PR3 [storefront / sales based] | NET -1
site 6 – PR3 to PR1 [storefront / sales based] | NET -2
site 6 – PR2 to PR1 [storefront / sales based] | NET -1

Have You Checked Your Storefront Pages?

I checked a few eCommerce / storefront sites and pages I am familiar with and it also seems to be a mixed bag. Two high traffic storefronts in the craft industry, Artbeads.com and Fire Mountain Gems, both had PR4′s and both maintained their PR4, at least to this point.

Both of these eCommerce stores are very established online businesses, and both have a good combination a product catalog sku’s and content for their customers in the way of guides and reviews. Both stores also have almost no online advertising to speak of since they are selling their own products (they probably wouldn’t promote someone else’s on their store), and one uses the Yahoo Store shopping cart system and one is independent.Â If you have your own online storefront, check your PR and see what the results look like. Do you have a good combination of content to help your customers, and a SKU based catalog / shopping cart system? If you sell on multiple sales channels like many businesses, has one been effected over the other?

Is There Anything To Conclude From This

If you look at the list above you will notice a few things. One, none of these sites I mention are super high traffic ranking sites. Two, it is a mix of non-content informational, content based, and storefront based sites. Three, all of the content based site rankings went up, all of the storefront selling sites went down. I don’t really think there is anything to conclude from this information. I have seen just as many high quality, high ranking sites go down over the weekend as well. I am not going to touch on the link selling issue to much, there are enough blogs posting on that already, but I will say that none of the examples listed above are real high text link selling sites (most none at all), and I have tried as much as possible to maintain the Webmaster Guidelines that Google has put forth on their Webmaster Tools site.

Because buying and selling links is not to much of an issue among the examples put forth above, and some went up and some went down, you could say that Google is placing a higher emphasis on content, but all you have to do is read a few posts from the high traffic blogs to discount that, so, I just offer the information for what it is, a mixed bag of ups and downs.

Another Goal Reached Anyway

One of the milestone goals for this blog was to reach a PR1 in a certain amount of time and instead it reached a PR2 in less than 4 weeks. It does looks like there has just been a complete rearrangement of the PR system, so I am not sure what to think of my new found PR2, but it was one of the goals I had set for this site and I am glad to have reached it so quickly.Â Have you had any sites move up in rank this weekend? If so, are they content, informational, or storefront based sites?

Update to Google Page Rank [September 2008]

Google updates their page rank system every so often, almost like a software update.Â It will often be announced on Matt Cutts blog.Â When the update is going to happen he will often say, there is a page rank update happening this weekend.Â When you find this out, just make note of where you were and where you ended up.Â It may tell you something about your traffic and how Google sees this traffic and its importance and you can improve your blog accordingly.

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10 Ways to Set Goals for Your Online Internet Business

Scott's Misc — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:09:14 +0000

After registering this domain name and setting up this blog I wanted to set some goals for its effectiveness. After all, how can you tell if what you are doing or want to do is working without some kind of ongoing self evaluation of goals reached or not reached. This goes the same for a small business and certainly is in place in large companies as well. I reached one of those goals this week, Reaching a Set Goal and Working on Others, and I wanted to look at some of the ways we set goals for our companies and what we can do with that information.

Some of the suggestions below are specific, some are much more general in nature, but without a goal of some kind, how do you know where you are going or have gone? Remember, all goals are not the same. Setting a lifetime objective for your business is not the same as a goal to reach a certain sales revenue volume by a certain date. Some people set goals by the length of time it will take to reach them, others set goals by the accomplishment itself, but I would consider for the sake of this article there to be minor, intermediate, and long term goals, all of which are necessary for a well rounded business.

A goal properly set is halfway reached. Abraham Lincoln

Make Goals Realistic to Reach

Many goals set are realistically unobtainable goals which will breed disappointed when they are not reached. It is important to set some milestone goals that are realistically obtainable by your company, business, or blog. When you have achieved these goals, set new, higher ones knowing that you have reached a minor goal you set forth to reach.

Another question to ask here would be, do you have all the resources you need to be able to achieve this goal in the first place? If not, it may not be very realistic. One of the goals may be to get the resources to achieve the next goal.

Make the Goals Measurable in Some Way

You need some good way to measure the success or failure of a certain goal. This is pretty easy on a blog, just check all the traffic rankings, feed subscriptions, ad spots filled, but you do need some kind of standard to which you measure how close you are to obtaining that goal.

Set Minor, Intermediate, and Long Term Goals

You don’t want to just set short term minor goals either. Set a well rounded mix of easier and harder to reach goals so you can judge when you have made some real progress. Whatever your goals, they will be reached, or not, over an extended period of time, setting a mix of goals will get your head out of today and now and get you looking at the future of your business.

Goals Should be Flexible, Not Set in Stone

What if you are moving right along and realize that your goals for the business have changed. Well your goals need to be able to change with your business. Don’t make or think about them as set in stone. As you develop your business you may find that you no longer want to reach a certain point or it has less importance than it did when you first set the goal. Keep them flexible and change them when you need to.

Focus on Strategies That Will Reach Your Goals, Stay Focused

Stay Focused. This may sound dumb, but if you actually want to reach the goals you have set, do things that work towards those goals. We can often set goals and then what we actually do is counterproductive to the set goal. If we want to keep going in that direction, fine, just read the step above and change the goal you want to achieve, or change the direction you are going to try to meet the goal as you stated it in the first place.

Review Your Goals From Time to Time

If you don’t look at them once in a while how will you ever know if you reached them or not? Do be obsessed as many of are with the actual numbers on a day to day basis, but if you have some short term goals, check on them at the end of the work week. That is easier said than done, especially on a blog. We all want to keep looking at our many different numbered areas like Digg, Technorati, Feed Subscribers and so on, but it is better time spent to check on them once in a while. You will also see larger jumps in the numbers than if you check them every day.

Focus on Your Goals, Not Your Competitions Goals

I actually went back with this one, simply because we all keep tabs on our competition, right? Well keep focused on your goals (some of which may be the same as your competition) and don’t worry about what the Jones’ business is doing, goal wise. If you work to achieve your goals you will probably be outrunning your competition anyway and it is always better, in my opinion, to worry about making your own business better than making your competition worse, they can do that on their own.

Be Specific, Don’t Be To Vague

Setting goals that are very broad or vague are hard to reach for the fact that it is hard to determine if you have actually met the goal or not. Don’t set a goal that says I want to increase the traffic to my blog or increase my revenue. All business want to increase their revenue, I think, and most blogs want their traffic increased. These are vague goals. Better would be, I want to increase the traffic to my site by 50% by the end of the year, or I want to increase our revenue of product ABC by 25% over last year.

Don’t Focus on the Disappointment of Not Reaching a Goal

We are not going to reach all the goals we have set, we just are not going to do it if we have any aspirations other than the most basic milestone goals. Don’t let this stop you from trying to continue to work toward a stated goal. Focusing on the disappointment of not reaching a goal will actually keep you from obtaining your goals. Focus on the positive.

Have Fun… When You Reach the Goal. Evaluate Your Success

If you have read any of my top ten lists you will know that, for me, number 10 is always have fun. If you have reached a goal, review how you met the goal. Did you meet it very fast, perhaps it was not set high enough, is it time to set another one? Do something you enjoy, go out to dinner, give your employees something, large or small, celebrate it in some (enjoyable) way.

I have a few more article editions to this one so stay tuned. I will outline my goals for this site and offer specific suggestions for your business goals and how to archive them. Since I just reached one of my goals for this site (obtaining an Alexa ranking of any kind) I think I will go to step 10, have fun.

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Reaching a Set Goal and Working on Others

Scott's Misc — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 15:00:11 +0000

I have have an upcoming article I wrote on goals, 10 Ways to Set Goals for Your Online Business, that will be ready to post next week, but in the process I have reached a milestone goal of my own for this blog, and I also thought I would list 10 goals of my own I set for scottfillmer.com and what progress has been made. I consider milestone goals something very obtainable and a way to see movement in the desired direction, and also something to recognize along the way.

Although this blog is new, I set a few goals for it that I wanted to reach in a relatively short time period, and although it isn’t the greatest determination of traffic, this week scottfillmer.com reached its first Alexa ranking of 1,026,512 835,454. Yes, I know… nothing at all to write home about, much less putting into a blog post, but this is the first ranking on Alexa it hit, and it hit this with the domain registration 14 days old.

The stated focus of my blog has been eCommerce and online small business, but I do think it is important to set some goals, and actually see if and when you achieve them. Some of my short term traffic ranking goals for blog are listed below.

Getting indexed by Google and Yahoo – reached in 6 hours of the domain registration
Technorati Ranking – as of this article it reached 1,072,771
Google and Yahoo Inbound Links – some but not a lot
100 RSS Subscription Readers – only 10 at this point (go ahead, subscribe here)
$10 a Day in Advertising Revenue – still working on it, about $2/day
Posting One High Quality Content Post a Day – so far so good, I think
Receive Comments or Feedback for each article – just about nothing on this goal so far (how about it)
Staying Focused on my readers, eCommerce and Business articles – working on it
Have Fun (always my #10) – it has been very hard work, but enjoyable

I would love to hear what goals you have set for your blog or business. A Google page rank was not in the list as I don’t think it is realistic at this point, and it might not be “operational” as it has been in the past anyway. These I listed above are of course some of my very short term goals for this site, so how about yours? Is everyone just tired of reading goal oriented content or blogging about blogging? I know blogging about blogging isn’t my favorite topic, but it is nice to see some goals put down in writing, and how close you are to achieving those goals.

Look for my upcoming article on 10 ways to set goals for your business.

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Test Google Search Engine Indexing

Scott's Misc — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 03:55:32 +0000

I decided to move my blog and all its contents and everything that goes along with it to a new domain, now http://www.chipseo.com, to give it a better match of content to search structure for our company (Island Zephyr). Now, we can do a good market test to see how long it takes for Google and Yahoo to index our site and start pulling in all new traffic.

Starting over again was a big gamble but in the end I think it will pay off with better results. In the mean time, this will be a good test to see how long it will take for the search engines to index this url site and start to get steady traffic again. I have actually been blogging for many years, so don’t let the short dates of content on this site confuse you. Our company is dedicated to providing good reliable information for those who sell online and are interested in using multiple sales channels to sell their products or services.

I will post the results soon and let you know what steps I took to get the new url into the search engines. For this test I am really just using common sense SEO work and a few links. I have setup so many domains, urls, and shopping cart systems but have never actually looked at the time it took to get the pages indexed. We will see now.