Google PageRank Explained

Everybody using internet is aware of the power of Google. Google is everywhere whether its search engine, email, social networking, online marketing, blogging etc.

But most important of all these is it's search engine which share approximately 60% of all searches made all over the world.This explains the importance of rank SERP (Search Engine Results Page) fo Google.The higher the ranking on SERP the more free visitors you will get from Google.

While displaying the results for a particular query Google takes into consideration a lot of factors.

Two most impotant factors being (source - Google's Corporate Information) -

• PageRank Technology
• Hypertext-Matching Analysis.

Now here comes the importance of Google PageRank.

What is Google PageRank?

According to Google - PageRank is Google's view of importance of a webpage. Pagerank is given out of 10.

Thus a webpage with a higher pagerank will be more important in view of Google as compared to the one with lower pagerank. Hence, a webpage with a better pagerank will get higher position in the SERP.
e.g. A webpage with Google PageRank of 5/10 will be more important and hence placed higher in Google SERP than the webpage with Google PageRank of 3/10.

How does Google determines a PageRank for any webpage ?

Lets see what Google says -

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important".

So Google takes into account the backlinks each webpage gets from different other webpages. Each backlink a webpage gets is considered as a vote by Google in the favour that webpage. But at the same time Google also analyzes the webpage from which a baclink is given.

Let's examine the following figure for some better understanding -

In the above figure A,B,C,D,E and F are different webpages. Here you can see that page C has got a higher pagerank than page E, even though it have fewer links as compared to page E. It's because of the importance of the page from which page C is receiving a link and also the number of outbound links from that page. In the above case as you can see page B has got most importance and is having only one outbound link to page C, so up to 90% of its PageRank is carried to page C.

In the essence, a page with higher baklinks from quality pages (those with higher pagerank) will have a better pagerank.

Thus, improving your Google PageRank helps you by getting you more visitors through search engines and ultimately can result into better revenue from your website/blog.

Source: Blogger-Help

101 tips for improving your blog by Ben Barden

In this post, I would like to present an ebook - 101 tips for improving your blog by Ben Barden from http://www.toptenblogtips.com/. As the title claims, the ebook contains 101 essential tips for all bloggers, no matter how technical you are, or which platform you use.

The ebook is divided into 10 sections, each containing 10 tips:

1. Advertising and Promotion
2. Blogging Personalities
3. Comments
4. Content
5. Design
6. Guest Posts
7. Networking
8. Overcoming blogger's block
9. Planning
10. Post frequency

Tip #101 is provided at the end of the ebook.

You can download the ebook here:

http://www.ziddu.com/download/11644427/Ben_Barden_-_101_tips_for_improving_your_blog.pdf.html

It's a free download, so you can share it with no restriction.

Customize 404 Error Page on WordPress Blog

404 Errors

By default, most Web servers return a simple "404 Not Found" error message when they are getting a request for a URL that they don’t have. This error message violates the three basic guidelines for error messages. All error messages must be:

• written in plain language that is easy to understand for non-technical users and that does not imply that the mistake is the user’s fault
  
• precise in specifying exactly what was done wrong (that is, not be generic or vague)
  
• constructive in suggesting steps the user can take to correct the problem

In terms of the "URL not found" error message, it would be better to explain to the user why the URL could not be found. It would be even better to list the most common mistakes in accessing files on the given site: for example, users often request URLs ending in .htm for sites that consistently use .html for all pages (or they use .html when all pages end in .htm). For any given site, it is recommended to have consistent naming conventions and list these conventions on a custom error message page.


The Importance of 404
Why working on the 404 optimization makes sense? It does not matter, if readers were looking something on your site and got there by mistake, or the link is incorrect, or visitors misspelled the address. They might go forever, never turning their head back to you and your site; even thou the site might have an excellent content. So, the main reasons your visitors may stumble into a 404 "Not found" page on your website are:

• A mistyped URL, or a copy-and-paste mistake
  
• Broken or truncated links on web pages or in an email message
  
• Moved or deleted content

It is a good idea to treat the 404 page as a doorway to your site, giving it the same degree of attention as a regular home page. The visitor who arrived to your 404 page by error, in many cases was actually looking for something on your site. Now you have to help them find it. That’s really the guiding light of 404 page design.


Tips for Improving Your 404

1. Don’t call it a 404 page. Your visitors have no idea what this means. Personalize your 404 page to make it user-friendly and understandable to any level of technical expertise.
   
2. Provide a way for the visitor to search for what they were looking for, installing the search box on the page.
   
3. Show them what you have to offer - the best of the best. Try to surprise and attract the visitors. You have may be just one chance to keep him. Show your blog sitemap or provide the easy visible link to one to let visitor know that you have indeed good stuff under your belt.
   
4. If none of the other options work for them (in other words, at the end of all of this, at the bottom of the page) get them a link to your contact form. If they get stuck, you want to know about it. Of course this is a last-resort option since no typically wants to contact the site owner when they have a problem. Just in case.

Using Wordpress to Improve Your 404
One of the beautiful parts about Wordpress is that you can very easily fix up your 404 page. It’s as easy as changing a template file.

1. Go to your Wordpress Theme Editor under Presentation. Select the 404 page to edit.
   
2. Edit the page using the offered guidelines. Two possibilities here: 

• If you’re a designer you should make this page look like the rest of your theme. I
  
• If you’re only a user, do your best to customize what you can. Change the headline, at the very least, to something like “Whoops, it’s not here!” or something of the like.
  

Custom 404 Samples

Find below a small collection of the funny and smart custom 404 pages screenshots, found on the Web.