Page Rank VS Traffic
I will give you a perfect example of how sometimes a high Page Rank translates to shit. I found a Blog this week that has a PR7 now the reason he has such a high PR is because he gives themes away at his site and of course every time some one downloads his theme and uses it on their Blog they point a link back to his blog. The problem is this guy is such a huge Dumb Fuck that instead of using a real keyword he anchored his name so he has a PR7 Blog that only ranks for his name.
Page Rank is really hard tied to how many links you have, traffic is a bit more complicated then that. Example let’s say you have a PR8 blog on “Pie” and I have a PR5 blog on “Hot Dogs” if we both write an article on Burgers my blog my end up being higher on the SERPS depending how well keyword focus I wrote such article.
My point folks from day one on your new blogs you already have to be working what keywords you will target do not assume that it is just get link after link and since your PR is now a 7 you will be higher then every other blog on your keywords. You need to focus on anchored links with such keywords, if you do not you will end up with high PR and no traffic.
PS: Always try to use the two keywords you chose as the base for your link campaign in every post. If Google’s algorithm see a consistent site wide keyword you get more authority.
Popularity: 23% [?]
Vic, sorry but my question is not directly related to this post – I understand this post but the nagging question I have the past few days is when should I slap the adsense ads on new blogs. I am not sure whether it’s down to geo targeting but usually from my end I see mostly crap blogging ads and the usual security ads when I put them up on my new blogs. I quickly take them off. Is there a good time to wait before putting up adsense until the blogs get enough keyword density for google to pick up for the ads? I don’t experience it for all my sites tho’, sometimes another new site will show relevant ads immediately, others I have to wait. Sorry if it’s dumb but I’m just trying to avoid another smart pricing I got hit late last month because of my mmo blog and it affected my earnings before I finally took them off last week.
YC lets say for example my domain name for a new niche blog is insuranceandnews dot com and I wrtite ten post and all are fir the niche insurance all my adsense ads will auto insurance but if my domain name is johndoe dot com i might get priced and get the shit 3 cent click ads. Now I might get those ads for a few days to a few weeks but adnsense will deploy their bot and once you get spider by the adsense bot you will get better pricing and ad accuracy. When I make adsense niche blogs I make sure there is no way adsense will not feed me the niche ads from the beginning. The important thing is to only use adsense in solid high CPC niches because if you use it in a bad blog where you are getting 3 cent ads your whole network will get smart priced.
I see, Vic. It’s about what I suspected. My real estate sites suddenly got less this month even with improved CTRs (3 to 5%) and I thought I got smart priced. I was running them on my mmo and celebrity blogs which weren’t showing good CTRs so I have since removed them and use CPM ads with high rates for those instead. I think the smart pricing is still there for awhile cos the ads aren’t showing well yet on the few newer blogs (which I am building around high CPC niches) I just made the past few days even tho’ the domains and posts are keyword dense. I’ll wait a few more days and concentrate on getting links first LOL
YC I normally see normal pricing back in max two weeks. Right now I am getting smart priced I will be removing adsense from certain sites too.
Thanks very much for the info, Vic. I’m not sure I might be sick tho’ I find this kinda fun – trying to find the best ad balance LOL
Thanks for the questions guys! You answered a big one that I have been having!
But, at what point in traffic do you put them back on the sites that you have removed them? I have a couple of niche sites that have low traffic, and an occassional click-through, but the ads are still relevant to the content.
Is there a magic number to put them on so you don’t loose everything on the entire network?
Vic,I am truly amazed by how much information you post in so few words. Keep this kind of post coming,
Hi Vic,
Thought I might wade in on this topic – hope you don’t mind – don’t want to Bogart you.
To understand Adsense and smart pricing you really have to understand Adwords. The system is set up to benefit the advertiser first and the publisher second – provided they meet certain criteria.
Google has two prices regarding content ads (the adsense on your site, not the search ads). This is simplified but here is the gist of it; if someone clicks a “make money” ad on my site I will receive a high payout if the clicker has shown a propensity to convert for the advertiser – did they do a search for make money online to find my site? If they did then they are considered targeted traffic and the advertiser will pay top dollar to me for sending them on. If the clicker came to my site from stumbleupon then Google treats this visitor as less likely to convert and the advertiser is charged a minimum amount for the click.
This isn’t really how Google determines the quality of your visitors but my explanation will give you an idea of why some clicks are more lucrative than others. If your site has a history of creating high converting visitors for the ads served then you will get top dollar. If you have a history of poor conversions the advertiser will only be charged pennies and you are effectively smart priced.
Knowing whether you are smart priced is not as easy as you may think. You may be in a niche that only has low paying ads simply because there is no competition among advertisers – you may actually convert quite well but are still payed peanuts because there are no $1 ads available.
Conversely you may be getting $.25 clicks and convert poorly. You are smart priced but don’t know it and this is bad because all your other adsense sites are being penalized without you realizing it. You think you are doing well but you could be making a lot more across all your sites if you simply deleted the $.25 ads from the poor site. What usually happens is you will delete the good converting $.03 ads and leave the poorly converting $.25 ads.
This is a big problem with most adsense users – you think because you get 50 clicks a day on your $.25 ads that you must be converting well but in reality all those clicks don’t convert for the advertiser. You may only have 10 $.03 clicks on another site but all 10 convert nicely for the advertiser. (they just don’t have to pay you more because they have no competition and can bid the minimum)
So how do you find out which ads are smart priced? You really can never know for sure so do what I do – I have a minimum adsense price that I must meet or I don’t run adsense. If I don’t average $.30 per click on every site then I don’t use Adsense.
A sure sign that you have been smart priced is when you see your CPC drop suddenly on a stables site that has a history of earning you a certain CPC. This only happens when you have been smart priced. This won’t tell you which adsense site is the problem but you can usually figure it out by backtracking – did you just create a new site or publish a new post that isn’t getting relative ads? Delete the adsense from the likely source of the problem and wait a week (smart pricing penalties are updated weekly) and your other sites should start paying the usual amounts once again.
The easiest way to avoid smart pricing is to write highly targeted posts on whatever subject – this will cause Google to give you highly relevant ads. If you write general posts about general subjects like “I like fishing” then you will get crappy ads. If the ads provided are not highly specific to your page topic then remove the adsense.
(Note – if you get the public service ads and you know advertisers exist for your niche, you have just been flagged as a spam site and never again will you see a real ad – your site is done as far as advertising with adsense is concerned – remove the adsense and say goodbye to the blog.)
One last thing – if you get a lot of social media traffic don’t run adsense. Only use adsense if you draw targeted search engine traffic. Social traffic is not targeted and will result in a low CTR for you and poor conversions for the advertiser – the two biggest factors in getting you smart priced. (if you only have 1 site then being smart priced doesn’t matter )
Once you have Adsense on more than 1 site then smart pricing is a big concern if you want to optimize your earnings.
Sorry for the epic Vic, I have been asked about this repeatedly and think more people will see this here than on my site – feel free to come over and hog my blog! Lol
Hope Santa was nice to everyone!
Griz
Thanks for the explanation Grizz,
I wish I had read this before I put Adsense on OpTempo. Using it there cut my earnings for Novemeber and December in half for my niche sites. D’oh! It’s gone now, probably for good.
Grizz,
Thanks for the great Adsense explanation. We have used Adwords, but never Adsense. Most likely will use Adsense in additional to affiliate links on the niche blogs we are going to create.
Thanks again for the great information on a subject we are pretty much in the dark about (haven’t yet read the Google help stuff for Adsense. Don’t need a nap quit yet!
)
-Marshall
Hey Grizz, thanks a million for the detailed and great insight – don’t ever worry about stepping in – I believe many, if not most, of us will appreciate your time in explaining things!! I think now another fun activity I have is to figure out which sites might have been smart priced lol
Grizz thank you so much for taking your time and making such a detail explanation. And please are you kidding, why would I ever be pisst because some one of your experience takes the time to fill us of knowledge.
Again Grizz Thank You So Much
PageRank is updated every three or four months … at least the external version. It’s an integer from 0 to 10. That seems about as accurate as Mr Magoo trying to read the speedometer through a ticket zone.
Real traffic and a good stats package, on the other hand …
Forrest you get a PageRank the day your site gets indexed. Again your Mr Magoo comment may apply to you if you feel like Mr Magoo looking at Page Rank. But to those that actually have a clue it is quite easy to understand.
Sure, you get a PageRank when Google discovers a page … but unless you work for Google, you don’t have access to this information. This is where my ‘blind’ reference came from; what Google uses internally is said to add up to 1 for all pages; an 11 point integer scale just can’t be accurately mapped to an unknown scale. The PR that’s shown in the toolbar just isn’t that helpful…
Hey Frank,
The niche sites should recover if you drop the OpTempo ads – give it a week – if they don’t then you have another problem. Trial and error I’m afraid.
Nice post Griz – Oh, hang on I thought I was on the wrong site for a minute haha!
Just to be different, I want to get on-topic for PR vs traffic – the post is spot on for established sites, but I have a question that I think quite a few might want to ask and that’s about our old favourite, expired domains.
How solid is the PR that comes with the expired domain?
Here’s some personal examples:
I’ve got my hands on a few domains with some decent PR now. While the back-links to the better ones can tracked to some solid sites and look very good to stay the test of time, others can’t – which leads me to think there may be problems ahead.
One domain in particular I know is going to die soon but I don’t care – I created a 3 month old blog that I’m going to kill with high paying paid reviews when it gets past PPP.
As far as I can tell, the site was a bad boy in its past life because I can’t get Google to index any posts I’ve put on it – even using the fast indexing tricks. I tried to drag some Alexa bearing scrapers to the site but while many took the bait, Alexa won’t recognize it.
So chances are, on the next Google PR reshuffle it will lose its PR6 anyway, so its a lamb to the slaughter whichever way you look at it!
Ok – other domains on the other hand might cause some concerns.
While I can track back-links etc and the domain’s PR looks solid, what will happen when I create a new site on it? Google indexes and finds a whole bunch of new content that is not what was there before. Does the big G question the PR it has?
More the point what about the sites linking to the domain – when they realize the site has changed will they take down their links that got it the PR in the first place?
With some domains it’s hard to see what they were before so you can stay in the same niche. Although you can make a pretty fair guess, you might be out enough for the back-linkers and Google to see you as changing tack and it might cost your existing PR before you can build up sufficient links of your own.
Am I asking a question here or making a statement? Dunno both maybe.
Thing is, bottom line, while you may have acquired a high PR domain, it doesn’t guarantee you jack shit traffic unless you start building it yourself.
Which means the same as starting from scratch except you might get a quicker jump up the SERPs because of your inherited PR.
Or you get lucky and not lose your back-links which gives you a beautiful chance to develop your new site to an even higher PR with good SEO and start counting the $$$’s to come!!!
Terry
Terry PageRank is so tied to links so lets say you can backtrack 5 or 6 links and you find solid PR links you should be good. Now you should still go on a quick D-list link run and try to find at a minimum 5 post that have a PR4 or more and make a comment now tag the shit out of it. You should retain PR but remember if you do not have anchored links with the keywords you want to work you still will be on page 400k of Google. The important thing with buying pre-owned domains with PR is to backtrack links before you buy. At the end of the day Terry you give me a 7 year old domains with PR0 and a 2 year PR7 and I will take the 7 year PR0 buildiong PR is really simple building SERP authority is a different story.
Yeah you’re so right Vic, that was the first mistake I made when I bought the first domain! After that I checked them all out much more thoroughly and I’m glad I did.
Yes to the D-list – I’m on it now!
Terry
Terry as you know I am all about doing the walk and fuck the bullshit. I just bough a domain that is 3 years old has been used for spam sites and is currently not indexed. I will make a full post on this but in the mean time. I take ownership on the 30th I will buy a mint license and I will actually build the niche in front of all you folks eyes. My intention is to prove that even with a fucked up hard niche like the forex with a blacklisted domain if you apply what me and Grizz preach you can make the niche work.
That’s what I discovered too now that I bought a domain or two with PR. The age is more important than the PR, I think.
Vic, just a question, as Terry said, some of the domain, even with the quick index trick, did not get index by Google. Mine is already one week and still not indexed.
What would you suggest for me to get indexed?
Submiting the sitemap? I know you discourage this.
bmunch if you are having trouble getting them indexed use my contact form on the to send me the domains that are not getting indexed, I will get them indexed for you.
Hi Vic thanks for the offer.
Actually about 6 hrs ago one of the domain just got indexed. So maybe it is just slow and not totally lost case.
Actually, I think like to learn rather than you do it for me.
I am slowly getting the hang of building a small niche site and experimenting with it. Just waiting for more lessons here,
Terry,
Until Vic sticks a co-author up top I’ll let him deal with your question(s) but I thought I would mention that those of you buying pre-owned domains should use this tool;
http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/
Use this to check out the domains – if they are linked to bad neighborhoods then you may have a chance to undo the damage although usually the domain is doomed and PR will be gone next update. (It’s already gone – the toolbar just hasn’t updated yet as Vic has been trying to explain to Forrest.)
On a personal note most sites I have purchased have been downgraded with new ownership but not entirely lost PR. If the domain is good remember that regardless of PR you have an aged site that can rebuild it’s PR much quicker and avoid the traffic problems associated with the sandbox.
I am not sure if Vic has talked about another option – I try and buy existing sites that the owner is operating and has no idea that they could sell it to me until I tell them I want it. This can be expensive but very effective especially for hard to backlink niches. 4 or 5 related sites with PR5 in one niche and the niche is mine – game over for anyone trying to compete with me.
Damn – sorry Vic – my fingers runneth over today – must be the result of a few days off catching up.
Of course your content is just growing and growing! Ha.
LMAO Yeah free content. But Grizz thanks dude it is so helpful to have an extra set of eyes with experience.
Thanks Grizz,
I checked out bad-neighborhood.com but of course as the domains I got don’t have the old website, they also don’t link out anywhere, so there was nothing for it to find.
Buying already active sites also makes a lot of sense if you want to dominate a niche – I get the feeling you already doing this in a couple of places…?
I hear what you’re saying about PR and it makes sense – of course they’ll drop unless the original back-links all stay in place.
The domain I checked out still has all its backlinks (amongst them are 2 .edu pr8 backlinks – one it to fucking Harvard of all places LMFAO!) but the anchor text sucks – it a branded name rather than keywords, which I think may actually be a good thing, because it means I can build on that by getting some good keyword anchored links out there of my own.
I believe if I keep the branded name in the site by writing a couple of reviews of the company it should keep the back-links sweet.
Traffic will be the uphill slog as its in the medical niche, but I can see possibilities and there are some good long keywords I can play with to get the ball rolling.
This is a lot of fun…
Terry
Terry even though the anchor my suck dude .edu links are gold and to Harvard shit that is just sweet talk about authority.
I only recently learned that PR had nothing to do with traffic and must admit that I was also under the impression that it tied in within each other.
As for Terry’s question regarding pre-owned domains, that is an interesting one. I recently discovered a domain with a PR 7 that was up for grabs, but then when I checked the back links and whether it was banned, it showed that both Google and Yahoo had banned the domain.
Despite the fact that it looked good on the first instance. Registered over 3 years ago, high domain and all. Maybe it would be a good idea to do up a post that indicates potential traps like people scamming their domains to high PR and where the best place to check for this would be.
I think these knowledge are only gained when you take the plunge and try to apply the knowledge learned here and at Court.
Also makes me understand more of some of Vic’s stuff. WHICH sometimes are a bit technical to understand.
Monika, I’ve researched a lot of domains over the last week or so now and I have the same conclusion that unless you can see the links and get some recognition on Google then its PR means nada.
I’ve watched a few PR7s that were all crap – I just bough a 6 year old PR5 (I know, a real come down for me!!!) that had solid backlinks and Google has its pages still indexed which is where I went wrong with the first PR6 I bought.
I have my eye on some more, but I’m making so much work for myself its untrue! Plus I’m still working on those free niche blogs that are seeing traffic thanks to Vic’s fast indexing trick.
This is all so incredible but I’m soooo addicted to watching those damn auctions!
Terry
Monika I will make a post touching the questions that have risen from this post. The important thing is to do good research but this I will say you find a 6 year domain if it is clean even if is PR0 just buy it right on the spot
Finding a 6 yr domain is even harder than finding a PR6 domain. At least a PR 6 domain, I just need to input the url and check the toolbar.
With 6 yrs domain, I got to check the age with WHOIS one by one.
Hello Vic, I knew PR and traffic were separate but I wasn’t aware of smart pricing. Your posts are so informative and generate so much discussion, that they are even informative. Thanks for stopping by my site and being so nice. I’ll definitely take your advice you seem really informed and I actually like your straight to the point style. I am looking forward to seeing you build a niche for us. Thanks so much, I’ll talk to you soon. Emma
Emma hi and welcome I told you I do not bite
When I was at your site I was getting 3 cent ads so you might be getting smart priced. If you are looking to make money online it might be beneficial to switch advertising. Besides that you have a really nice site.
Best of Luck
Atually that explains a lot Vic. Thank-you!
You are welcome Emma I hope you can get some tip here that helps out.
Hi vic, this has probably nothing to do with your post, I just wanted to thank you for one of your idea where more inferior quality content is better than less very good quality content. To find out myself this month I posted 100+ posts so far which double than my last months posts, this also resulted in my blog having almost double the RSS subscription than last month. You can see a full analysis of my RSS subscription here: http://www.blogperfume.com/fee.....&pro=1
Next month I plan to have 200+ posts, lets see what happened
That is great Pavs. Best of luck.
Hahahahaha…. Co-Authored by GRIZZ
Ok, me and my big mouth – too funny Vic!
LMAO Any more request?
Another thing I have found out today while checking backlinks for expired domain.
Check both WWW. and without WWW. with the domain name. They have different results.
Arrgh, another step for checking up a domain…
See my reply in the forum on that…
Terry
i love traffic
i don’t care about PR