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Page Rank Restored- Page Rank Zero Site Gets Back Some of its PR.

Its baaa-ack.
The insanity of it all. Google Gods have bestowed some page rank on one of my Page Rank Zero sites in the last few hours.

The site was a PR5, then a PR2, then PR0 and now a PR3. Anyone’s guess whether it will be there tomorrow.
None of my other PR0 sites have gained back any of its PR.

The PayPerPost posts and links still there. I do have nofollow tags on my paid links. Will be interesting to see what happens to the traffic. In previous post, http://www.bigfootwebmarketing.com/2007/11/19/visualized-impact-of-pr0-site-viewer-discretion-advised/ I showed graph of the sites traffic looking like Niagara Falls after getting a PR0 ten days ago.

Visualized Impact of PR0′d Site : Viewer Discretion Advised

This is snapshot of the traffic of one of my more popular blogs. It is ugly. This graph might cause some readers to feel faint or dizzy.

This had PR5 for last year or so. It’s page rank dropped in late October to PR2. Then last week when Google zeroed out page rank of sites who had any dealings with PayPerPost the rank became PR0. You can see the drastic drop in traffic from the graph below.

page rank drop and traffic graph

Most site owners would be nauseous looking at a graph like that. They might fire their SEO. I admit when I looked at it I was queasy. Okay, very queasy … until I looked at my other numbers.
[Read more →]

Have Your AdSense Earnings and CTRs Dropped Because of Change in Ad Display?

You may have noticed something odd going on in your Google AdSense reports- Your CTR (click-through-rate) has dropped, a lot.
Many AdSense users are reporting heavy drops in the AdSense earnings the last few days. It may be because of the new way Google displays its ads.

The only part of the ad that is clickable for a user is the TITLE- not the whole ad. The change started a few days ago and does NOT affect all ads.

AdSense Ads Without URL’s

The two ad unit sizes without URLs are:

The 468×60 Banner

and the
234×60 half banner


You may want to switch to these size ads if you have notice big drop and see if it helps. Give the new ads their own channel and track. ( Which you should be doing anyway) . If you are using Google AdSense Deluxe Plugin then it will be very easy for you to do- just replace the old code with the new in options.
I would be curious to know if you were affected if if switching ads helped- please let me know.

Increase AdSense Performance and Make Other AdSense Ads More Clickable

If it is more practical to stick with your current ad- you can give this a try:
If you have not all ready done so- make your ad “blend” with site. Use the same background color on the ad and border as you have on your site. ( You can check your theme’s stylesheet in Wordpress -Presentation/Themes/Edit/stylesheet to see the hex code for your color if you don’t know it)

You can also try keeping the TITLE of AdSense ad same color as the other anchor text on your site ( the color of a live link on your site that tells users this is a link) and then making the TEXT and URL same as color of text on your sidebar or header- depending on where you are placing the ad.

I have also tried making the TEXT and URL a light color-Anchor text on site red and text black, make TITLE of ad red and TEXT light grey, making the TITLE more prominent.

10 Things To Do Instead of Whine About Your Lost Page Rank

Okay- the pity party should be over by now. Your page rank REALLY is gone. Posting on message boards and boring your spouse with how unfair it all is isn’t going to bring it back.
Here are some productive things to do instead of sitting in your bathrobe and refreshing page rank checkers over and over again.

1. Set up some new sites. If you had good page rank and good traffic you are probably on to something. Try a different theme and give your new site a different look- distinguish it from you other blog. You can use your existing data to figure out work what and what doesn’t. You may even want to try an offshoot of your existing blog; i.e., if you blog about candle making and you notice heavy traffic for soy candle products an ideas- set up a separate site with a heavy slant on soy candles.

2. Learn a new trick. Figure out how cascading style sheets work- change the colours in your theme. Make an “old” theme new again. Have widgets terrified you in the past? Jump in. Learn some HTML code or improve on your existing knowledge by turning off visual editor in Wordpress. Look for some new plugins- if words like mySQL database and php scare you and you have avoided installing a great plugin because “you don’t know how” figure it out.

3. Get rid of clutter on your site. Remove stale links from your Blogroll. Clean up your categories.

4. If you haven’t all ready- remove paid links or add nofollow tags. “Clean” your site of any grey/black stuff going on. Especially if you are going to submit your site to Google for reconsideration.

5. Submit your site to Google for reconsideration. This is up to you. If you have noticed a drop in traffic that you think its resulting from your page rank drop then worth considering.
Clean up any paid links and posts remove your references to PayPerPost, Textlinks ads, etc. I would leave your PPP up- just add nofollow tags and remove tracking links from posts. Advertisers can give you negative tack rating at any time so keep this in mind if it matters to you.

6. Find a new way to make money from your site. You new, clean site might be a good way to try out some new things- try using Yahoo or Amazon contextualized ads. Read up on new ways to earn money. Try some affiliate marketing if you have never done so before. Sign-up for a
WidgetBucks account. At time of writing they had a 25.00 sign-up bonus.

7. Make new friends. Bloggers can be a very anti-social bunch- preferring others to come visit them in their own house. Go out into the world and start posting comments. Become a regular on other blogs with similar themes as your own. Relationship building can never hurt.

8. Dive into Social Media. My Internet savvy/IT husband asked me the other day- somewhat embarrassed- what Web 2.0 and what is Social Media. Its a bit like missing that first wave of a big news story- it comes to point where you can’t avoid it but you have no clue what people are talking about- you are either afraid to ask or are beyond caring and wait for it to blow over. Learn about social media. Register for a Digg account, StumbleUpon or figure out what all the twitter is about Twitter .

9. Post on your blog. Do something useful and create some content for your site.

10. Take a break. If you have been glued to your keyboard the last week or so- get off up. Take a shower. Talk about something else other then Argus. Read a book. Play with your kids. Removing yourself from all the drama can help you feel better and give you some perspective. This too shall pass.