PageRank & Alexa & Backlinks — Oh My!

Just for giggles, I enjoy hanging out at various webmaster forums including Digital Point where I can get a sense for what so many people are thinking. That place is frequently rife with rumors as members try to get into the colossal mind of Google, Alexa, and other internet measuring devices to see how they can improve their own sites by exchanging links, working the system, and more.

Well, wouldn’t you know that last night’s visit actually did reveal something of value — Google has updated their PageRank, completing the export of the new numbers to the Google toolbar.

Yes, this blog is now PR5 as is The Auto Writer and many internal pages on this site are showing at least PR3, though the home page of the URL is curiously still locked in at PR4. For those of you who insist that PageRank doesn’t matter, I say to you: bull. You know that you just stopped reading this post long enough to check on your site!

Last October when Google zapped a number of people’s PageRank over the issue of paid links, some of the loudest cries came from so-called SEO experts who had been telling us that PageRank really doesn’t matter. A handful of these same people have long poked fun at Alexa, too, but when Alexa overhauled their algorithm two weeks ago and exported their new numbers, guess what they were blogging about? The all-new Alexa.

Honestly, Page Rank, Alexa, and the number of back links pointing to your site won’t necessarily bring in the customers. I’ve visited sites where the Alexa was clearly gamed and the number of back links scraped together in the tens of thousands, but came away from the site not too impressed. I do not recall a customer saying that they found me because my site was ranked at a certain level. Instead, they typically like the way that I write and/or the subjects I write about — these are people who know nothing of Page Rank, Alexa, or even SEO.

Still, when you dress up to go to the dance it sure is nice when that pretty gal, Alexa, flashes that welcoming smile your way.

Renaming, Repurposing This Blog

It is now official: MatthewKeegan.com has officially been repurposed and is now an SEO blog. Gone is the vague business model — I’m now using this blog as the central point for my search engine optimization (SEO) work. The official name has been changed too: Matthew Keegan | SEO is now on the masthead.

What does this mean? Well, on surface you won’t see many changes as I’m not going to be adding scads of articles to this site in a bid to drive in traffic or to fetch new customers. I’m already managing ten other blogs and working very hard to help them rank high in the SERPs, pull in traffic, and convert customers. I’m a white hat kind of SEO guy, but if there are some gray areas to exploit, I might explore those as well.

Link baiting is, of course, the main way I help bring links in and this is only done through writing excellent content. To that end, I’ve been overhauling a few sites, taking a couple of others up one level, and using photographs and better layouts to help touch up some other pages. I’m not going to reveal all of my secrets, but I can tell you that as I track some of the changes I’ve made, the search engines love them.

So, join with me and link to this blog and if you are a customer needing some SEO assistance, then please consider me for your project. I can best be reached at matt AT thearticlewriter. com — to your success!

Update: Before I forget, anyone who leaves a comment to this thread with a link to a page they want stumbled, I’ll be stumbling that page for them to mark this blog’s transition. This offer expires at 5 p.m. ET, on March 7, 2008.