While some of you already know, Google’s PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each of your website’s pages. This factor can affect a number of things such as your website’s position in Google’s search results or your AdWords PPC campaigns (read more about Google’s PageRank on Wikipedia).

Lately I stumbled onto a useful tool that can predict your website’s future PR. As this website (TheWebmastersCafe.net) is pretty new, it’s currently stuck into Google’s “sandbox effect”. This is the probation period where your website still hasn’t got a PR from Google so I wanted to know what my blog’s PR would be in the future. Unfortunately, I haven’t got enough backlinks yet so the prediction isn’t good. On the other hand, my other website, HomeMusician.net, has over 500 backlinks but it’s PR probably won’t move but still, it has a PR 4 which isn’t bad.

Here is the prediction tool as well as some other useful PR-related links :

PageRank Prediction
http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_prediction

Live PageRank
http://livepr.raketforskning.com/

Google PageRank Checker
http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php

iWebTool Page Rank Checker
http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_checker

Part of getting organic traffic to your your website is to build backlinks. Usually, I do this by posting on related blogs and forums. This can take a lot of time but traffic will grow faster and faster over time and your website will also gain higher PageRank.

When you’re building backlinks on forums and blogs, just don’t go out there and spam every board you find. Try to find communities with topics that really interest you. Find some forums and blogs that you will be visiting often so you can contribute to it’s community. Make posts relevant and useful to others and add your website’s URL in your signature. Don’t make shitty posts just in order to have a backlink, people will notice it and you will probably get banned one day or another.

You can also exchange links with other websites relevant to yours. Don’t just post your link everywhere, make sure that your website will attract visitors that stumble on your link. You should also avoid link farms at all cost. Chances are it will affect your PageRank.

Here are some tips I’ve found over Kirsty’s blog (http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk/) when you’re building links:

• Try to find the right balance between quality and quantity. A crappy site will bring your crappy traffic.
• Check out the site’s PageRank (just get Google’s toolbar over at http://toolbar.google.com) and try to go for websites with a PR of 4 or higher.
• See what your competitor’s backlinks are. To do this, simply type “link:www.domain.com” in Google’s search box (of course you gotta type your competitor’s URL instead of domain.com!). See what their best backlinks are and try to get your site listed there also.
• Do a search on Google to find some related websites that allows you to add your link. Here are some search terms suggestions to help you find those sites:
  • [topic] add url
  • [topic] exchange links
  • [topic] submit links
  • [topic] link submission
  • [topic] link exchange

  So for example, if you have a website on dog breading, you could search for “dog breading submit links”.

• When you submit a link, try to use some useful keywords and not just your URL when you can. For example, you could put a link like “Find Dog Breading Info at http://www.ilovedogs.com”. This will help your SERP.
• When you get your link added to another website, submit the web page to Google in order to get it indexed faster (http://www.google.com/addurl).

Of course there is a lot more than this to link building but this is a good start!

Perhaps you’ve been using Google AdSense on your website for a while now and you’ve been making a few bucks here and there. If you are like me, you just threw up a bunch of banners here and there and hoped for the best. You’ve looked at other websites and thought “Ok I’m gonna put a 468×60 ad at the top and also one at the bottom. Let’s also put some 120×600 skyscraper ads on the side. That’s what I see everywhere so it must work!”. Wrong!

You see, over time people have become blinded to those banner formats. They simply scream “Don’t click me! Don’t click me!”. This is why it’s important to use the right banner formats in order to get the most click (and revenues of course).

Recommended Formats

For me, the formats that performed best are :

• 336×280
• 728×90
• 250×250
• 160×600

I think it’s safe to say that for most people, these are the format that will perform better as well but not necessarily in that order. That is why it’s important to use Google AdSense channels.

Google AdSense Channels

When you’re getting a new AdSense ad code, you can create a channel through which you will be able to track clicks from your visitors. A channel can be anything from a banner format to a zone on your web page. A single ad can be part of multiple channels at the same time.

For my part, I create a channel for :

• each banner format (336×280, 250×250, etc.)
• each section of my website (Homepage, articles, links, etc.)
• each zone (Top right, right column, bottom, etc.)

A zone is a place on a web page where a banner is displayed.

When I create a new ad, I always place it in 3 channels (format, section and zone). This allows me to know what performs best because a certain format may get a good CTR (clickthrough rate) in some sections of my site while they may not get a single click in other sections.

Also when I place a new ad, I wait about 3 to 4 weeks before tweaking it. Don’t slaughter your website if an ad is not performing well after only a couple of days.