This morning I opened some of my favorite blogs and looks like everyone, and I mean it — EVERYONE is talking about the merciless Google PageRank collapse, that hit most of the top bloggers and no one seen it coming… Here are some stats to start the morning with (although some of the below listed sites dropped their PR 1-2 weeks ago already)

autoblog.com PR6 –> PR4
engadget.com PR7 –> PR5
problogger.net PR6 –> PR4
copyblogger.com PR6 –> PR4
joystiq.com PR6 –> PR4
tuaw.com PR6 –> PR4
searchengineguide.com PR7 –> PR4
searchenginejournal.com PR7 –> PR4
johnchow.com PR6 –> PR4
quickonlinetips.com/ PR6 –> PR3
weblogtoolscollection.com/ PR6 –> PR4
andybeard.eu PR5 –> PR3

(Thanks Andy for the list)

You will be amazed to also discover that some of the Internet’s leading websites lost their credibility in Google’s eyes as well. Take for instance washingtonpost.com that went from PR7 to PR5 or the famous rich people’s magazine online Forbes.com that dropped as well from PR7 to PR5. Actually I can go on forever because the list of penalized domains, never mind how trusted they are, is huge.

Who giggles apart from Google?

Probably the rest of the world who’s PR was not affected, but… The amusing part is, now toptut.com is in the same PR league as johnchow.com, coppyblogger.com, weblogtollscollection.com, searchengineguide.com and problogger.net (!!), while it’s obvious that this blog is a few light years away from these big names. So what’s Google point here? To just penalize anyone who has achieved a decent or semi-decent PR? Or can’t simple mortals gain more than PR5 anymore while only the Gods at Mountain View can climb higher than that?

There is still no answer for these question as PR update was not finalized and apart from guesses, ideas, assumptions and fears, we don’t know anything.

If you feel like torturing yourself with this whole Google PR Update Tragedy a bit more, you can read also on Daniel’s, Kumiko’s, Darren’s CoppyBlogger’s blogs about the the devastating Q3-Q4 207 update.This update reminds me actually of war with Napoleon, when only after the war was over, it was possible to estimate the true losses… Hope this update won’t take as long as the war with Napoleon though!

P.S. - It does not matter if you sell PR links or not, you will probably lose your ranking anyway, because Google knows better if you sold links or not…

If you think Google does it out of purely noble intention, giving everyone an equal chance to rank high, regarding the capital you invested in buying links — you are wrong. Google does not really care weather you pay or not, however, they care WHO you pay to. Ideally, pay them, and advertise via Adwords.

Let’s see how it started the past months

First Matt Cutts writes openly in his blog, calling webmasters to report paid links. Following that, we see some ranking collapse, best and most well known example is John Chow not only not ranking for the term “make money online”, but it looks like Google kicked him out even for the term “John Chow“. Same happens to Text Link Ads, that no longer rank anywhere for “text link ads” and many other sad examples.

PageRank Apocalypse

The hysteria continues when all the top bloggers and top ranking sharks lost -1, and even -2 of their toolbar candy, and that is, with PR Q3 not even being finalized. Unofficially, Google confirms the penalty being rolled out and case by case websites and advertisers get kicked out of top ranking as well as now pay for their criminal past of buying link with live, green, vivid PR.

Google’s message to webmasters: Don’t sell PageRank, your site will lose ranking.

Google message to advertisers: Don’t buy PageRank, your site will lose ranking.

…And, the aftermath?

Naturally, advertisers are afraid to buy links via semi-banned and penalized Text Link Ads. They afraid to do it in some other networks as well for same reason. Naturally webmasters removed the “buy links here” text, they don’t offer it openly in forums anymore and as a result, link sales slowed down. Webmasters report that their  Text Link Ads revenue collapsed, with all the advertisers pulling back. But, who did win here? Of course Google. If you want to make sure you advertise and 100% comply with Google’s strict ranking policy, you can advertise via Google Adsense. This brings traffic, not links (since the script is Java-based, however, if you need to keep promoting, you will take this option.

Links sales revenue collapsed, Adsense revenue raised. Many webmasters had seen the obvious increase in Adsense revenue, and no wonder. Bottom line, it all came down to monopolizing the whole buy-and-sell-and-publish-links and search-and-rank industry.

However, if Google takes it case by case, looks like there is still plenty of work to do…

The possibilities of commercial promotion today are almost endless, because this include all the available media, which surrounds us — let’s not forget that except online advertising, we also have radio, television, billboards, magazines, newspapers and more sources where we can promote our products and services.

However, we need professional service to assist us in this not easy task. If you are in the UK and seeking UK online advertising services, myadbase.com would probably be the best solution for you. Thanks to them, you can choose from countless  advertising portals in the UK giving listings from media sellers and advertising agencies. MyAdBase provides a huge database of media sources that allow us to advertise, so instead of seeking through Google and other sources, all you need to do is browse their website and see what suits you most. This makes advertising process much easier a you save time searching and comparing.

Good news for all the search engine marketing fans. I just discovered the launch of StaticPageBuilder.com, which is a seo software for building static pages, perfectly optimized for Search Engines.

It builds the pages already optimized in according to Google webmaster’s guidelines, they are easily crawled, accessible and target better for your desired keywords, which eventually helps your Search Engine Marketing optimization. As a result you have a ready-to-launch website in your hans, and no need for SEO expert to do the expensive work for you. They offer a free trial, (for which you have to register free), so you can see for yourself what this software is all about and how it works. It has a pleasant interface and in my opinion is pretty easy to use and useful.

This is the error message I got when I logged in today to my Digg account. So, “misuse” it is. Actually, not only my account was banned, but also all the URL’s seems to be missing (maybe that is automatic though.

I won’t be hypocrite and say it was unjust, I won’t even try to email them and get my account back, after all, it’s not like I was using it all that much anyway. If you will read my Digg vs. Stumble Upon analysis, you’d understand why I am managing to cope with the sorrow so easily.

After all, even though hitting front page on Digg.com (which I never was lucky enough to reach) can deliver 40,000 visitors to your website easily, it doesn’t really mean the story is worthy. Digg is mainly about Digg itself, Kevin Rose and politics (no day passes by without seeing Rudy Giuliani name in top 10 stories). Just look at some of the top dugg stories for the last 365 days:

It confirms what I said, Diggers like to talk and see discussion about their own community, and it’s natural. The good thing is, I am not alone. I wasn’t banned and put outside the big cycle, I just joined the “opposition” cycle, where some bigs names have already been for a long time — John Chow, Designer Folio, Digital Point Forum, Text Link Ads (affiliate), V7N Forum, Paula Mooney, and many more leading names on the Internet.

What I did that got me banned? Well, I posted Digg exchange requests (like thousands of people do everyday, and provide direct URL). If you want to do Digg exchange with people, give your username and URL in PM, don’t post a hyper link in public. I tend to doubt it was due to submitting my own websites to digg, as I submitted only a few times, and they were less than 20% of my dugg bookmarks.

So, this was another happy story coming from Digg’s blacklist, which I hope you enjoyed reading. If your account ever gets banned, don’t hang your nose in sorrow, because I am the live evidence — there IS life after your account suspension!

Anyone of us who is running an online business, be it a huge corporation that rolls millions off affiliate sales, or a small website that earns a few dollars off Adsense, understands the importance of SEO. Search engine optimization is rather a strategy, than technique. You have to know exactly what do to, where to add your link and on what exactly websites should you buy text links. It’s really not as easy as it may seem at first, blindly purchasing links on every cheap website can sometimes cause more harm to your ranking (spammy sites, sites banned by Google, etc). Although Google may look negatively on PR links sales, still an all, millions of webmasters will still be paying for a text link on a high PageRank page, knowing how greatly it will help their site’s ranking and even SERP (Search Engine Ranking Position).

Having said that, it’s still not everything and there are many more aspects you should look into when starting to advertise your online business, which is why I personally would advice to save time and hassle and turn to a good Advertising Company. This way, you can focus of your site and the business you run, not on studying the marketing strategies of Search Engine Optimization and spending long days hunting links on appropriate website. Another benefit of availing of company that specializes in this industry is that you get more control over the links you purchase. For instance, no need to run occasional check weather the links are still up or not, because the guys from htpcompany.com can do it for you. They specialize in Internet Marketing, SEO, Online Advertising and everything else in between that will help you to spread the word about your business and gain popularity in Search Engines. If I was to recommend an advertising company, it would definitely be HTP Company, due to their good reputation, impressive clients list and affordable prices. They have almost 6,000 websites on which they can place your text link, so most definitely you can find something that suits your needs.

Don’t forget that good SEO optimization is not only about being ambitious and having your site ranked high, it’s primarily about the revenue you will harvest off your site later — the better ranking, the more visitors from SE, the more sales, clicks and leads!

Two weeks ago the wpSEO was released, which provides more SEO for WordPress blogs. I feel this tool is going to gain popularity, fulfilling bloggers perpetual desires to rank higher in SE. This tool can generate post descriptions in a few different ways. If you’d like to be more precise, you can provide a brief summary for meta description manually, although in most cases it will be generated automatically.

Installing this plugin is unbelievably easy, just like any other plugin, upload it to the plugins directory through your FTP and activate it in the WordPress admin panel. At the moment wpSEO documentation does not support English, however, due to being so easy to use and simple, you won’t need the language support.

Get wpSEO free from wpSEO.de.

There is a lot of speculation around the Alexa ranking. Some, like me, believe that Alexa ranking is useless, while others see it as a good traffic measure unit. The problem is, when you make money online, some advertising networks such as my favorite Text Link Ads and PayPerPost use Alexa rank as a criteria, and adjust your payout per link in according to your Alexa rank, assuming it says something about your visitors count.

While Alexa rank only measures traffic based on those who use Alexa toolbar (which is, less than half of the surfers, I believe), we all would agree that its inaccurate. However, in order to generate better revenue we need to have as low rank as possible (the lower — the better), so let’s see how we can do that, without increasing the actual traffic.

1. Using Alexa redirects. It means, instead of link in htp://www.toptut.com format, you should use - http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?http://www.toptut.com. This will send the users though Alexa’s site, redirecting to your URL and this way, the traffic coming through the redirect will count towards your ranking. Disadvantages: If you implement this technique, the link loses its Google PageRank value (which is much more important when it comes to making money online), because the link points to Alexa’s site (and they benefit). Another disadvantage is the speed loss, as redirect takes up to a few seconds to load on fast connection and you might not be eager on losing visitor due to slow loading time.

2. Using Alexa Widget. This technique is far better and I heard from a few friends of mine that is it’s way more helpful. All you need to do is go to this page, and choose a widget for your URL, then add it sitewide to your site or blog. Once the widget is up and running, every visitor who enters your website, will count towards your traffic ranking as having the script installed works like a stats counter for Alexa. This way, your traffic rank will be much more accurate and will “catch” every visitor, be it someone who enters though his bookmarks, feed or a link in Google. Disadvantages: You have to bear with the small Alexa banner on your site, and display your ranking to public, even if it’s nothing impressive yet.

That’s it, these are the only “legitimate” methods. Sure there are plenty of ways to game your ranking by displaying a tiny iFramed image pointing to your Alexa redirect. I very much doubt it’s acceptable by Alexa’s TOS, but there will always be faked PageRanks, Faked Alexa’s and even Fake Technorati Ranks… Still and all, there is nothing like genuine PR7 site with Alexa rank below 1000… So better start working on your rank right now!