Google was built around PageRank. For a long time, SEOs would focus on getting high PR scores to rank well but that ended a few years ago when Google’s algorithm advanced. Now PR does have an effect on several things but it hasn’t been the place to focus legitimate SEO efforts for a while.

The question was recently raised, “should we care about PR?” My answer is “very little.” Here’s why:

If a website has PR it is most likely ok with Google and included in the index and results pages. That means it has influence within Google’s system and can be useful for getting relevant links.

Pages with PR stay out of the supplemental results… but we can’t see which pages are in the supplemental results anymore so I don’t think that is worth worrying about.

There’s some disagreement about this but pages with high PR scores get crawled more often than pages with low PR scores. This makes sense as PR is a metric of popularity and Google’s algo depends on popularity so they may as well focus their resources on these “valued” pages.

Mostly PR is considered valuable because people think it is! Most of the people buying links based on PR don’t really understand what it is or what the influence of PR is on the search results. SEOs call this “chasing the green tail”.

Over the last week Google has been dropping the PR scores of suspected link sellers. I suppose the idea is that if these sites are selling links based on PR Google can cut into their profits. Fair enough, but this trick hurts the credibility of PR more than anything because now we know the scores can be manually altered. These sites still show some PR. We know they aren’t banned. And so far all reports say Google referral traffic is steady so there is no real penalty. Continue The further devaluation of Google PR »

Posted in Link Resources, SEOs, Industry News, SEO

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What’s more fun than launching one website? How about launching five websites?

I mentioned before that I really enjoy writing about industry news, ideas that I have about web design and SEO and other online business concerns. The content of 14th Colony followed my passion. But I do still have a website design and SEO business to run.

With that comes the Sacramento Edition of 14th Colony. The Sacramento Edition is a bit stripped down and will focus on generating client work and giving back to my local community. It will also be more fun and personal for me.

I grew up in Sacramento and the culture here is really magnificent. The “high art” scene has been booming, real skyscrapers are emerging and there is a feeling of impending greatness. As the Capital of California we have a lot to live up to.

Plus, we have the Kings.

…even if they do suck most of the time!

While the Sacramento edition resides on a subdomain and looks similar it really is a separate site with it’s own features. There are small differences in the layout but I expect that to change over time as that site develops it’s own personality.

One of the features the Sacramento edition will have is a blogroll, so if you want to exchange links, hit me up.

PS. Yes, I said 5 websites and all over the course of 2 weeks. Take a moment to check out the new Fabrication Unlimited website where they Steel Your Ideas! The other two sites are confidential but I’m sure I’ll find a way to mention them here eventually…

Posted in 14th Colony News & Announcements, Web Design

1 Comment »

Get noticed on 14th Colony with your own advertisement. Site-wide ads on the right are going cheap starting at just $10 per month. There is a 3 month minimum (pre-paid) but members get a 4th month free.

I’m also open to custom ad programs like single page insertions or ads in other areas. If you are interested, shoot me an email.

Posted in 14th Colony News & Announcements

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Were you expecting to land on Linker’s Union? Or maybe you were expecting the classic 14th Colony layout. Either way, things have been changing!

Linker’s Union has been absorbed into 14th Colony. All your favorite posts and people that were there are now here. You can get the whole story at Linker’s Union Rollup.

The much anticipated 14th Colony Redesign was officially launched October 14. It was not a smooth transition. If you are encountering missing pages or 404 errors, please contact us.

Posted in 14th Colony News & Announcements

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After 8 years of website design and development I thought I had the hang of moving a website over. It seems I was wrong! The transition to the new layout has been a disaster with missing pages, an .htaccess file that won’t cooperate and the WordPress theme falling out for no apparent reason. This has been a frustrating process and way more time-consuming than expected.

I’d like to say “at least I learned that before you move a WordPress site over you need to…” but alas, no such lesson. I’ve moved other WP sites in the recent past without any of the problems I’m experiencing today.

I do have the original site backed up *just in case* but I really want to get this now layout working so please bear with me!

And as long as I’m writing I will give you one tip that I hope helps: when pages fall out, use a 302 redirect to repoint that URL to the home page. That way the link credit for that page stays with the site and when you get that page back up you can remove the 302 redirect. This also redirects any viewers that may have the URL bookmarked to the temporary page to reduce the confusion of a 404 Page Not Found Error.

A 302 redirect lets the search engines know the page has been moved temporarily and to please come back later to find it. The format is:

Redirect 302 /page-being-moved http://www.your-domain.com/

You just replace the info as appropriate and place this line in your .htaccess file.

As of now, every page should either have a 301 (permanent) or 302 (temporary) redirect. If you get a 404 please let me know.

Posted in 14th Colony News & Announcements

3 Comments »