Google judges each site based on a scale from 1 to 10. This is called Google Page Rank often abbreviated to PR.

Whats a good PR?

Its hard to say whats a good or bad page rank it depends on many factors like the age of the site, quality of content, amount of pages and sites linking back your site. On average for a well established site anything from a PR 2 or above is considered a good PR.

I have a PR 0 does this mean I have a bad site?

No a Page Rank 0 doesn’t mean you have a poor site at all. If the site is new you will have to be patient as the Page Rank update comes around quarterly, so you may have to wait for months before your PR changes. If your site is on an old domain and you have a PR 0 it could be due to a number of reasons, either your site hasn’t got relevant content on it or hasn’t got any other sites linking back to it. Having good Search Engine Optimisation practices implemented into your site can help build a PR.

PR the be all and end all?

One of the biggest mistakes you can make when browsing the web is too judge sites based up on their PR. Just because Google PR doesn’t rate the site high doesn’t mean it doesn’t offer a quality service or information relative to what you are searching for.

How do I find out my PR?

There are many sites that offer a Page Rank checker tool, however you can download the Google toolbar for here, which offer a integrated PR Checker.

Time Scales in SEO

I often get customers asking me to forecast the time scale for a search engine optimisation project and its the one question that is the most difficult to answer. As you know the industry is constantly changing its standards as are we, meaning the time scale for a customer to see results can vary from one cache to months of hard work.

So what are the factors which effect time scales?

• Existing Domain Strength - If you have an old domain with a strong backward link campaign, this is a great starting point for any SEO company meaning the time scales can be reduced.
• Phrase Competitiveness - If you are optimising for extremely competitive phrase then its obviously going to take more human resource, time and money to reach your target.
• Competitors - If you are optimising for a competitive phrase is may be that other businesses are also optimising for the same thing, increasing the difficultly of performance therefore prolonging the time scale.

We understand that SEO can hold the future of your business in its hands, so its important that all the key phrases perform and convert to enquiries. The successfulness of your business is the main importance and it is hard to put a time scale on when it will reach your target. We will ensure that we give your site the resource and time it deserves in order to get in the desired search engine placement.

In this article I aim to express 5 reasons why organic (the left side of Google) search engine optimisation is worth the time and effort.

• It’s what Google was made for, and its what people generally use Google for. Good positioning in the organic listing of Google is much more likely to increase traffic to your site over pay per click (right side of Google) campaign.
• You have no budgets; your site won’t disappear from the listings after being clicked 20 times.
• The coding used in your site will be clean, modern and W3C compliant.
• The addition of a good navigation, with your keyword phrases throughout the pages and topical sites pointing links back to your website equals long term success.
• You would have nothing to show for months of pay per click marketing if you were to stop, with organic search engine optimisation your site would have built a page rank and would be starting to appear in organic listings.

Overall, I feel people are generally put off by the timescale of organic search engine optimisation over the instant results of pay per click. However, pay per click offers no long-term benefits and will not generate as much traffic to your site as organic SEO. For these reasons I recommend each client to opt for organic SEO over PPC.

When you are approached by a search engine optimisation company they will ask you what phrases you would like to appear for, then guarranty that this can be done, but what if the phrases are not right?

At Creare we ensure that the keyphrases suit your business needs, Our consultants ensure that the we discuss and understand the areas of your business. This then enables us to use our expertise to advise you on keyphrases that will not only generate you traffic, but also conversions.

By conversions i mean the amount of people that visit your site and actually make an enquiry or buy something.  It can sometimes be the less competitive phrases that are more specific which will make you money, rather than the general ones and of course internet marketing is all about making your business money.

This takes an understanding of SEO and experience in optimising for various industries. We have clients that range from Inflatables to Disabled Showers all of which have given us an understanding of what converts and what makes money.