I came across an interesting article at Search Engine Panel entitled “Demystifying Page Rank - What It Is And Isn’t.” I’ve noticed that many bloggers and website owners seem to go crazy over their Google Toolbar Page Rank and express disappointment if it drops or excitement if it increases.

My own observations are that the Toolbar Page Rank seems to have little to do with where a page or website gets ranked in the Google search engine. I’ve never really spent much time trying to increase the Toolbar Page Rank of the several web properties we own. Instead, we’ve focussed on providing useful content and regular updates. This in my opinion will do more for your website in generating traffic via search engines than worrying about back links to your sites.

Not that back links aren’t also helpful in generating traffic. But it seems to me that many blogs and websites could be spending more time and effort on producing new original content on their sites and by spending time and energy on that, back links will be created. Other site owners who find your content useful will link to it. And search engines seem to like websites that are regularly updated.


As mentioned, we have several web properties that we have to earn income for a variety of advertising sources. With respect to Google Adsense, one of those sites regularly earns between $3,000.00 and $4,000.00 per month and in June 2008, nearly hit the $5,000.00 mark. This particular site has a PR of 5 and we do absolutely nothing to try to increase back links to it. It does get updated once a month with a new article but has no newsletter, contests, or giveaways - none the gimmicky things many Internet Marketers will tell you that you need to do in order to generate traffic (not that there is anything wrong with that - we just don’t do it with this particular site).

This particular website is about 5 years old. When we first launched it, there was a LOT of time and effort spent on creating content. There was some effort spent on site promotion to other relevant and related websites but not nearly as much as some claim is necessary. Most of the traffic to the site originates with search engines and I believe this is simply because the site has so much content that is easily indexed by Google and relevant search terms rank quite well. The PR of the site has remained a 5 for some time.

On the other hand, we have another web property where the PR rank was recently increased from a 3 to a 4. Yet at the same time, it has lost significant search engine rankings with Google in the past month and traffic is about half of what it was for the previous 12 months.

Why? I believe there may be two possible reasons:

1. We haven’t updated the site or added much new content in the past six months. And realistically, although the site generates traffic levels that many are envious of, the particular niche it is in doesn’t have high paying advertising. Presently, it earns between two and three hundred dollars a month in Adsense revenues and another couple of hundred in other advertising revenues for a total of approximately $450.00/month. Not enough to pay the mortgage but fills up the gas tank.

We probably could spend some time and energy increasing traffic levels and search engine rankings, but with the low ad rates for this niche, it is not worth it when that same time and energy on other websites will likely provide higher returns to us.

2. The other possibility for the lower search engine rankings are that we recently added the “Pay Per Play” advertising to the site, and maybe Google does not like that. I don’t know - does anyone else have any experience with adding this network and seeing their search engine rankings drop? I will be doing some experimenting on my own with some of the websites we own and see if their is a correlation.

My advice to website owners that are looking to generate ad revenues is to work hard and smart. You’re unlikely to get revenues of 5 grand a month overnight - so don’t be discouraged when it doesn’t happen for you right away. Don’t worry about your Toolbar PR. Cut back on your “back links” efforts, and spend some of that energy on new content that is useful and original.

Persistent effort is the best, if not the only, way to have some expectations of success regardless of what you are doing. If you are not making persistent efforts, it’s not likely you will have success. There is a price to be paid for the achievement of any worthy goal - if you’re not prepared to pay the price, don’t expect to achieve it.

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