I have to admit i am no expert. i am a "mere" learner. thus, when I posted about Google PageRank (PR), I was struck with the reality that people, or bloggers, once they have had the PR, they sometimes lost it. And now here I am, discovering how to maintain the PR once one earned it. As you can see i don't even have my own PageRank yet yet, I find searching about it and knowing its ups and downs in a site for future reference and if I can have it later, it wont hurt keeping it. I know the same is tru for all of the bloggers out there.

So, How Do We Avoid Losing Page Rank?

Again, I have to admit that currently, I don't even have PR myself. This is because PR is not gained overnight and when we have it, it is not easy to maintain as well. And as a rule of thumb, a good content for a site or blog is always one strong factor in having a PR in the process. This is one part of the "hard work" in order to have a good Page rank. And when you have this PR thing, can you celebrate now? Not yet! That is only the beginning! You have the task to maintain it and not to lose it.

And the question now comes in. How do we maintain a PR? Or, the better question of: "How do I make my PR better?" If all of us can answer these question very well then we have nothing to worry about but if we cannot then there are a lot of things we should worry about.

In connection with my preceding post, which is about Google PageRank , I have a considerable number of responses about PR, especially thos who have losthem. Thus, as a learner and in the process of sharing my learnings with you, I tried to search fo things making it safe for a webmaster not to lose the PR or, even better, to maintain and increase it..Many webmasters are already aware of this and as you all know, I am a learner but in case you read this, at least I share the hows in keeping the PR once we have it.

"...when I decided to redesign our web site. I wanted to make major changes in page structure etc and I knew what was going to happen when I do that.All of our site's pages had 4 PR which was better than what they have now because now they all have 0 PR. So I redesigned the site and ignored the tips I have covered in this article because there is always an exception of everything and there was one. I have to say am not an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert but I keep learning and as you learn something you slowly become experienced and expert." (Abdillahi Abdillahi) I quoted that person's statement because he has the authority when it comes about PR. Abdillahi Abdillahi is a web designer and a founder of a web hosting and design solutions company.

Like a football team, they can be the champion but onc they stop practicing and improving, they might lose. The same is true for the PRs. The following are some of the tips applicable in maintaining and/or increasing the Google Page rank.

Do not rename files

Whenever the webmasters/bloggers rename a file that is a part of the existing web site, those webmasters/bloggers increase the change to lose that file's Page Rank. There are many reasons which can make webmasters/bloggers rename the site files including (but not limited to) to add some dynamic features a to a certain page which has an .html file extension and the script webmasters/bloggers are going to use is a server side such as PHP. After webmasters/bloggers decide to add the feature to that page they will have to rename it to .hp file extension and that will result the lost of the page's PR because when any search engine spider comes to their respective sites in order to index it, the search engine will look for the old file and it would nott find it because it is no longer available or accessible to anyone.

Sometimes this causes the search engine spider to leaver the site or get stack into no where. But there is a way which you can keep the .html file and add the feature you want it to have in the same time make the server read it as a php file. That will be the use of .htaccess/ mod _rewrite. I'm not going to cover about those two as the article is not about them but you can search the web and find many great tutorials about them. So try to avoid renaming any file that is a part of your web site.

Do not change the domain name of the site

Lets suppose the webmaster/blogger has a domain name which has an 8 PR but later he/she wanted to change it for another domain that he/she thinks suits the site better. By changing it he/she completely lose the PR of the site and all the sub pages. He/she can still have the old domain and redirect it to the new one and move the old pages to the new one BUT THIS IS NOT A SOLUTION TO RETAIN THE PR as well.

It is a new work all over for the PT because it goes back to zero with the new domain. A practical advice then, to all webmasters/bloggers is to not change the domain name of the site unless it is very necessary especially when it already established a very good (or at least good) PR.

Do not redirect pages or the domain name

Page redirection or domain redirection will result the lost of the PR of the site and its pages. We are mostly aware that this happens more often than not when we tranfer hosts and or we decided to have a custom domain frem a free account. One example is this webloglearner page being redirected to a custom domain (like what I bought www.webloglearner.com that did not function).This is only one reason for redirection. For sure there are still a lot more other reasons.

With redirection, the search engine spiders will (sooner or later) realize what a webmaster/blogger is doing (redirecting all the time) and these search engines might "punish" the site and remove it from the index.Simply stated, redirection is not very healthy for those who are aiming for a google PR or any other PR for that matter.

One good advice given by Abdillahi Abdillahi is: "If you get a new file and design it is better to delete all the old files from your site and use the 404 file not found page which will contain a site map of the new design's links and an error message telling the visitors what happened to that page they followed, whether they followed it from a site or a search engine.In that way you don't lose visitors and search engine spiders don't get stack into that page which doesn't exist anymore instead they follow the links in the site map and index the new files. Therefore, avoid using any kind of page or domain redirection."

And the easiest way to lose the PR? To be against google I think such as losing the adsense or something like that? I will still have to look for it if there is relevance between adsense and gppgle PR but at this moment, it is safe to assume so. It is better to be prudent, right? So take good care of your adsense accounts as well.

Another? I read many accounts or posts when I searched about this topic that those who make paid reviews such as PPP (you know what this stands for, right?) have assumed that this is one reason why they lost the PT because the search engines do not like to index these kinds of pages.

How to improve the PR?

Simply stated, hard work and perseverance. Again, obtaining a PR does not happen overnight and it needs hard work. A good content is a must again. I have tried this and I am sure that a "very good" content is above all. Why? I posted a very comprehensive essay in one of my sites because i am a technical writer and when one customer cancelled the order, I posted the write up that I did so that customer will not take advantage of my work. I even posted in a blogspot without a very good PR or something but when I tried searching about it, it was the first result that google gave. That was three or two weeks ago and I just tried a few seconds back and it still the first. Do you want to try? Just search for "the nation of islam and the muslim brotherhood" in the search engine because you will be seeing a post from my Opinionated Philippines Blog. If you will try this, you will see that this ceratin post is full of facts and heavily referenced. It has proper citations and comprehensive discussions. It has references at the bottom as well to point to the original sources.

With the above experience, I was able to affirm that content is still the best way to get to he readers. Why? How many established sites the Nation of Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood have? Many and even in the news they came out. Yet, my very new post came out atop of all those establised (and also related) sites.

Updated Content

Another way is to update the contents of the site. For serious and constant bloggers, this is not a very new idea. However, to thos new ones and are aspiring a PR, they should also know that updating the site's content is very important. The webmaster/bloggers should provide fresh content and try to update it daily or every two days. No matter what kind of site one has he/she must have a great content because they say "content is king" (Abdillahi Abdillahi). If you can't provide that content by yourself then get content from similar site or get articles of other authors which write about what your site is or even hire someone to write it for you. That is why the "guest blogger" stuff became popular. As you update it daily you will see your PR getting better but be patient because it won't happen overnight. Be careful not to just copy the contents though because it is not a good indication as well to simply copy and paste!

Quality back links

Quality back links are very important considerations is having/maintaining some PR. Bloggers/webmasters should have links with sites similar to theirs. We all know about link exchange and I have already explained in my google PR post the importance of linking and exchanging links is not done for something without purpose. Backlinking/exchanging links will help you and the other site increase your Page Rank. BE CAREFUL THOUGH! "Make sure you don't link back to sites that are not similar to yours as this would decrease your current page PR." (Abdillahi Abdillahi) There are many ways you can increase it but try to use the legitimate way and not anything that might hurt you later. The more you have manu quality back links the more your site's PR gets better.
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I have mentioned references to Abdillahi Abdillahi. He is a web designer, founder and president of http://kooshin.com , a company providing affordable web hosting and web design solutions to small to medium sized businesses and individuals. For more information , please visit http://kooshin.com and the exact page of my reference is here.