Just before the hubbub about Google canceling PR, Google updated PR at the end of October. Regardless of whether PR will eventually be canceled or not, improving a website's weight in search engines cannot solely focus on PR values; patiently doing a good job with site content and user experience is the key. Doing well in the following five points will prepare you for the next PR update:
Ensure Content Freshness
It seems that in this update, Google favored new pages more. New pages refer to pages you've recently added to your site or pages where the content has undergone significant changes.
Existing pages that haven't been updated or have only had minor changes may see their PR drop, while new pages from the homepage to deeper-level pages pass link juice and gain value improvements. This also proves that Google likes fresh, original, and updated content on pages. Reposted or recycled old content on your site should be frequently changed and adjusted. Otherwise, your page's ranking in search engines might drop. Even if you change the URL, if the content remains unchanged, the page won't gain PR.
Text Content is King
Simply changing the layout, template, or images won't have much effect because search engine spiders don't read or fully understand these changes. Search engines can easily read text, but images and site layouts are relatively harder.
Alt tags and modified texts allow search engines to get information about what images display to visitors. This can also promote the SEO of your site. Therefore, changing your template won't quickly improve your page's ranking. Text content is the key factor in improving page rankings on Google.
Major Changes Needed for Text Content
To improve your Google PageRank, you must genuinely change your site's content. This doesn't mean simply adding a few lines of text, reordering the content, or using tools to automatically generate content. A "major" change in text involves creating content, even drafting it, or rewriting your existing text. This work is challenging, and not every site can achieve it.
For example, changing product descriptions on e-commerce sites multiple times a year isn't always realistic. In such cases, occasional content changes or slight modifications can still help with webpage rankings.
Pay Attention to Keywords
Before implementing changes, your new website copy should have undergone appropriate research. This means finding suitable keywords for the page. Suitable keywords refer to those with high search volume but lower competition, such as long-tail or more precise keywords.
Once these keywords are confirmed, they should be embedded into the website's title, meta description, meta keywords, header tags, alt tags, and content. However, be careful not to overdo it; otherwise, search engines may view it as spam, which could negatively affect your site or even result in permanent penalties.
Link Structure
The site should also have a flat navigation hierarchy. This means your homepage — the page that gets the highest PageRank value from Google — should link to your site's most important pages. The more pages on your site that the homepage links to, the higher those pages will rank in search engines. This is known as the passing of page link juice.
Imagine a tree structure where a main site links to many internal pages. In this case, other pages on the site that aren't linked to the homepage won't receive much link juice.
Prepare for the Next Update
To avoid a drop in your site's PageRank, content needs to be updated 3-4 times a year. Since Google's main PageRank and algorithms are also updated 3-4 times a year, these two updates usually occur simultaneously. Therefore, the next big change is likely to happen in January 2010. So start writing or hire a copywriter to create content beneficial for SEO.