I am currently working to improve the search engine rankings for my
site (www.mybodycomp.com) and have been reading a lot about Google's
PageRank.  I noticed that my site has a PageRank of 0.  This is
obviously making it close to impossible for my site to show up in any
search engine results.

Why is Google giving me a page rank of 0 and what can I do to improve
it?

If possible, I would like robertskelton-ga to answer this question.

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Request for Question Clarification by robertskelton-ga on 06 Mar 2003 11:33 PST

Have you been using Web Position Gold?
Have you participated in any form of link exchange scheme?

What was your PageRank previously? When did it change? Or, when did
your number of visitors drop?

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Clarification of Question by beachguy-ga on 06 Mar 2003 13:16 PST

This is a relatively new site...I launched it January.  As far as I
know, the PageRank has always been 0.  I have never used Web Position
Gold although I did sign up and use a program called LinksManager. 
This hels you find other sites to trade links with.  I wouldn't
consider it a link farm though.  Even google gives LinksManager.com a
PR of 6.

All the sites I traded links with consisted of related content.  The
only reason I can think of for the low page rank is because I linked
back to nearly all the sites that link to me.  Is this a problem?

Hi there,

Pages that link to MyBodyComp:
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=%22mybodycomp.%2Bcom%22

Google says:

Fiction: Joining a link exchange or "free-for-all" link program will
boost my rankings.

Fact: Linking schemes do not increase a given site's PageRank, and
will often do a site more harm than good.
://www.google.com/webmasters/facts.html

The problem appears to reciprocal links. Nobody outside of Google's
inner core know how they can tell, but I can make at guess at what
they look for:

1. Pages with certain phrases that suggest link exchanging
2. Different sites that have the same links and wording on their links
page
3. Is a site linked to from directories and/or normal web pages, or do
the links only appear on links pages?

By looking at the pages that link to you I found the following pages
that have link-swapping phrases:

"Swap links with us"
http://www.powermaxvitamins.com/resource_center

"trade links"
http://www.leehayward.com/links_fitness.htm

These two links pages have identical wording, albeit in a different
order:
http://www.leehayward.com/links_fitness.htm
http://www.blastyourbench.com/links.htm

The only pages that link to your site are very long links pages. 

Some of the other sites that appear on the link pages also have a PR
of zero, and are probably in the same situation as you:

http://www.allmensneeds.com/
http://aboutfitnessequipment.com/


Remedy
------

Get as many genuine links as you can. A good start is Open Directory
and Yahoo, although Yahoo will charge you $299 per year.
http://dmoz.org/Shopping/Sports/Software/Fitness/

One of the sites in the above category has disappeared. Check out the
sites that link to it, and if you find some good sites, send them an
email letting them know that the link to Myotech no longer works, and
perhaps they might want to replace it with a link to your site.
://www.google.com/search?q=%22myotech.%2Bcom%22

I've written more on the topic here:
http://searchenginez.com/article1_deadurls.html

Look at the other sites in that category, and see who links to them -
this will give you an idea of what to do. Compare the number of
incoming links, the quality of the links, and the PageRank of each
site:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Shopping/Sports/Software/Fitness/ 

(Note that most of them have a good PR because they appear in Open
Directory, which Google uses for its directory)

Email every site that currently links to you and ask them to remove
the link. When they have, re-submit your site to Google. When you have
some quality links pointing to your web site, re-submit again, and
also submit the pages that are linking to yours.


Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by beachguy-ga on 08 Mar 2003 07:50 PST

Hi Robert,
Thanks for your answer.  I do need a little clarification on
something, if you don't mind.

You have stated that the reason that I am getting a PR0 is because the
pages that link to me could be considered to be "link swapping" sites.

However, this cannot be the case.  On Google's "Facts & Fiction" page
(://www.google.com/webmasters/facts.html) they state:

"There is almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or
have your site removed from our index. Your rank and your inclusion
are dependent on factors under your control as a webmaster, including
content choices and site design."

I obviously have no control over links pointing to my site - so these
should not be a factor in determining my Page Rank.  Otherwise, all
I'd have to do is submit my competitor's URL to a bunch of link farms
and their PR would go to 0.

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Clarification of Answer by robertskelton-ga on 08 Mar 2003 18:54 PST

There are two factors which you are in control of, and your
competitors cannot affect:

1. Genuine links. Although some of the sites that appear on the same
links pages have a PR of zero, many have a healthy PR. I believe that
this is due to them having many genuine incoming links as well - so
the ratio of "links pages" appearances to genuine links is quite low.

2. Link schemes are two-way, they require participants to link to the
sites that link to them. It would make sense that Google checks to see
if, as well as being linked to, your site has pages of return links.
Your competitors cannot place a page of links on your site.

Thanks for your indepth answers!

(coming from someone who holds #1-3 Google spots for my keywords)

Searching Google for "link:www.mybodycomp.com" produces no results.

However if you search for "mybodycomp" you get 16 hits,
and searching for "mybodycomp.+com" gives you 17 results.

Google knows you are out there. All of those 17 results seem to be
valid links back to your site. You obviously have content on your site
so I am not sure why you have a Page Rank of 0. My only conclusion is
that your site has been banned from the Google Results page for
attempting to artificially inflate incoming link count or page rank.

My suggestion, email: search-quality@google.com