This is not a useful post at all, but I’m trying to take advantage of heavy searches for the above term. I’ve also got a question for you guys, end of this post. 
The craze started yesterday and that can only mean one thing in the webmaster world – a Google Pagerank update.
What is Google Pagerank? Well, it’s basically a number showing how ‘authoritative’ your website is – which is judged by the amount of backlinks to it. The scale is from 1-10, with 10 being the highest (Google’s homepage is a ten). The higher your PR, the more valuable your blog is and the more money you can make.
I had a few websites do decently enough – a couple PR5, one PR6, these are my niche websites. As for the social ones, this blog was bumped to a PR4, while BP’s forum went up to PR3 and the homepage went up to PR2.
It’s a complicated process so don’t try and understand how it works, but here’s a few tips to improve your PR.
1. Kill outgoing links. Although you should have some, the less, the better. I recently turned off dofollow comments for this blog – too late to have any real effect on this PR update, but we’ll see how it works next time around.
If you have dofollow enabled, each comment counts as an outgoing link, some to pretty shady websites (spammers that get through) and some with unrelated anchor text. For example, this blog has around 5,500 comments – with dofollow enabled, each of those counted as an outgoing link!
You can also try and use a Wordpress plugin like Post Teaser to shorten your posts and reduce the amount of outgoing links on your frontpage.
2. If you’re going to be a link whore, do it privately. I stopped selling text links on this blog as it doesn’t bring in much for the sidebar space. Don’t flaunt the fact that you’re selling links or using something like Pay Per Post – if you are, keep quiet about it.
3. Get inbound links – focus on quality, not quantity. This chart shows what kind of links you need; as you can see, you only need 3 PR4 links to get your blog to PR3, however you need 555 PR1 links to get the same result. An easy way to get those kinds of links is by using dofollow blog comments, high quality directory submissions and of course the top commentators list (*coughs*).
What results did you see this update?
Also, the question…
I’m thinking of adding a forum to this blog – nothing major, but something like using a Wordpress plugin (XDForum) or bbPress (I’ve heard it’s decent…). The reason for this is that sometimes comments on here turn into carnage (which is killer, really) – you guys are kick ass, sometimes too much so. I love the fact that this blog gets an average of near 20 comments per post, but I can’t answer 20 questions per post usually. So what I’m thinking is a simple forum where people can ask questions and answer them; I’ll be on there too and all questions will be answered within a week.
Cost for this will be $497 $297 $97 free. Only for readers of this blog, of course. 
Let me know what you think.
July 26th, 2008 at 9:58 am
lol at you posting this for title keyword traffic. I should do the same no? heh
CreatingRevenueOnline.com’s last blog post..Flipping BANS Websites
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July 26th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Oh.. and to your question. Forums are hard to manage and get out of control with fights, flames, spam and ASL people. The real question is, do you have the time to manage it anymore than you do answering all the comment questions?
And with those plugins… do they allow you to assign moderators so you can outsource some of the work to loyal readers… like me? lol
CreatingRevenueOnline.com’s last blog post..Flipping BANS Websites
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July 26th, 2008 at 11:37 am
with the number three, i don’t think it is still the basis of pr… Google keeps on changin algorithms so stuffs like these don’t have much value as they used to before..
Melvin’s last blog post..Don’t Bother With PM’s From Your Blog
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July 26th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
personally i think comments are better than forum coz to a blogger there is nothing better than genuine comments and also we try to solve each others comment queries as far as possible(atleast i try to do so). You wud b discouraged when u see 1 or 2 comments to ur post even if that means ur forum is full of threads.
Also look at this from a new visitors point of veiw,when he comes here he sees only one or two comments so that will discourage him and when he sees posts two months back have 25 comments each then your blog will appear as a dying blog to him.
All this is my opinion offcourse the final choice is urs.
as for pr i got my directory from pr n/a to pr 4
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July 26th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I took at a look at Wordpress forum plugins not so long ago but was concerned about spam control. Having run various forums in the past you can hit so hard its unreal so with a popular site like this one I would really carefully consider the controls whatever forum software you use has to control spam and exclude certain individuals. From what I saw bbPress at least was *very* basic in this respect.
Just a thought…
Richard’s last blog post..Using Bebo As Search Engine Bait
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July 26th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
bbPress is a decent one.. requires less of maintenance.
Keshav’s last blog post..santoshgs:
What if Microsoft designed Gmail?
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July 26th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I’m a sad PR2. WTH.
Dude I have more backlinks than some of the PR3 blogs on 45n5 but I guess it depends on the quality of the backlinks.
Anyway that chart is not certain as TNX is not affiliated with Google.
Germz’s last blog post..How freelancing can help your business.
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July 26th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
I’m pretty happy since my blog got a PageRank 3
But I don’t really think a forum on TUK would be really good, BP is enough in my opinion.
I’ve never written a keyword stuffed article on my blog before, but your post just encouraged me to that right now! Thanks
Rajaie AlKorani’s last blog post..What Does It Take To Be Successful?
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July 26th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Yeah, I was thinking about the forum thing…I just installed one for another one of my sites, and I like it. I used simple:press, it’s very slick and easy to do.
As far as the PR, you came out like a fat rat, good deal. I only have to wonder if having dofollow on my comments has hurt me. I use the top commentator plugin, maybe I’ll up the spots on there and kill the dofollow on comments.
JK Swopes’s last blog post..Non-cash cashflow and indirect profits. How much are you really making?
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July 26th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Damn, my site went from PR3 to PR2. I have to focus more on it, because I can not go on like this. I do have a backlink from here, which will hopefully help me the next time around. I hope that time will be soon, because my sales will no go as well with PR2. I am looking on gaining some more backlinks, and tomorrow I will terminate most of my outgoing links. I am announcing on my blog that most of the links I gave away will be terminated, except very recent ones. Also the banners might go down. Anyway, I am going to focus on PR a bit, though most people think it unimportant.
Nathaniel’s last blog post..I Never Fail With My Designs
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July 26th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Nice post Jason. And yeah, I support a forum on this site, it’d be nice to have a place to talk about things liek flipping websites, selling services, etc, etc.
Ralph’s last blog post..Flash Effects
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July 26th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Start a forum! Start a forum!
- Mike Michalowicz
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July 26th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
I just noticed that my blog went from a PR0 to PR3, this is exciting!.
The Smile Guy’s last blog post..Gorgeous Smile – Look at Those Eyes
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July 26th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
@ The Smile Guy – lucky you! Mine went down! I wish I could have raised to PR4!
Nathaniel’s last blog post..I Never Fail With My Designs
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July 26th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
I’m advising against using a WordPress plugin forum. I tried one before, and the lack of options is staggering… definitely use something more mainstream if you are looking ot add a forum.
Congrats on the PR bump!
The Net Fool’s last blog post..The Dawn of a Dot Com Empire – Bullish Bankers dot com Launch Party!
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July 26th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Also Jason, how do you make your site nofollow? I have been trying to find out but this is one of the things I don’t know.
To add to this comment, I approve of the forum, and the above question should be on the forum. Maybe you should make a more sophisticated forum than using a plugin, but thanks for directing me to the plugin, I can use it:)
Nathaniel’s last blog post..I Never Fail With My Designs
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July 26th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
@Nathaniel: All wordpress blogs come with nofollow. Unless you installed the Dofollow plugin you should be fine.
Also add a forum jason!!!!!
Germz’s last blog post..PR Update… I give up.
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July 26th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Lol my blog’s pagerank didn’t go ANYWHERE. But, I guess I deserve it. Haven’t done enough with the blog lately but post here and there when I felt strong about something.
Rob’s last blog post..Don’t Buy Google Nemesis
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July 26th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Ok thanks Germz. I guess my blog is do-follow. Now all I need is to remove some of my outgoing links. That will be done in the next few days anyway, for the ones I gave for free I am removing. Then I will start my private ads up. No link sales though.
Nathaniel’s last blog post..I Never Fail With My Designs
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July 26th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Hey great post. That PR table is very helpful, thanks for posting a link to it.
Jordan’s last blog post..Should You Choose Wordpress Or Blogger?
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July 27th, 2008 at 1:46 am
sweet! now time to reduce my outgoing links from homepage
for the next effcect btw a discussion board will be a nice idea 
narendra.s.v’s last blog post..Win $200 on thebloggersguide.com
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July 27th, 2008 at 3:41 am
[...] from StandoutBlogger got a PR 2, same for Melvin. Rajaie from RajaieTalks got a PR 3. Jason from The University Kid got a PR [...]
July 27th, 2008 at 5:20 am
I actually had a handful of new sites bust into the page ranks as PR2s, but some of my older sites went down in PR. I guess that just shows that you need to keep working on the PR on your established sites and not spend all your time on the new ones. Congrats on the continuous rise of TUK!
I like the idea of the forums and could see it growing rather quickly from the community that you have built around this site (kinda like how BP took off!). However as creatingrevenueonline pointed out it could be a lot of work to manage and may actually take more time than replying to comments. Perhaps one way that you could make the forums less work to manage would to be force admin approval for new members. This way you could require that someone is an active visitor/participant/reader on TUK before they are given access to the forums. This could eliminate the spammers and reduce the need to moderate the forums. Just a suggestion but I like the idea of the forums.
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July 27th, 2008 at 5:21 am
My page rank stayed at a PR4 as far as I can tell. I thought it might drop because of all the text links i’ve been selling, but i guess not. I’m happy with a PR4 for now.
Pete’s last blog post..Financial Crisis: First foreclosure, now credit cards?
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July 27th, 2008 at 11:23 am
A forum sounds pretty rad, I have loads of questions that I want answered.
Ryan McLean’s last blog post..How Can I Run a Competition
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July 27th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
About the forum idea – I don’t think you should spread yourself too thin. You already have the Blog Premiere forum where your readers can chat, ask questions, etc. – why do you want another one for the same thing? And will you have time to manage it? It seems like you are already struggling to respond to your private messages in your first forum, and the situation will only get worse if you open another.
Silla’s last blog post..New direction
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July 27th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Google PageRank, at least the one that’s shown in their Toolbar, is a complete joke. If you want a better informational source of this type, do yourself a favor and buy a ‘Magic 8 Ball’. 9 out of 10 webmasters have been able to make better use of the info from the Magic 8 Ball than from the info provided by the mighty and useless Google Toolbar. In short, don’t waste your time playing the PageRank game since it’s a useless measure at best…
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July 27th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
my review blog now PR 4 from PR 3… i`m very happy
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July 28th, 2008 at 5:45 am
My blog is pr4… I am happy:)
and i will try to get pr 5 on next update ….
abdul’s last blog post..Getting High Ranking in msn search
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July 28th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
I am still new to blogging (5 months now) and although I recently had a PR1 blog, it suddenly went down to PR:N/A which to me sounds like its back to being pratically invisible to Google. Not sure why….I guess I will just keep adding content and see what happens.
Ray’s last blog post..Programs with .exe file extension do not open
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July 30th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
sorry to hear the do follow is gone from here. I will be leaving it on my blog… as I got PR3 on it and am less concerned about google as I am with keeping my readers happy. Feel free to drop by and comment.
Sell Porn Make Money’s last blog post..Friday Freebie – Free Porn Video – Take 2
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January 13th, 2010 at 4:10 am
This sure was a great offer for all your readers!
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