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I can tell you how to do this, but there is a warning that must go along with the answer. Are you sure you want to do this?
I discovered this quite by accident. When checking this site in Google webmaster tools I notice each month highest PR page on the site is a post I wrote right after I set up this blog. When Your Blog Doesn’t Look Right. Honestly, I don’t need to link to it here.
Here is what I see in my results:
Your page with the highest PageRank
Jul http://www.realestatebloglab.com/plug-ins/when-your-blog-doesnt-look-right/
Jun http://www.realestatebloglab.com/plug-ins/when-your-blog-doesnt-look-right/
May http://www.realestatebloglab.com/plug-ins/when-your-blog-doesnt-look-right/
It had me baffled for months and months as to why this single post is the Page was the Highest PR I have. And why when most of my post head almost directly to supplemental results. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, direct to the small screen and the supplemental can beyond, And then this one stays in the active index month after month.
Then I found it. The one single blogroll link responsible for it all.
This little post has a PR3 rank because it is directly linked in the Bloodhound Blog Blogroll.
I don’t know if that was on purpose or the link was copied and the post never stripped off. I doubt Greg believes this is the best post ever. But that single link in a blogroll on a blog that cranks out posts like paper on a printing press keeps this single post always showing up as the highest PR page on the site.
As long as that blogroll link exist I can guarantee you no other page including the home page will every have more Google Juice on the site.
So that’s how you can immortalize a single post on your site. Get a link to it from a prodigious blog in their blogroll and your post is in index eternity.
But are you sure you want to do that to a single post? Maybe if it is the best post on your blog. But isn’t the best post always the last one you wrote? : )
Post Tags: bloodhound-blog , google_webmaster_tools , immortal-blog-post , supplemental-results
Stumble it!
36 responses so far ↓
1 Greg Swann (9 comments.) // Aug 30, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Okay, I just fixed it. Never knew it — and I didn’t check the others.
This post rides between second and seventh when you Google zillow.com. I want it in second place forever, and I think you’ve shown me how.
2 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Aug 30, 2007 at 3:18 pm
Greg,
Oh, my gosh, you just took that post out of blogging immortality : )
Now it will be interesting to see if that post even stays in the active index.
Glad I could help your zillow post staying high in the serps. If you want a link to it from one of my blogs just let me know. I link to the bloodhound blog on all four active blogs (I think). I’ll be glad to change one to that post for you.
I’ve got an update ready to post on 101 and supplemental results. You are going to like it. It certainly makes me jealous. You see why in a couple of days.
3 Ron Ares (2 comments.) // Aug 30, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Psssssssshhhhh….the sound of a slow Google page-rank leak. Doh!
4 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Aug 30, 2007 at 4:20 pm
It might not be all that slow.
Is that the sound of a mighty rushing wind.
Gotta Go, Geez no basements in Tucson!
5 Eric Blackwell (54 comments.) // Aug 31, 2007 at 12:40 pm
@Dave-Ding!Ding! Ding! Spot on, my friend
Greg;
1) I am a big fan of the bloodhound blog.
2) I appreciate the fact that you help REALTORS by sharing your experience.
3) For not being SEO focused, you do a VERY nice job of building your online reputation. and
4) I could not agree more with your post and think it needs top billing as well.
I just blogrolled your post over at my blog (which should help some). I am also going to do some posting on the subject over at REW in the near future.
Wisdom is applied knowledge. Let’s all apply some…grin.
Best;
Eric
I
6 James Boyer Chatham NJ (2 comments.) // Aug 31, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Wow, what a problem to have. I have not run into this sort of thing before but I almost think it might be a problem worth having. But then again…
7 Teresa Boardman (16 comments.) // Aug 31, 2007 at 8:22 pm
You think too much.
8 John L. Wake (5 comments.) // Aug 31, 2007 at 9:05 pm
I’m such a geek! I love these tricky things.
Perhaps it’s another one of your many experiments but in your blogroll you misspelled Phoenix as Pheonix in the Phoenix Real Estate Guy blog entry.
He ranks higher for “Pheonix real estate” in Google than “Phoenix real estate” no doubt in part because of your entry.
There’s not much competition to rank for “Pheonix real estate” but a common misspelling might generate some traffic.
In a previous life, I targeted Overture ads with misspellings around “Christmas gifts” and it was easily my most profitable ad, but alas, there were way too few clicks to have a significant impact. It was a nice supplemental source of clicks but not something you would what to spend much time on.
9 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Aug 31, 2007 at 9:19 pm
You are a geek, and I use misspellings all the time for rankings. Jay ranks very well without me giving him a proper link, but with the misspell, he should rank quite high for that as well.
Yes John you are a geek. and remember this is a lab. : )
10 John L. Wake (5 comments.) // Sep 1, 2007 at 12:44 am
Okay Dave, you’ll enjoy this then.
I was cleaning out some files yesterday and found some old notes.
When I started HomeSaleNews.com I used Google Adwords a lot… it was cheaper then.
In the notes, I compared ads that used the phrase “home sales” versus “homes sold.” The two ads with the two phrases had identical click-through rates BUT the clicks from the “homes sold” ads converted to subscriptions at 13.0% while those of “home sales” only converted at 8.7%.
That makes me smile. I am in awe at what a geek I was… er… back then.
11 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Sep 1, 2007 at 7:33 am
It is nice to know you are somewhat in recovery. Hang in there in a few years you might be well.
But I doubt it. The Geeekyness has a way of clinging on : )
12 Eric Blackwell (54 comments.) // Sep 1, 2007 at 9:10 am
@ Dave–Correction: Geekyness is terminal. But not fatal (grin). You never quite get rid of it, but it won’t kill you. In fact it can be a quite profitable illness if it is less than debilitating!
Hi, I am Eric and I have a terminal case of it as well–hehe
13 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Sep 1, 2007 at 9:15 am
I’ll vouch for that, you’ve had it for some time.
But you have learned to live with your disability.
Three cheers. Have a great weekend.
You see I know you guys are geeks, because only geeks are sitting at a computer writing comments on a holiday weekend : )
14 Malok (22 comments.) // Sep 1, 2007 at 3:51 pm
You guys are funny with your bantering back and forth.
How did you find that link back to the blog roll? Just went through your backlinks and checked each one? Or did you happen to be on the site, and saw your article listed. (Just curious)
Regardless, congrats for having the article posted on it. Anytime you can get a quality source to use some of your material, its a good thing.
(Happy Labor Day too by the way!)
15 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Sep 1, 2007 at 4:00 pm
You must read fast. The answer is in the post. Short version.
Found the link when I was on bloodhound blog and saw the lab in the blogroll. Mouse over and you see the link, It was to the post.
The article isn’t posted on it anymore. That was the first comment, the link is gone. Now the experiment is to see if it will stay in the active index and how long it will retain any PR. There are lots of these little experiments brewing all around the lab. : )
16 Richard (3 comments.) // Sep 1, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Seems like everyone is way ahead of me in regards to Google PR and SEO. I’ll keep reading and figuure it all out.
17 Malok (22 comments.) // Sep 1, 2007 at 7:14 pm
I do read fast - but it was unclear to me in your original post as to how you tracked it down using link:[site name], analytics - or if you just stumbled across it while wandering on their site. The way this was worded could indicate several different ways of finding it: “Then I found it. The one single blogroll link responsible for it all.” which is why I asked for clarification - so that if I had an anomaly like that ever occur for me, I could use your experience to provide guidance in my own efforts.
Anyway, bummer the post is gone on their site.
But, at least you will some interesting data to see how long of an effect it will have as it starts trickling down through the ranks. (I’d be interested to know if its progression downward is linear as it relates to the length of time that it was posted on their site.)
18 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Sep 1, 2007 at 7:57 pm
It’s not really a bummer, by Greg removing the link to the post I now have a link to the home page instead.
That is a much better link, yes the post will eventually loose PR, but the home page will gain everything that post was getting. It will be a tremendous boost to the home page PR
I read bloodhound all the time, but most of the post are near the top of the page and the blogroll is way down the page so I just never had scrolled down till one day I did, found the link to the Lab and clicked.
After that click it all made sense.
so it would fall under stumbled upon. I don’t use backlink checkers.
It will be interesting to see the effect on both that post and the home page in the future.
Have a great weekend : )
19 Ken Smith (4 comments.) // Sep 4, 2007 at 1:38 pm
No question you are better off with the link juice going to your homepage in this case. You will find all of your posts will end up with better rankings.
20 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Sep 4, 2007 at 1:42 pm
21 Ken Smith (4 comments.) // Sep 4, 2007 at 1:45 pm
There are times that getting links to any page is needed, but in general you need to have a reason for ranking that page. The post in question wasn’t really one that would bring in lots of traffic so you are much better of getting the boost at the homepage level.
22 Las Vegas Guy (4 comments.) // Sep 5, 2007 at 12:52 am
Ken is right. Better off to have the link going to your main page, you’ll get more benefit from it in the long run.
23 kermit johnson (1 comments.) // Sep 6, 2007 at 11:52 am
I would be happy to get that kind of back link to ANY page or post on my site.
24 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Sep 6, 2007 at 11:56 am
I agree with you just getting that kind of juice from any site to any page or post would is great.
Of course you are better off getting it to the main page, that’s the whole point of this post. But there are circumstances where you might not need the juice to your home page and you want it to a page or post to keep it forever in the active index. This is a good way to do it.
25 Sam Dodd (1 comments.) // Sep 8, 2007 at 9:58 am
Interesting read and I never thought one little blogroll link could have such an impact on a blog post. Thanks for the great information.
26 John L. Wake - Realtor (5 comments.) // Sep 8, 2007 at 11:03 am
It not just any link from any post.
It’s a front page link from Bloodhound Blog, the New York Times of Realtor blogs.
27 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Sep 8, 2007 at 11:06 am
I had to laugh also at the notion a link from the frontpage blogroll of BHB was “one little blogroll link”.
It mades me wonder if Sam hasn’t read to many media reports on the RE market. : )
28 Hawaii Real Estate (3 comments.) // Sep 15, 2007 at 3:18 pm
Incoming links are the most important aspect of ranking your site in SE’s. I don’t think you’d want to lose this link!
29 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Sep 17, 2007 at 6:35 am
It isn’t a matter of giving up a link, it is a question of where the link points. Especially when that link is from a site like BHB. In this case I didn’t loose the link. Greg just pointed it to the home page instead of that one single post.
30 Wayne Long (2 comments.) // Nov 11, 2007 at 2:49 pm
I’ll take one of the BHB blogroll links to anywhere they want to point it.
Obviously the home page is best and it is tough when a single post outranks your homepage.
31 Jay Skinner (1 comments.) // Feb 1, 2008 at 1:48 pm
It reallt makes the difference where the link is coming from, and the one in BHB has a PR5 rank!
32 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Feb 1, 2008 at 2:00 pm
It does, for the one page have a PR5 rank, but if the link is in the blogroll it is on every page of the site as well.
Would you rather have a link from a PR5 home page with limited PR on other posts/pages or would you rather have a link on a PR3 homepage with many PR3 pages/post on site?
And yes, any link from BHB is a good link : )
33 Chris Heath (5 comments.) // Feb 12, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Now it’s out in the open Google will probably change it they cant stand anyone sussing them out!
34 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Feb 12, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Actually this is perfectly within the guidelines for Google. Getting good back links to a quality posts is exactly what they want.
The issue would be if you setup a scam to get back links to a spammy post. Then there are other parts of the Google algorithm which will kick in and negate the effect.
What I’ve outlined here is just a way to help a quality post not be missed and draw the attention it deserves based on content and not just back links.
35 Milan Cole (3 comments.) // Feb 28, 2008 at 12:27 am
Now the question is, do you still think it was worth blogging about now that you lost the link?
36 Dave Smith (445 comments.) // Feb 28, 2008 at 7:14 am
Of course it is. And I didn’t loose the link. It was simply moved.
Moved to where I wanted it moved. But if that link hadn’t been pointed to that post instead of the homepage of the blog I wouldn’t of had the opportunity to see how a strong link back to a single post could help keep that post in the index.
Even if I had lost the link all together it wouldn’t have mattered. Links are nice, but quality content is better.
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