Page Rank stuck on 4 for months, how to I get to 5?

[birdfood]

My ecommerce website has been stuck on page rank 4 for around half a year and lots of work to increase this to 5 or higher have not budged it at all.

I'm getting very frustrated and would really appreciate tips or advice on how to shift this stubborn pig headed site to 5 or higher.

This is a recap of what I've done so far link wise (over 1900 links based on backlink watch)
-at least 4 squidoo lens
-over 400 article submissions, around 100-200 of those are from PR5-6 sites
-hundreds of blog postings (follow)
-hundreds of directly listings
-dozens of forum postings (mostly follow)
-reasonable about of social book marking
-plenty of review site listings
-and many other things that I can't recall right now

Any feedback would really be appreciated

[Michael D]

Get a few high pr links from a related site. Try and make sure the link is a contextual link on a high pr page on the blog. These are the most powerful links but are also the hardest to obtain, unfortunately.

How are your rankings for your targeted keywords? If these are good I wouldn't worry too much about your PR.

[birdfood]

Thanks for the reply Michael. When you say contextual link, do you mean it uses anchor text?

My site targets around 7-8 key word combinations based on one core key word (that is VERY competitive) and ranks for 2-3 in page one, 1-2 in page two and several on page 10 or worse.

[Angela V. Edwards]

Directory submissions aren't working the way they used to. Google has removed all mention of sumbitting to directories from their Webmaster Tips, including submitting to Yahoo's Paid Directory. Those may not be helping you.

[Kay King]

Keep doing what you are doing. Getting PR1 to 2 or 3 isn't that difficult - but each step you go up requires much more effort to reach.

If you have a PR4 site, don't worry about it. The important thing is WHERE your site appears in google when you search for it. Focus on getting the site to the top in searches and don't worry about the PR.

kay

[Michael D]

Yeah, a contextual link is just an anchor for the keyword you are working. These are the hardest to get because they come from a page working a similar or the same keyword, but they are very powerful. Since they are so tough to get some people go as far to buy them. I am not saying this is what you should do because you can be penalized for this.

The links you are getting now don't have a lot of juice to pass to your page. They are still good links but not the best you can get. The best you can do is keep at it. These kinds of things take a long time. It looks like you have a pretty good start already. The reason I asked about rankings is because PR is necessarily what you need to shoot for. Yes, higher PR pages do tend to rank better but I see lower PR pages with better links outrank them all the time.

[grandstar]

Have you tried making comments in high ranking blogs?

[logosi]

Don't forget making and submitting RSS feeds to feedage (and other) aggregators.

[Kurt]

Going from PR 3 to PR 4 is 10x harder than PR2 to PR3...And going from PR4 to PR5 is 10x harder than PR3 to PR4.

And it will be 10x harder to get PR6 from PR5.

Basically, you will have to put in 100x the effort to go from PR3 to PR5, than you will to go from PR1 to PR3.

People think that each step in PR is equally as hard, but it's not. Each step gets progressively harder and harder.

Also, a "contextual" link is one that is included in the content itself, and not found top/bottom, left/right of a page.

For example, this link (just an example) is contextual because the actual link is in the content of the page.

[kkchoon]

Just put up a blog, build a strong community with other bloggers, they should be able to help you push your ranking if you have good content on your blog...

[Bishop81]

It could just be related to the age of the site too. How old is it?

[USEO]

Originally Posted by Michael D

Get a few high pr links from a related site. Try and make sure the link is a contextual link on a high pr page on the blog. These are the most powerful links but are also the hardest to obtain, unfortunately.

How are your rankings for your targeted keywords? If these are good I wouldn't worry too much about your PR.

I just skimmed through this post and MD's reply is the most logical to me.

I agree even more so with his last comment - you are worrying about PR unduely. You could spend hours and hours trying to increase PR when actually you want to increase PROFIT.

Worrying about PR is NOT the sollution.

Concentrate on the on-page SEO firstly, then the off-page SEO:

Higher inward PR (eg 6 or 7) links will blast you up the SERPS for a whole bunch of keywords contained in your content IF the on-page SEO is good too.

"contextual link" - THIS equalls mega power and is often overlooked - there are differing definitions of "contextual text links"...

Mine is this:

A contextual text link is a text link from one page (or site) to another page that includes the objective keyword and is relevant to the DESTINATION page. This text link "sits" in the middle of content that is relevant to the objective keyword.

EG.

If you want to improve the SEO of a page for "xbox 360 console" (I'm assuming the page has good on page SEO and is about "xbox 360 consoles") you could link to the page from ANY site and make the text link CONTEXTUAL... this form of linking WILL ALWAYS offer a SERP benefit.

So, if you had a site about Wii Consoles you would write something like this (preferably on the Wii site home page, though sub pages will also add benefit) ..

"Not sure if the Wii console is for you? Why not consider the xbox 360 console. In the gaming world people have differing oppinions on which console is the best in terms of fun and enjoyment. The xbox 360 is available in 3 types: Arcade, Premium and Elite. Read more here:

(The more text about the Xbox you include here, the better - logically)

I have built a succesful income around focussing on on-page SEO and contextual linking in this way.

I never even look at PR (ever!)...

Aaron

[birdfood]

Thanks for all the good replies. I've read them twice, the second time taking notes.

Never realised that PR was a log scale where to go up 1 rank required an increase in work by a factor of 10. Will need to change my thinking and attitude a little towards PR

Learning what contextual links are and how to do them is also very useful.

Originally Posted by grandstar

Have you tried making comments in high ranking blogs?

I went through the top 100 blogs on technorati to find the ones that had follow tags, allowed comments with anchor text and did not remove my comments (constructive and in the context of that posting). Took a long time and I ended up with a list of around 10 that has slowly dropped to 6. The blogs on the list are towards the bottom of the top 100 and from memory, ranked between 3 and 6.

Originally Posted by Bishop81

It could just be related to the age of the site too. How old is it?

The site is almost 2 years old