How NOT to Get a PR10

Ironically, the site pr10(dot)com ranks extremely highly for search terms like “how to get a pr10″. This would be unsurprising … if it weren’t for the fact that every piece of ‘web marketing’ advice on the site is very, very thickly veiled sarcasm. I would almost think the authors deliberately wanted to drop the Pagerank of every site other than their own by using these tactics! So, in retaliation (and courtesy of pr10(dot)com), here is how NOT to get a pr10. Optional subtitle – How to get dropped off the Google index.

Google - not as antiquated as they once were

1. Use hidden text on your site

The suggestion is to colour code your text so that the text is either the same as the background colour, or visually very close. The example given is to use 00FF33 and 00FF66, so that Google will index your keywords on the page but humans can’t see them.

2. Use full stops as links

Put full stops down the bottom of every web page, each one linking to Google, to Yahoo, and to your own site.

3. The ever-increasing non-magical Pagerank

Sorry, this tip is so ridiculous that I have to quote directly from pr10(dot)com:

“This tip is probably the most powerful one on here. Make at least three pages on your site and link them as follows:
Page 1 >>>>>> Page 2
Page 2 >>>>>> Page 3
And this is the kicker
Page 3 >>>>>> Page 1

Google will give points to page 2 from page 1, then to page 3 from page 2, and then – if you link it back to page 1 – it starts all over again. I can’t even count how many points this will end up giving you. Just don’t abuse it too much – or the big sites will complain you are taking too much PR from them.”

4. Use lots of meta keyword tags

Having your meta keyword section stuffed with your keywords may have helped several years ago (and to be fair, the pr10 site is copyright 2002), but nowadays the technique does little to nothing. You won’t get de-listed, but you will have wasted your time.

5. Link to a Google page that contains all the inbound links to your site

This supposed magic trick just doesn’t work! The in vitro data is not supported by in vivo testing. You are supposed to link to pages that link to your sites using “link:www.whatever.net”, thus listing all of the inbound links for that page and pushing up their Pagerank, and therefore your own.

If these tips didn’t seem so much in earnest, I would laugh at them … as they are published on the net, I certainly worry that they’ve irrevocably hurt many people’s SEO rankings.