Whether you like it or not, the online market is abuzz with Google giving a Heads-Up for an upcoming PageRank Update! That’s good news for SEOs and Webmasters.

The news is Google’s Matt Cutts announcing through his blog:

“I’m expecting that also in the next few days that we’ll be expiring some older penalties on websites”.

Matt Cutts leads in making waves with its latest announcements every now and then. Through this initiative, he proudly makes it known to the Webmasters about this latest development becoming visible in the next few days. It leaves everyone making wild guesses about the details of this latest development, with different stories being spun by all and sundry, especially those from the competitive side. However, some believe that Google has simply followed in the footsteps of Yahoo.

Speculations apart, let’s divulge a little deep into the details, (just for the sake of some newbies on the scene) as to what actually is meant by PageRank. PageRank is a system which counts various link votes of a website and also helps to find which pages are more important.

Thus, simply put, it states how a particular website ranks in terms of search engine rankings. PageRank are opinions of the importance of particular websites and does have a significant role in many web search tools. PageRank are opinions, opinions of the significance of particular Web sites as they correspond to a search query.

A page that is linked to by many pages, themselves enjoying high PageRank, gets a higher ranking in the scale. Google has its own unique way of assigning numeric value from 0-10 depending upon the website’s popularity, which in itself is based on number of inbound links together with the PageRank of the pages providing the links.

Let’s start with how PageRank is used by Google for searchers. It is one of many factors used for ranking pages. Focus on your content. If your website has good content which is regularly updated, you are likely to gain a high PageRank, with regular revisits and also a name (recognition) for your website.

Google proudly and periodically announces PageRank updates, whenever there is a strong need felt for it, be it every 2, 3, or 4 months and reiterates that Toolbar PageRank values are historical and not by any means real-time values.

So, one needs to gear up by keeping up with a website which has fresh content, is technically sound, and is bent on building a rich stock of links to put you a step ahead of your competitors. If you aim for a sufficiently higher PR for your website (we all do that, don’t we!), you need to have a flair for writing inviting (and different as well as interesting, so to say) headlines. A good heading does half of the business for your website.

You must have also meaningful permalinks that convey a true message about relevant details of your post to a prospective visitor (on your website, of course!). How can we dare to ignore the role of having a proper link building campaign for our web business? It’s an important strategy for the successful online marketing of your website with the dual advantage of giving your competitors a tough time.

Take time to ensure that links do exist on different sites with which you are doing business. Put in simple words, you should look for building links with sites that already have a ‘know, faith and liking’ with your business. These include websites of your customers, suppliers, your business friends, different trade associations and The Chamber of Commerce. Having done this, you are more likely to follow towards getting your website listed in at least some, if not all, of the prominent directories including Yahoo, DMOZ, GoGuides and Business including those which are free of charge.

Since there are many different ways to build links, you are likely to find a best answer from different alternatives by doing a little research to make your web presence felt (or read, phew!). Remember! It’s the quality of links, (and not the quantity of links) which matters.

This brings us to towards the last but not the least step for booking a high PR, be at any search engine including your favourite Google. Try to include as many posts under your topic as possible. Don’t worry; it’s not that calculative or brain cracking, as it seems to be. The golden rule is to keep your eyes and ears open (to possible changes and available alternatives) and just remain observant rather than overreacting in a fit of panic.

To go strictly by the guidelines of Matt Cutts, PageRank is not simply just a numerical figure in the scale of 1-10. It is much more than that. It is a floating-point number that is arrived at by considering various degrees of resolution than those indicated in the Google Toolbar. That does not by any means imply that we become obsessed with the PageRank of our websites in any way.

No wonder, for a blog in its infancy, a higher PageRank can and does spell more monetary gains. However, what really matters is the number of visitors that flock our website which are instrumental in keeping our cash registers ringing (oh, that gives us a sense of wow, and it really should). Give all the web page elements, the required importance and see your website sailing through!

Google’s update to their Keyword Tool will SIGNIFICANTLY improve your keyword research ability. Review how in just four minutes with the screen shots, commentary and test results below:

Google has always stated they would never follow Yahoo!’s footsteps and release actual numbers from their keyword data, as Yahoo! took so much heat for their numbers being off. Well, they have obviously had a change of heart. Here is a summary of what they have added and what the numbers mean.

Step One: Go to Google’s External Keyword Tool.

Step Two: Enter your keyword phrase or a website URL.

In the above example, the radio button defaults to "Descriptive words or phrases", I enter my keyword, and while I can enter multiples, I am going to leave it on a generic term "mortgages" to see how Google’s synonyms feature works as it is also checked by default.

If you choose the URL route, you will need to click the radio button "Website content" and the screen will change to allow for a URL to be spidered. I did not check to also spider pages linked from this URL. I want to see how Google sees this page’s "theme" which is very important in my SEO efforts.

Why?

If Google comes back with unrelated terms as my theme, I know I screwed up my Title Tag, Headline, Content, etc. and I need to fix it ASAP. Because if Google can’t properly read my theme, I’m probably not going to rank well for the terms I’m targeting.

Step Three: Click "Get keyword ideas".

Step Four: Analyze Results.

Keywords: Are sorted by relevance based on Google’s algorithm.
Advertiser Competition: This is based on AdWords. The fuller the bar, the more competition. As you see from the image above, the bars are completely full indicating heavy competition. Heavy competition in the AdWords space almost always translates into heavy competition in the SEO space for that keyword phrase. However, competition is good, as where there is competition, there is money being made.
Approx. Search Volume: June: Based on data collected from June (last month), this is the total number of search volume for the month.
Approx. Avg. Search Volume: Based on historical data of the last 12 months, this is the average per month search volume.

As you can see from the data above, the volume is pretty heavy for the top mortgage keyword phrases. Later in this article I will be comparing real data with Google’s data to show how accurate it is.

How did the web page option result turn out?

As you can see from the data Google spit out, the page is very well themed and "search engine optimization" and "search engine marketing" are the two biggest themes. Perfect. Google then breaks down each and gives additional keyword suggestions for each grouping. This is very powerful and very much worth your time to learn. This just made keyword research for your individual pages so much easier. What about the MSN Excel Tool which I thought was so cool? It’s just been replaced in my book with Google’s tool.

Why?

Accuracy. You don’t have hundreds or thousands of non-related keywords for a URL in Google’s tool as you do in Microsoft’s. It is clear Google wins yet again by giving relevant, meaningful data instead of a big glob of stuff for you to wade through.

Data Accuracy
So, how accurate is this data? Let’s see. I constrained a keyword report to only include "meta" keywords, as they are "niche" keywords in my view and best to use to test data accuracy.

The above numbers are constrained to only show the click-through traffic from Google for the entire month of June. This is an actual screen shot from Google Analytics. Now, let’s compare these numbers with the keyword tool.

Google only had data for three of the five keywords entered. As you can see, I did an "exact match" so the search volumes would be accurate. As you see from the results, we are getting "Insufficient Data" for June and it seems through the queries I have put through that the "magic number" is 600. Meaning that unless your click through traffic is at least 600 on your end, there won’t be any data from the previous month. Even though Google is showing an "average" of 1,600 search queries a month for the term "meta content" and there are no advertisers, even though Google says there are (Advertiser Competition bar half full), I had a mere 318 clicks despite holding the #1 position. Taking 46% of the search volume, which is what I should expect for the #1 result, I should have had 736 clicks, more than 400 than I received.

"But wait," you say, "the data for June was insufficient. You are basing your numbers on data which doesn’t exist."

Fine.

Taking twelve months of data (July 1, 2007 – June 30, 2008), I received 3,612 click throughs, or and average of 301, which is LOWER than the current month’s data. I could go on for days with similar results.

Looking at data on my affiliate sites, the trend is similar. Google’s search volume numbers are at least 2x of what they should be, which is similar to what Overture did. Be mindful of this as you make your determination based on "search volume" as the numbers are inflated. In one instance, I own the top seven results for a keyword phrase (different domains, of course) and my traffic volume is just over half of Google’s search volume number. It should be A LOT higher than that. More proof that the numbers are off.

Remember to test the keyword first through PPC to make sure the keyword phrase converts before doing SEO. No use doing SEO on a phrase that doesn’t convert – no matter how much search volume it gets.

I will have more examples this month as I continue my testing with this tool.