If your blog or site Page Rank (PR) was slapped by Google, then welcome to the club (actually I am an ex-club member). Yes, this blog PR was reduced from PR 3 to PR 3 a few months ago by Google as I was posting reviewed articles (with links). Who doesn't involved in paid reviews these days ? Google dislike paid reviews and reduced blog or site PR of those with paid reviews especially if it involved PayPerPost.com

Much have been posted by other bloggers on how to recover your PR status. I just post this article to satisfy questions from my own readers and followers. And the information which I am above to reveal works for me.

Have you gain back your Google Page Rank (PR) ?

I gain back my Google PR with these two influential measures:

1. Implement "NoFollow" for paid or sponsored articles and links

Did you know that Google allow for sponsored articles ? They have relaxed their rules with a condition that the link to your sponsors (the advertisers) must incorporate a "nofollow" option.

To include "nofollow", edit your HTML link tag from and input rel="nofollow" as shown below:


2. Write back to Google for reconsideration

After I changed my sponsored links to a "nofollow" links, I wrote a short note to Google to reconsider my Page Rank reinstatement. I highlight to Google the following:
* That I have change my sponsored links to "nofollow".
* That I earn peanuts from my sponsored posts compare to big shot like JohnChow.com who earned thousands of dollars from his paid reviews.
* That as a punishment from Google my blog PR was reduced from 3 to 0 while big shot like JohnChow.com PR was only reduced from 6 to 4. A cynically note to Google that they are being double-standard in their bashing of PR on blogs or sites that violates their rules on PR ranking.

After my reconsideration request to Google, my PR was reinstated to PR3 in a couple of days.

Lessons learned:
1. Don't bother to write comments with link on big blogs. They enforced a "nofollow" link to protect their PR. Writing comments with link may only bring traffic to your blog and it has no impact on improvement to your blog PR ranking. Use this online backlink checker (tool) to see if backlinks from external site use "nofollow" tag or otherwise.

2. Don't bother writing a review to big blogs. They will published your link with "nofollow" instruction. Again, your published link may bring traffic not PR improvement.

3. There was no drastic drop of traffic to this blog when its PR was slashed to 0. But their also no drastic increase of traffic when this blog PR was reinstated. This conclude that contents is still king. Content drive search engine to bring traffic to your blog.

4. Getting paid reviews is now even more difficult because sponsors still insist the link include "dofollow" option. This is when you need to decide whether to regain your PR status or to earn more from paid reviews. As for me, I only accepted the review if the sponsor agreed with a "nofollow" link. Thus, kind hearted readers can contribute by tipping me to compensate my reduced earning from sponsored reviews.

Some facts and figures as of Jan 25, 2008 (see also my previous site facts and figures):
* Technorati: Authority - 96, Rank - 70,031
* Alexa: Traffic Ranking - 190,027
* Link Popularity: Total - 1,883 (Google - 126, Yahoo - 1,757)
* EzRichProject PR: 3
* EzRichProject is 9 months old.
* EzRichProject currently has 237 posts.
* Zero (0) money was spent on achieving PR 3

Resources
* Install FireFox PageRank Status Extension
* How I got Free Page Rank

EzRichProject Updates: Feb 12, 2008:
* How to decide when to regain blog page rank

EzRichProject Updates: Jul 17, 2008:
* Google reinstates my blog Page Rank

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Image Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/blueone/446296770/

Technorati Tags: Page Rank