Today I discover an interesting phenomenon with Google ranking. One of my PR1 website actually ranked above my other PR4 website for the keywords: singapore seo. These websites are:

Let’s try to use the results above to examine how pagerank affects search engine ranking.
It is definitely a MYTH that you need high pagerank value for your web page in order to be ranked in the top 3 pages of the search engine result listing.
Check out this keyword “blog marketing“, there are over 250,000,000 results. And my friend Kian Ann’s 3 months old Blogopreneur.com – currently still a PR0 website – is ranked at 26th!

High PR will help, but there are more important factors that you should focused on – as illustrated by the above Google ranking.
Why You Do Not Need High Pagerank
In most cases, you will need a very high PR to compete for very competitive keywords.
However, if you believe that The Long Tail economic theory works in e-commerce then you should know why we are talking about optimizing your web pages for the less popular and less competitive keywords. We want to be able to get our web pages to the top of the organic search engine listing as quickly as possible without incurring the high cost of traditional media and PPC advertising.
On-Page Optimization
Take a look at ShiHengCheong.com.
And here’s DesignerSEO.com.

There is definitely more content in DesignerSEO.com than ShiHengCheong.com. In fact, you can find more occurrences of “Singapore” and “SEO” in DesignerSEO.com than ShiHengCheong.com.
In terms of on-page optimization, DesignerSEO.com has more text and content search optimization. It is much easier to work on this site as there is more content to help boost the frequency of the targeted keywords and more pages to optimize its internal linking structure.
However, we have to know if this page is optimized for the targeted keywords. Generally, DesignerSEO.com is targeting “singapore seo” however, the main niche keywords are: seo web design training workshop singapore.
And, the targeted keywords for ShiHengCheong.com: singapore seo specialist which is closer to the keywords “singapore seo”.
This is one reason why ShiHengCheong.com does better for the keywords singapore seo but nowhere to be found for the keywords “seo training in singapore” or “web design course in singapore“.
Proper on-page optimization will ensure that your web pages are search engine friendly and “crawlable”. However, in terms of actual getting in the top search engine ranking, off-page optimization rules!
The Seven Off-Page Things That You Must Do To Get Top Search Engine Ranking
1. Keyword targeted inbound text link is very important for you to rank well in Google.
2. A keyword rich text link from within the main content text is more “powerful” than links from the sidebar menu. You want a link from a page with content that is related to your website.
3. Use only the targeted keywords in the anchored text. Try not to dilute the focus by add other keywords. Stop words such as and, the, an, a, or are OK. You only need 4 or 5 quality inbound links to get ranked in the top 30 for a no-so-competitive keyword. You should be thinking along the Long Tail concept and optimize for profitable rare keywords than popular competitive keywords.
4. If possible, get link from sites that are frequently visited by Googlebot, SLURP and MSNbot, such as a high PR website (PR5 or higher) or popular blogs – these are criteria for good quality links. Examples of a popular blog is Blogopreneur.com which is visited by the important search engine spiders several times a day even though it is still at PR0.
5. Get good quality inbound links also to your internal pages. Make sure that the web page or blog post, where your link is placed, has been indexed by Google, Yahoo and MSN. It would be nice to have link from high PR but if you are new, even PR0 can do. The important point is to have your link placed strategically in that web page.
6. It is easy to get ranked in the top 30 if you get help from your friends. Look for strategic link partners among people that you know. Work in team.
7. If you already have a well-spidered website/blog, don’t be stingy. Link to others who have good content first, eventually you will get more links in return.
Since you are reading this, you are either well verse in the art of SEO or you are struggling to get visible on the search engine. If you are the former, please drop me a comment. If you are the later, you can come attend my SEO Web Design Workshop in January 2007.