It’s taken me a while, but I finally found it. Found what? The perfectly optimized website according to Google page rank… for a while at least!
Ever since I’d learned about Google’s page ranking system, which I really don’t trust (and don’t think they now care about anymore), I wanted to find those pages that were at the very top, to see just what it is that they’d done. Sure, by now we’ve heard that Google says trying to attain high page rank is meaningless. Still, it was one of those challenges I put myself on because, well, it’s just what I had to do.
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That search began in earnest, as I first went looking at the top ten sites, based on Alexa’s ranking. Google’s site has a perfect 10, but we can’t count that. Or can we, since none of the other search engines have a page rank of 10? Nope, had to exclude them, if only for bias. I then went through the next 10; nothing.
At that point, I just started searching big name sites at random, hoping I would just happen upon one. But it wasn’t happening, and I was getting depressed. Then I finally decided that there just wasn’t any way to obtain a perfect score, and I would have to be satisfied with those sites I found that had 9’s; that’s very good also.
Lo and behold, I finally found a site that has the perfect 10 rating by Google. I was researching something regarding standards for proper CSS had HTML, and that search lead me to this site: http://www.w3c.org/, or W3C: The World Wide Web Consortium.
My mind was swimming; the perfect website! Not only that, but it had an Alexa rank of 230 at the time; even better. In a weird way, it showed just how diverse ranking properties can be; Alexa says it shows the web prominence of a website, and though 230 isn’t bad, it seems to shake things up, even if only in a minor fashion, because how can such a page be considered as perfect by one company and only #230 in another?
Frankly, I don’t care. I don’t care because I found perfection. And what perfection; why should I have expected anything less than what this pages shows me.
And just what does it show me? Well, first it has lots of content; these people were made to create content, which is easy for them to do because they have so many contributors.
I looked at the source codes; how wonderful they are. When you look at the main page, start in the middle first. This shows how content doesn’t have to be rambling, or even one coherent thought. These people don’t just have a list of content; they have one paragraph explaining what they’re going to give you, with links galore, internal links, which I’ve talked about before. You almost never leave this site.
Along the top and the sides are even more links. Each one takes you to very organized pages, and every single one of those pages have lots and lots of links, all going somewhere else within the site. On the left side of this page all the links are in alphabetical order; on the right, they’re grouped by category designations.
One very special page is their table of contents, which is here: http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/. Every single line in the actual table of contents, which looks like a large outline, is a link. Each link takes you to a page, which leads you to many other links and pages, and it goes on and on. Frankly, I don’t know that one person could read this entire site in a week or a month without having to start again from the beginning, there’s so much here.
This is the icon, the standard upon which we are all based. And frankly, I have to admit that I was elated and sad at the same time. Elated because I finally found perfection (though it’s gone now); sad because, unfortunately, I’m never going to attain perfection, page rank or otherwise.
As a sole proprietor, I’ll never be able to match this kind of content, and I write all the time. Even if I add staff, which I hope to someday, I can’t see where we would ever be able to spend the kind of time it takes to put together something like this. Others may not see it the same way I do, but this is a beautifully put together site; I almost want to cry. lol
I can only hope that one day, when I’m old and gray (technically, being black my hair is white), I’ll remember what it was like the day I saw perfection, and knew it would never be me or my sites; how do you feel?
I have seen perfection once in my life thanks to you and this post. I feel exactly like you and I am already quite grey in the little hair that I still have left on my head.
LOL! Rummuser you kill me! Actually, I’m sure you saw Nadia Comaneci, which means you’ve seen perfection at least twice in our life. 🙂
A perfectly optimized website involve about 70 points related to on-page optimization and about 5-6 related to off-page optimization. I personally have never seen maximum on all of the points, as it start with domain name and age and going through the contend and ending up with speed optimization. The other thing is that practically no more than 1-2 search temrs can be targeted in a single page. Official guidelines definitely need to be followed, but there is about 10 times more things that should be done. Though you’ve mentioned Alexa. Alexa doesn’t have to do anything with rankings and optimization. It is 100% innacurate metric. I have worked on several projects where a website is getting between 2k to 4k uniques a day and Alexa rank is about 700k. And have seen blogs with 100 unique visits a day in Alexa 100k.
Carl, I mentioned Alexa because it’s a metric that lives out there, no matter what people say or how accurate it might be. As for perfection, I did see this site when it had a 10; no idea why they lost it but I’m doubting they sit around trying to figure out why they lost that point.
I use W3C quite often when I run into design/coding issues, and I have never once noticed their pagerank. Think I’ll have to look at them with the Pagerank tool bar when I get home because I have never, ever seen it display a 10. I think you are correct in your assessment about no one caring about Pagerank anymore; hasn’t been an update since December, I believe.
Derron, I’ve never really cared about page rank, which worked well for me when I lost it on this blog for a short period of time. Still, it’s pretty amazing seeing a site ranked as high as even a 9 right now that’s not a news site like CNN.
Wow. Very interesting. I think there are many other sites that come close to this one no? Perhaps YouTube? Anyway it is interesting in that you brought up interlinking. Is that the term? Where pages link to other pages within the site? I know you do that Mitch, referring back to older posts. I am currently going back to older posts and linking to subsequent posts. 😉
Troy, Google owns YouTube so they don’t show a page rank for them. I don’t know if your word exists, but I’ve always advocated internal linking and it actually does work pretty well. When I was doing more SEO work I remember a site that was in an industry where there was almost no one else doing what they did & they had a PR of 6, all internal linking. You’re right, I do it more to give related posts some love, while knowing it works for SEO also.
Sorry Mitch, but it’s dropped to an 9. Just goes to show that perfection doesn’t last all that long.
Me, I’m not worried about perfection. If I was I’d be working out a lot more 😉
Actually Peter, I said in the article that it was back to a 9, so I already knew that lol
You mean to tell me Peter that you are not doing the TCB LP2 (AKA The Elvis) workout plan I created? Ugh! I am shocked. It is such an amazing workout routine. So simple and brings excellent results. The workout plan is taking the south end of the Las Vegas Strip by storm!
Right. Google owns YouTube which is why a lot of the so called ‘gurus’ are saying to create good quality YouTube videos as you do. That plus your interlinking and you are bound for mega-super stardom Mitch! Me? I will just ride on your coattails if ok by you. 😛
Heck Troy, I was hoping to come live off you in my old age lol
I have some plans to work on that residual monies… so…
I was watching a show yesterday on the telly called Extreme Homes or some such and they showed a house in Japan that was something like 30,000 Sq Ft and housed three generations of folks. So there is always that.
Anyways, who was it? Seth Godin perhaps? Maybe Chris Guthrie? who said, “Pour your time into your side gig that can eventually allow you to leave your job.” Yeah, starting to work on that Mitch so…
Heck, it’s possible I said something like that somewhere along the way; I certainly believe it to be true. I wish you the best of luck at it.
I did miss that, but then I’m not surprised, after all, I’m not perfect 😀
Troy, I’m not doing any form of workout at the moment.
Well, for me Understanding Google’s ranking system is not an easy task, They change their algorithm very frequently. I always wonder some posts are ranking on topic without having nay PR, DA, PA and backlinks whereas on the other hand blog having all of these ranking signals are still not ranking well. SO, it is hard to understand.
Atinder, that’s why it’s best not to even try, but to write whatever you want to write instead.