Google Page Rank of my site has dropped from 4/10 to 3/10

[SangeetaC]

Google Page rank of my website has been dropped after Panda Update. Can anyone help me out to tell me the possible reasons about the same. We have tried to make our website more lively and user friendly. We have indulged some graphics to make it more attractive. But it seems it backfired us. my site is http://www.myrealdata.com as well as Google page ranking of my Quickbooks hosting page has been dropped as well. It would be great if someone can help me out with expert suggestions.

[SteveOllington]

I wouldn't worry about the PR. It won't be due to content changes anyway, since PR is based on incoming links only and has nothing to do with what you have on-page. We've gone from PR 4 to PR 5 with the update but I don't care as I practically ignore PR now anyway... can't wait for them to hopefully get rid of it. It's one tiny metric which isn't a true reflection of what they have anyway. So much more that matters.

At the moment you have a direct link from the homepage to the quickbooks hosting page with anchor text in the footer. Above that, you have some body content about quickbooks hosting (still on the homepage), put a link in there to the quickbooks hosting page. Body content links are better than footer links by far.

Also it seems that you've had the following URL's for that page:

/quickbooks-hosting.html
/host-quickbooks.html
/hosted-quickbooks.html

Were/are these all the same page just with URL changes? Have you put 301's in for them so that both older URL's point to the new one?

[PanuKuuluvainen]

If your rankings haven't dropped don't worry. PR has been a useless statistic for a long time. And like Steve said, Panda update has nothing to do with PR since PR is based on links, Panda deals with content.

[Dan-Petrovic]

Your Google PageRank went down immediately after some of your linking websites lost their PageRank or cut their links to you. Toolbar PageRank updates rarely so you couldn't see it until now. Timing with Panda is accidental and not related to your PageRank change. Nothing to worry about and keep up with great content and good design. New thing to keep an eye on is user experience, however links are still very strong as a factor so you should try to earn great links as well.

[RyanKent]

I agree with Steve but wanted to add a bit.

You don't see your true PR. Google updates PR internally on a frequent (?daily) basis, but we do not see it. They update the toolbar that we see 3 or 4 times each year.

The PR number you see is truncated. Your prior PR may have been 40 and showed as 4. Your PR may now be 39 and show as 3. So a 1 point drop may be extremely minor.

Some details from Matt Cutts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3Jup5R1MGY

@Panu, I believe you might be missing the relevancy of the Panda affected sites' links and their impact on PR. Most of the sites negatively affected by Panda have links to other sites. The value of those links are now devalued, so the PR of the pages receiving those links would also be impacted.

[SangeetaC]

Thanks all for the response, specially Steve for analyzing my web page as well. It seems like I have SEO experts to help me out. I would request though if some one can let me know how can I improve the user experience on my site while analyzing my site. It would be a great help. I have mentioned about my site in my question itself.

[SteveOllington]

I would recommend you visit conceptfeedback.com

There's a free and paid service. Paid is relatively inexpensive for what you get, but if you give some reviews yourself then you can get reviews in return from others, some of which are design and UX experts who provide comprehensive stuff. Well worth it I think

[Hyrule]

My PR also went from 4 to 3, but one of my blogs went from 2 to 3. I haven't seen a difference in traffic or rankings yet. Steves advice is solid and my best recommendation is to just keep looking and getting high quality links and writing high quality content. The new webinar has some great incites on this.

Your website, by the way, looks great.

[SangeetaC]

Thanks alot for the help and great suggestions. What should I do to improve my domain and page authority.

[SteveOllington]

Getting great links is the way to go, but that can be easier said than done. Primarily you want to attract natural links through the promoting content, but you can build links too. Have a look at these tools: http://www.seomoz.org/labs/link-finder/index.php and http://www.seomoz.org/link-finder