After a ton of research, I had compiled a list of ways I was going to try to improve the PageRank of the unc.edu page I owned. My goal was to make it so that personal website was the first result when you searched "Joe Puccio".

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Done: 

Changed all back links to have “Joe Puccio” in title. 
	Facebook
	Google+
	YouTube

Submit links for reindexing: 
http://www.youtube.com/user/monstermac77/about
https://www.facebook.com/Joepuccio.pi/about
https://plus.google.com/+JoePuccioA/about

Put in a meta description with "Joe Puccio" in it. 

Change description of link on brand yourself

Link to Google+ on unc.edu/jpuccio, so that authorship shows up? 

Change link on Links page to read "Back to Joe Puccio" or something. 

Check to see if google puts the date next to any results for "Joe Puccio", this would indicate time sensitivity which means they would rank higher depending on recency of update. It's unlikely that they do. 

Add image of you and Tara at the top, centered. Alt text is an image’s version of anchor text. For the image, put "a picture of joe Puccio" or something.

Don't put "Joe Puccio" in h2, because it indicates weak relevance, as if the Joe Puccio is secondary content? 

63. Contact Us Page: The aforementioned Google Quality Document states that they prefer sites with an “appropriate amount of contact information”. Supposed bonus if your contact information matches your whois info.

Submit http://joepuccio.brandyourself.com/ ? 

Maybe resubmit https://plus.google.com/+JoePuccioA/about now that authorship has been added? 

Submit url and linked pages on jpuccio

To Do:


When does Google decide to show images of search at top?

Keep in mind: 24. Image Optimization: Images on-page send search engines important relevancy signals through their file name, alt text, title, description and caption. 

36. Number of Outbound Links: Too many dofollow OBLs may “leak” PageRank, which can hurt search visibility.

38. Number of Internal Links Pointing to Page: The number of internal links to a page indicates its importance relative to other pages on the site.

15. Keyword is Most Frequently Used Phrase in Document: Having a keyword appear more than any other likely acts as a relevancy signal.

Aim for 2500 words on home page. 

Have a high update frequency. This matters less if the results are time sensitive, which they probably aren't. 

58. Page Age: Although Google prefers fresh content, an older page that’s regularly updated may outperform a newer page.

Look into reading level:
41. Reading Level: There’s no doubt that Google estimates the reading level of webpages:
But what they do with that information is up for debate. Some say that a basic reading level will help your page rank because it will appeal to the masses. However, Linchpin SEO discovered that reading level was one factor that separated quality sites from content mills.

What does this mean?
48. Human Editors: Although never confirmed, Google has filed a patent for a system that allows human editors to influence the SERPs.

Good to know: 96. Contextual Links: Links embedded inside a page’s content are considered more powerful than links on an empty page or found elsewhere on the page. A good example of contextual links are backlinks from guestographics.