yes by all means link from your main pages to your articles, and about your page ranks, you can either get a google address bar, or download this handy free program
http://www.cleverstat.com/en/page-rank-software.htm and just put your page urls in it and click check or search or whatever it says to do.

I just realised thats the only free program that I haven't written about, anyway for the record your main home page has a PR of 3.

regards Lynnny
www.seobycanz.com

Hi Frances

Im interested in writing articles related to my business. Could you suggest any places where I can publish them?

I'm new to all this search engine optimistaion so any tips are gratefully received.

Im in process of setting up a blog which Im going to link to my site and am getting a sign up form added where people can join my mailing list etc.

Cheers

Tracey

> 2) I have created a lot of "information/ article" type pages. I dont want > these to be accessible to the shoppers browsing my website, but I do > >want them to be picked up by google. So i have worked on the content, >copy, meta tags, titles etc etc.
>But I am wondering: if i create a hyperlink to these information pages on >my popular pages, in white text so that it is invisible on my page - will >this be picked up by the google bots?
>I just dont really want my visitors to see the pages - but they are >welcome to enter my site via this page if it comes up via the search >engine.

Hi,

yes it will be picked up. Among many dozens of metrics, Google does employ really people reviewing information and what you describe is a "black hat" trick ie. deceitful. Google's business is to put exactly that site on top of the list that the visitor searches for and it is obviously in their interest to serve the people that search and not the people that list (of course you are a searcher at times as well)

What you asking here for is having your caking and eat it and I don't think it will work in the long term. This is also because people that do have your shopping cart open will of course be able to open another tab, enter search keywords and then might well find your other pages.

P.S. In regards to PageRank, there are a variety of Plugins that you can install into Firefox that collect and display Pagerank for a search result or a page. Top of my mind can't remember one, but a search here should be finding you one:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=pagerank&cat=all&lver...

Kind Regards,

Jochen Daum

Chief Automation Officer
Automatem Ltd

Phone: 09 630 3425
Mobile: 021 567 853
Email: jd@automatem.co.nz
Skype: jochendaum
Website: www.automatem.co.nz
http://twitter.com/automatem
http://nz.linkedin.com/in/automatem
http://www.xing.com/go/invite/3425509.181107
http://www.aucklandbusinessnetworking.co.nz

As has already been mentioned, trying to trick search engines is NOT a good idea. When (not if) you get found out, your site will take a dive in search rankings which is the opposite of what you're trying to achieve.
Far better to have a natural integration between your content pages and your product pages.
You can take a leaf out of Google's own book on this one. They display paid advertisements along side their natural search results. There's no reason why you can't do the same sort of thing with your information pages.
Newspapers have an entire business model based on using content to sell advertising. With the web it's pretty much the same thing except you take out all the middle men. You provide the content, the advertising, and the end product. Don't try to hide the content though. Think about how many people would read newspapers if they only contained advertising.

Hi Frances, using white writing on a white background is considered a black hat technique and will get your site demoted in the ranking.

Re your page ranking - the ranking Google publish via the various tools is only indicative, it is not the ranking they use in their algorithm. Concentrate on providing a clean innovative site.

Good luck.

Hi Frances
PageRank is one of the tools on Google Toolbar.
You can download it here:
http://toolbar.google.com
It takes less than one minute to download and install altogether
Cheers
Jenny
http://LawyerChoice.co.nz