Home > SEO Articles

Working With Google PageRank
By Syed K. Rizvi

What Is Google PageRank?
As discussed in the article 'How Google Changed The Rules Of The Game', based on its proprietary PageRank methodology, Google revolutionized the way search engines ranked websites. But what exactly is this PageRank technology?

Well, the precise formula for calculating PageRank is still a secret weapon in Google's arsenal. But many have attempted to depict an illustration of their understanding of this concept. Of these, the two I would like to mention here are:

Mike Grehan In His Search Engine Marketing Book:
"It's not what you say about yourself - it's what other people say about you! So, what does that mean? And how does it apply to search engine optimisation? Well the answer is this: search engines pay more attention to the links which point back to you from other sites than what you write on your own web pages. And it's not just the number of links: it's the quality of those links and what text they contain."

The Economist Case Study:
"Google's PageRank algorithm is a mathematical recipe that uses the structure of the links between web pages to assign a score to each page that reflects its importance. In effect, each link from one page to another is counted as a "vote" for the destination page, and each page's score depends on the scores of the pages that link to it. But those pages' scores, in turn, depend on the scores of the pages that link to them, and so on. As a result, calculating the scores is a complicated business."

In layman's language, PageRank is a measure of how popular a web page is among other hyperlinked pages on the internet, calculated based on the number of links pointing to the web page in consideration and the quality of these pages linking to it. Some important points to be taken care of are:

• PageRank is web page specific and not domain based, meaning different pages of the same website have different PageRank.
  
  
• Hypothetically, between two web pages on the same topic and equivalent in on-the-page relevancy factors, the page with higher PR should have priority over the other in search engine's results pages.
  
  
• PageRank itself doesn't boost website rankings, it only adds to the weight of off-the-page relevancy factors.
  
  
• High PR ensures frequent and deeper crawling of Google's spider.

Why So Much Of Importance To PR?
The theory asserts that only websites with valuable content will be linked to by other websites and thus it will be easier to locate superior content for online searchers' queries.

Increasing Your Website's PR:
Some tips are:

• Links from high PR web pages add more to your PR figure than links from other unpopular pages.
  
  
• The higher the number of total external links on a web page, the lower is the increment it causes in the PR of each linked page.
  
  
• Attract quality links through:
  - Submitting to major web directories
  - Getting listed with topical websites
  - Track where your competitors are listed and submit
  - Write articles and submit to decent networks
  
  
• Do NOT, by any means, participate in a reciprocal links program.