Google PageRank Explained
Google PageRank or PR as its otherwise known is a term that’s frequently used when talking about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) but what does it actually mean and how important is it when using SEO to market your site?
PageRank according to Google :
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”
Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.
Wikipedia says:
PageRank is a patented method to assign a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is also called the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E).
PageRank was developed at Stanford University by Larry Page (hence the name Page-Rank [Vise and Malseed, 2005]) and Sergey Brin as part of a research project about a new kind of search engine. The project started in 1995 and led to a functional prototype, named Google, in 1998. Shortly after, Page and Brin founded Google Inc., the company behind the Google search engine.
So to summarise its your pages popularity on the web based on the number of quality inward links your page has.
I wanted some more information on how important page rank was so I did some futher research. Below is a summary of the most important points I found.
Internal Links
Most webmasters think that its only External Inbound links that have any effect on PageRank. This is not however the whole truth. Internal links within your sites structure are also equally important !
I discovered that your PageRank has a maximum value that is calculated from both your External Links and your Internal Links. This means that you can increase you maximum page rank by adding more pages to your site! This sounds great doesn’t it ? However be warned. New pages must contain fresh relevant content not simply content copied from elsewhere on the site. This could set alarm bells ringing at Google as this practice known as "Cookie Cutting" (not sure why) is classed as Spam. If you a detected as using any spamming techniques you risk your pages and possibly your entire site being removed from the Google index..
Outbound Links
Outbound links are links from your site to other places on the Internet. Whilst this can be a bad idea from a visitor conversion point of view as they are essentially an exit from your site they can also leak PageRank. It is therefore essential that when linking to other sites you ensure the link is reciprocated.
This begs the questions - "Which page should I place my External Links?". If they cause your PageRank to literally drain away you probably don’t want them on your highest ranking pages. Or do you ? It appears there is no way of knowing but the general rule seems to suggest you should place your external links on your lowest ranking page.
Inbound Links
Inbound Links are like injections of PageRank from other sites on the Internet. Anyone involved in SEO or Internet Marketing will tell you how important it is to ask for and swap links with other high ranking sites.
But where should we ask for the link to ? Should we accept links from everyone?
The answer to the first question is quite simple. You inbound link should point to the page you want to achieve the highest rank usually your homepage as that way the internal pages should gain a good rank through internal linking. A point to note is that Search Engine Spiders see www.site.com, http://site.com and www.site.com/ as three separate pages it is therefore vital that you standardise your domain and how you ask for you links.
The answer to the second is probably yes. Google is aware that webmasters don’t have any control over other peoples websites therefore it would be unreasonable to punish them. So carry on collecting as many links as you can but keep in mind that quality is more important than quantity,.
A final word of warning on Inbound Links. Avoid Link Farms and some paid for links as these can have a disastrous effect on your sites Rank and could possibly lead to you being removed from the Google Index.
I hope this gave you an overview into PageRank. I’m sure i’ll be coming back to this subject soon so keep informed via our RSS feed.
