Google PageRank

Google PageRank Explained

Google PageRank is a major part of the Google algorithm. PageRank is considered, by many experts, to be the most important factor in establishing the relevance of your web page for each particular search phrase typed into the Google search box. I believe that Page rank is clearly important, but if it was of paramount importance, this page would not have gone to the number one position in Google, for the term 'link analysis explained', which has 20.5 million competing pages, one day after the page was first cached, if it were relying purely on PageRank.

Google works out your web page’s PageRank by treating each incoming link to your website as a vote. For example, if Google-Pagerank.co.uk has an outgoing link to Page-Rank.co.uk, Google consider the link as a vote for Page-Rank.co.uk. It’s similar to you being recommended a good plumber by a friend – the recommendation strengthens your confidence in employing him.

Link Analysis

What is link analysis? Google do not purely count the links coming into your site, in order to calculate PageRank, the search engine robots analyse the page linking to your site. The more important and relevant that the linking page is to the keyphrase entered, the higher the relevance that Google gives to your page, so taking link analysis into account when organising reciprocal links, is something to bear in mind.

Link analysis takes into account the following on-page and off-page factors when calculating PageRank and page relevance:

  • The PR of the linking page
  • Whether the linking page is on-focus, (if you have a financial website, an on focus link would be a link from another financial website. A link from a site about flowers would be considered off-focus)
  • The number of outgoing links on the outgoing link page, (if there are 500 outgoing links, it will not be considered as relevant as a page with only 20 outgoing links)
  • The quality of the incoming links directed at the website of the outgoing link

Incoming links and PageRank are a major part of the Google algorithm, but don’t listen to anyone who tells you that all you need to do is get hundreds of links pointing to your website to get the number one position on Google, it is simply not true. Google considers many factors when working out where you will stand in the rankings, for each individual search phrase, including on page content, page titles, code compliancy, the weight of the source code and ease of navigation.

What Page Rank should I aim for?

The higher the better! The PageRank scale is between 0 and 10.

If your site is PageRank 0, (PR0) to PagRank 2, (PR2) you should certainly consider establishing a link campaign to attract new links to the site to boost PageRank.

If your site is PageRank 3 (PR3) and you are competing for fairly non-competitive search terms, you should concentrate on on-page optimization. If you still don’t achieve positions, then try to boost PageRank to PR4 or PR5.

PageRank 4 (PR4) and PageRank 5 (PR5), are seen as fairly relevant sites and unless you are in a really competitive market, it is probably sufficient to rank fairly well if the on-page optimization is in place.

PageRank6 (PR6) or above, is sufficient PR for almost any area of the market, but once your are PR6 or above, other webmasters will naturally want to link to you, so you will be offered reciprocal links almost every day, allowing you to further strengthen Page Rank with little effort.

Web Design and SEO ArticlesWeb Design and SEO Articles

Most of the articles we write nowadays are featured in the Big Man's Blog, as it is optimised so that a properly optimsed article is featured on the front pages of Google within minutes. The article featured below was originally written a few years back, but the information in the article is still accurate in today's marketplace.

If you have any questions regarding this, or any other article featured on the site, don't hesitate to email your question to bigman@kenkai.com.