Page Rank

PageRank (PR) is a word often revered by many in the SEO community when launching link building campaigns. When you are a site owner for instance, you would want to obtain high page rankings. As in a competition, the higher the rank, the better you are compared to the rest.

PageRank is an overused term that describes how your site is faring in terms of link popularity and exposure to search engines. Although it is common knowledge now that PageRank is not the only factor the affects a site’s link popularity, as there are quite several of them, site owners and people involved in a link building campaign need to get a glimpse of how PageRank is calculated. The better you understand PageRank, the more effectively you will be able to handle any link building effort.

What is PageRank?

PageRank is a numerical value that is assigned to a site for the purpose of measuring its importance or relevancy. PageRank was developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The concept was inspired by citation analysis conducted on scholarly journals or articles to measure its credibility. The more times a paper gets cited, the more important or credible it is to its peers.

PageRank computes the probability of finding a web page if a person randomly surfs the Internet. Google uses the mathematical formula,

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn)), where:

A = Linked Page
tn = Linking Page
C/(tn) = Number of outbound link on v
d = damping factor, normally set to 0.85

Despite its intimidating appearance, the mathematical formula has several implications for obtaining the link popularity of a web site:

a. If a web page links to another page, it is essentially casting a vote in favor of that page.
b. If several pages link to a web page, it means it has more votes and deserve a higher rank.

How does Google assign PageRank?

Google PageRank is highly dependent on the quantity of backlinks. An experiment conducted by SEOWatch concludes that the more backlinks a website has, the higher the PR will be. This is logical since the PageRank was designed as a type of balloting system among Web users where site owners “vote” by linking to a particular page to show support. This explains why PR is often referred to as a measure of link popularity.

However, because mere reliance on quality of links have made spamming and search engine manipulations a link building tool in order to influence a site’s positioning, Google’s algorithm includes the quality of backlinks associated to a website in its calculation. If the pages linking to your site have high PR and are considered “high authority” sites, then your page shares a piece of their reputation and improves its link popularity.

Google PageRank considers other factors in assigning values to web sites. These include site age, back link duration and back link relevancy. The fact that Google considers back links’ relevancy helps warn site owners: bad sites can harm your overall total PageRank and your link popularity.

Is there only one type of PageRank?

There are variations of PageRank used by Google in order to measure importance or relevancy.

Google Toolbar PageRank. This feature projects a page’s PageRank as a whole number ranging between 0 and 10, 10 being the highest. In order to restrict and disallow search engine manipulations, the accurate procedure on how Google calculates PageRank is not disclosed. However, there is always stress on the quantity and quality of backlinks to produce higher PR and higher link popularity.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Rank. Link building campaigns are built around this type of ranking. It returns the actual result produced when a search engine responds to a keyword query. A web page’s SERP rank is indicated by a link’s placement on the SERP. If the page can be found on the top positions in a SERP, the higher its SERP rank. It must be noted that while PageRank plays a vital part in SERP, a myriad of factors are included in its computation. Any link building campaign should be geared towards achieving the highest SERP ranking for a website or websites.

In order to deter search engine manipulation, Spamdexing, and spoofing, as a means of building link popularity, Google is mum on how factors influence PageRank specifically.

What are some tips to improve PageRank?

The encouraging thing about being able to understand PageRank is that webmasters, site owners, or a link building company can determine how to adjust some factors in order to optimize PageRank and improve link popularity. A high PR to add to other link building methods will drive you ahead of competitors. There are three basic areas to consider when optimizing PageRank:

1. The quality of links you choose to have link to your site. The link you choose and the effort you put in to acquire them are essential in PR optimization. As explained before, quantity and quality of links are important considerations in PR and link building. Choosing link farms and banned sites to link to you would prove disastrous to PR and link popularity.
2. The site you choose to link out to from your site. In using outbound links, there is one golden rule: ‘Keep PageRank within your site.’ Linking out will decrease your total PageRank compared when you decide not to link out. However, if you choose to link out as part of your link building campaign, experts advise to choose pages that has both a low PR and a lot of links to your site.
3. The internal quality of your site. Your site’s navigational components and linkages must be able to distribute PageRank within the whole site. To accomplish this, Google’s algorithms must consider as much content in your site as worthy of being indexed. Developing quality content creates more PageRank and boosts link popularity.

While PageRank is a valuable tool, achieving link popularity through PR optimization must be combined with quality visitor experience. Gaining higher PageRank will not amount to any significance if users could not find content to enhance their experience when navigating your site.

Google PR or Page Rank algorithm by NetguruSolution