PageRank – What Is PageRank? And Some Common Myths Answered
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PageRank is Google’s way of rating the value of all inbound links to a page. Every link carries a certain amount of PageRank which is based on the PageRank of the page the link is coming from and the number of links on that page. The more links on the page that gives the link, the more diluted each links value is. This is because you could have some sites who give out links very easily and some who don’t. Getting a link from those that don’t is clearly of more value than those that give out links cheaply.
PageRank is one of the largest of the two hundred different ranking factors in the Google algorithm. This is why there is so much effort put in by webmasters to build links. It is certainly the ranking factor that Google have given the most media attention. They have created the PageRank toolbar and its periodical updates. Also it is often a subject of choice on its webmaster forums and blog.
It is named after Larry Page one of the founding member and co-owners of Google. He created the algorithm and named it after himself.
Why did Google create PageRank?
You will notice that with many sites, in particular shopping sites, they get their users to rate their products. These websites then show the best ranked products higher up in their own search engine e.g. Amazon. Google applied the same theory to the internet as a whole. They wanted the user to contribute to the ranking of pages. They couldn’t set up a group that would manually rate the web because it would be far too expensive. So they counted every hyperlink as a vote for the linked to, website’s quality.
They didn’t make every link equal though. A link from a page with more PageRank was more valuable from those with less PageRank thus making it a fairer as Google can trust these links more.
The big PageRank myth
Some webmasters believe that PageRank is the only ranking factor and that if they get a high rank it will mean automatic free traffic. That is simply not true; it is only one of two hundred factors. While it is one of the more important factors, it is still necessary to focus on other areas of your website too. If you were to stop trying to build backlinks and focussed all your time on building loads of high quality content you would be well on your way to tons of free traffic. Content without backlinks is worthless than just content, but backlinks to useless content will be worth even less than that.
There are couple of other factors than the authority of the site and the numbers of links on that page that determine the overall value of a link. They are:
1) The value of a link with regards to the ranking of specific keywords can be increased by using anchor text. Anchor text is the actual words a link appears in. You will notice lots of links on this page that are words. The anchor text of a link tells Google what the page the link is pointing to is about. For example if I linked to my site using the keyword “backlinks” in the link, its overall ranking for that keyword when searched would be boosted.
2) Whether it is a nofollow link. Nofollow is a HTML tag that doesn’t allow PageRank to be passed through a link. Obviously if somebody applies nofollow to a link it has no search engine ranking value although it still has the value of being able to pass traffic through it to your website.
3) The relevance of the website giving the link to the website receiving the link. The more relevant the website linking to your site, the more Google trusts the link. Think of it this way, if a restaurant was recommended to you by a food critic. And then another restaurant was recommended to you by a mechanic. Who are you likely to trust to know more about restaurants? Of course the food critic who is in a related field to restaurants.
So PageRank is a very important factor in the ranking of your website. You can gain more PageRank by building more backlinks to your site by doing things like writing articles or making videos and distributing them around the web.
Mark Collier is the owner and author of 2 Build Backlinks.com a free resource for link building. Link building is the best way to build traffic to your website, both through organic search engine traffic and direct traffic from people clicking the backlinks. The more traffic your site has the more money you will make from eBook sales, AdSense revenue or whatever your monetization model is. Link building is also crucial for building PageRank and increasing the number for your pages in the search engine’s indexes.
There are so many pages on 2buildbacklinks but my personal favorite is the video marketing. Video marketing along with article marketing is a great way to build traffic to your website.
You can also find me on Twitter, YouTube or Website Babble. I always use the username 2buildbacklinks
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