Pagerank is an algorithm
Posted 10th August 2012 at 11:40 AM by bloggerd
Tags google page rank, pagerank, seo
Google sees a link as a recommendation for another website. And it is best to think of links as a recommendation.
Imagine if you were trying to decide what restaurant you were going to eat at. You read a review in well respected food magazine for a lovely Italian. You also read a review of a different restaurant in a car magazine and it too recommends a restaurant only this is a Chinese restaurant now which one are you likely to believe to have the best knowledge of restaurants? That’s right the well respected food magazine. Gaining backlinks is much the same.
Pagerank is an algorithm
Algorithm defined: An algorithm is simply a mathematical formula used by the search engines to determine which pages rank number 1,2,3,etc when you search for any given keyword or set of keywords.
While we know Pagerank as a vital factor in Google’s overall algorithm, Pagerank is in fact an algorithm within the whole algorithm. This is because it is Google’s way of rating and evaluating links. It does this automatically by taking into account a number of factors. As a result it is a mathematical formula i.e. an algorithm.
Why is it called Pagerank?
It is named after Larry Page who created the whole algorithm for evaluating links. Page is the co-founder of Google and was revolutionary in being the first search engine to use links as a major ranking factor a factor which is now used by all major search engines.
How to get more Pagerank?
To improve your Pagerank you need to get more high quality backlinks to your website, and in order to do that you have to master the art of backlink building.
What makes a high quality link?
There are three important factors in making a link high quality:
1) The authority of the site linking to you: this is determined by the Pagerank of the site and web page that is linking to you. The more Pagerank of the site linking to you the better the link for you.
2) The relevance of the site to your site: this too is connected to the authority of a site but is slightly different. Thinking again of a link as a recommendation of your website. A good recommendation of a restaurant is more valuable if coming from a relevant source. If you were to get recommendation from another competing restaurant that would be worth far more than a non competing non food related business like a hairdressers recommending your restaurant. The hairdressers is a good recommendation just not as good as your competitor recommending you.
Taking this logic and applying it to Pagerank, it is clear that getting backlinks from other sites that have a similar to yours is better than less relevant links.
3) How easy is it to get a link? : If you get a link from a high Pagerank site that’s great. But if the page you got your link from is littered with hundreds of links then it is hard for Google and the other search engines to determine whether the link is valuable. As a result the value of the link is diluted and less Pagerank is passed. Where as if you get a link from a slightly lower Pagerank website but you are one of only a few links from the page then the overall result may be of more Pagerank being passed to your site.
A high quality backlink is very useful to your website in boosting your Pagerank and also your Google ranking which will result in you soaring up the organic searches and getting more free traffic for your website.
Some people believe that if they simply get a thousand inbound links from sites with no Pagerank or authority they will get lots of Pagerank. That is not true at all one link from a Pagerank nine website’s homepage is far better than a thousand worthless links.
How do you get more high quality links?
Well that’s simple. You just have to follow the numerous backlink building techniques and tips available on this website. In general to actively go out and get a link yourself you have to add value to another website. Whether that’s by writing an article or adding an insightful comment to a blog. There are hundreds of ideas on this website on how you can add value to other sites and get the most out of your hard work by getting inbound links to your website.
You can also follow the 86 link building strategies discussed in Link Building Mastery. LBM is my 266 page eBook that gives you the tools and the techniques to build high PageRank backlinks to your website. If you want higher search engine rankings and more traffic from Google then I highly recommend Link Building Mastery.
Pagerank and the other search engines
While Pagerank is exclusively Google’s it has had a large effect on other search engines in general. Larry Page came up with the idea that a link is like a vote and the whole system of evaluating links and using them as a ranking factor of a website. As a result of the success of the search engine and Pagerank, other search engines have also used links as a vital part of their algorithm. To which point most people assume that Bing, Yahoo! and Ask all use links in their algorithm.
Checking Pagerank
There are a number of tools out there that allow you to check the Pagerank of web pages. But they all get their information from the Google Toolbar. When you download the Toolbar you can choose to see the Pagerank part of it. It will show a little green bar at the top of your browser that shows the Pagerank of a page out of ten. You can download the toolbar from www.toolbar.google.com. It looks like this
Toolbar updates
The Pagerank of websites is updated as soon as Google find new information to change their opinion of the value of sites inbound links. But the toolbar which represents these views is not updated straight away but in different troughs. There is no set date for these updates but they can come as a surprise either nasty or nice to website owners who are not aware of the updates and suddenly think their Pagerank has changed drastically.
If your Pagerank has changed drastically on the toolbar after an update it is simply a reflection on what has happened to the inbound links to your website over the period of time since the last toolbar update. In general each update will show little or no difference to your toolbar so there is no need to worry about them.
Top 6 PageRank myths
Pagerank sculpting
Pagerank sculpting is controlling the flow of Pagerank around your website. You do this by strategically linking internally and also with your links from other sites. For example you may choose to link from your homepage to the pages on your website that have the largest keywords. By doing this you will be passing Pagerank to what you consider your most important pages you may also attempt to build high quality links to these pages in particular.
Nofollow
Google have come up with a cool piece of HTML that means that Pagerank isn’t passed through a link from page to page. You simply insert rel=”nofollow” into the link. It was intended to stop spammers from adding links to websites just in order to build their rankings with Google. It has worked extremely well and is a very popular piece of code. It is used by Wikipedia and many other websites that allow users and visitors to contribute and add backlinks to your website.
But the nofollow attribute also allows you to easily sculpt Pagerank. Imagine if you wanted to provide a list of links or simply felt that a page on your website had too many outbound links then you could apply the nofollow attribute to some of the links. It is also very useful to restrict the flow of Pagerank to pages that won’t be showing up in natural search results but are useful to users.
What pages might they be? Well for example have you ever seen a sitemap or login page turn up in the search results? Virtually never. So while you want users to access the page you don’t want to waste Pagerank on pages that won’t get you any free traffic. So all you have to do is apply the rel=”nofollow” attribute to all links to those types of pages.
Anchor text
While anchor text is not a part of the Pagerank formula. It is too important not to mention. If you are going out there and trying to get backlinks and Pagerank for your website it is important to mention anchor text. What is anchor text? It is the text in which a link is contained. You will have noticed I’m sure that while you read web pages you will notice some links without an actual web address visible just words are visible. These words are seen as keywords to the search engines and are very important to showing the search engines what the page linked to is about.
So if you are linking to yourself make sure you use the keyword for the page that is most relevant to that page. Doing so will boost your rankings for that keyword for that page.
Summary of PageRank
Pagerank is important in the ranking of your website but is not the only factor. While it is generally perceived as the most important factor and certainly is one of the most talked about factors by Google themselves. Don’t take it too seriously but backlink building is very important to the authority to your website and will result in more traffic if combined with PageRank and all the other ranking factors.
Imagine if you were trying to decide what restaurant you were going to eat at. You read a review in well respected food magazine for a lovely Italian. You also read a review of a different restaurant in a car magazine and it too recommends a restaurant only this is a Chinese restaurant now which one are you likely to believe to have the best knowledge of restaurants? That’s right the well respected food magazine. Gaining backlinks is much the same.
Pagerank is an algorithm
Algorithm defined: An algorithm is simply a mathematical formula used by the search engines to determine which pages rank number 1,2,3,etc when you search for any given keyword or set of keywords.
While we know Pagerank as a vital factor in Google’s overall algorithm, Pagerank is in fact an algorithm within the whole algorithm. This is because it is Google’s way of rating and evaluating links. It does this automatically by taking into account a number of factors. As a result it is a mathematical formula i.e. an algorithm.
Why is it called Pagerank?
It is named after Larry Page who created the whole algorithm for evaluating links. Page is the co-founder of Google and was revolutionary in being the first search engine to use links as a major ranking factor a factor which is now used by all major search engines.
How to get more Pagerank?
To improve your Pagerank you need to get more high quality backlinks to your website, and in order to do that you have to master the art of backlink building.
What makes a high quality link?
There are three important factors in making a link high quality:
1) The authority of the site linking to you: this is determined by the Pagerank of the site and web page that is linking to you. The more Pagerank of the site linking to you the better the link for you.
2) The relevance of the site to your site: this too is connected to the authority of a site but is slightly different. Thinking again of a link as a recommendation of your website. A good recommendation of a restaurant is more valuable if coming from a relevant source. If you were to get recommendation from another competing restaurant that would be worth far more than a non competing non food related business like a hairdressers recommending your restaurant. The hairdressers is a good recommendation just not as good as your competitor recommending you.
Taking this logic and applying it to Pagerank, it is clear that getting backlinks from other sites that have a similar to yours is better than less relevant links.
3) How easy is it to get a link? : If you get a link from a high Pagerank site that’s great. But if the page you got your link from is littered with hundreds of links then it is hard for Google and the other search engines to determine whether the link is valuable. As a result the value of the link is diluted and less Pagerank is passed. Where as if you get a link from a slightly lower Pagerank website but you are one of only a few links from the page then the overall result may be of more Pagerank being passed to your site.
A high quality backlink is very useful to your website in boosting your Pagerank and also your Google ranking which will result in you soaring up the organic searches and getting more free traffic for your website.
Some people believe that if they simply get a thousand inbound links from sites with no Pagerank or authority they will get lots of Pagerank. That is not true at all one link from a Pagerank nine website’s homepage is far better than a thousand worthless links.
How do you get more high quality links?
Well that’s simple. You just have to follow the numerous backlink building techniques and tips available on this website. In general to actively go out and get a link yourself you have to add value to another website. Whether that’s by writing an article or adding an insightful comment to a blog. There are hundreds of ideas on this website on how you can add value to other sites and get the most out of your hard work by getting inbound links to your website.
You can also follow the 86 link building strategies discussed in Link Building Mastery. LBM is my 266 page eBook that gives you the tools and the techniques to build high PageRank backlinks to your website. If you want higher search engine rankings and more traffic from Google then I highly recommend Link Building Mastery.
Pagerank and the other search engines
While Pagerank is exclusively Google’s it has had a large effect on other search engines in general. Larry Page came up with the idea that a link is like a vote and the whole system of evaluating links and using them as a ranking factor of a website. As a result of the success of the search engine and Pagerank, other search engines have also used links as a vital part of their algorithm. To which point most people assume that Bing, Yahoo! and Ask all use links in their algorithm.
Checking Pagerank
There are a number of tools out there that allow you to check the Pagerank of web pages. But they all get their information from the Google Toolbar. When you download the Toolbar you can choose to see the Pagerank part of it. It will show a little green bar at the top of your browser that shows the Pagerank of a page out of ten. You can download the toolbar from www.toolbar.google.com. It looks like this
Toolbar updates
The Pagerank of websites is updated as soon as Google find new information to change their opinion of the value of sites inbound links. But the toolbar which represents these views is not updated straight away but in different troughs. There is no set date for these updates but they can come as a surprise either nasty or nice to website owners who are not aware of the updates and suddenly think their Pagerank has changed drastically.
If your Pagerank has changed drastically on the toolbar after an update it is simply a reflection on what has happened to the inbound links to your website over the period of time since the last toolbar update. In general each update will show little or no difference to your toolbar so there is no need to worry about them.
Top 6 PageRank myths
Pagerank sculpting
Pagerank sculpting is controlling the flow of Pagerank around your website. You do this by strategically linking internally and also with your links from other sites. For example you may choose to link from your homepage to the pages on your website that have the largest keywords. By doing this you will be passing Pagerank to what you consider your most important pages you may also attempt to build high quality links to these pages in particular.
Nofollow
Google have come up with a cool piece of HTML that means that Pagerank isn’t passed through a link from page to page. You simply insert rel=”nofollow” into the link. It was intended to stop spammers from adding links to websites just in order to build their rankings with Google. It has worked extremely well and is a very popular piece of code. It is used by Wikipedia and many other websites that allow users and visitors to contribute and add backlinks to your website.
But the nofollow attribute also allows you to easily sculpt Pagerank. Imagine if you wanted to provide a list of links or simply felt that a page on your website had too many outbound links then you could apply the nofollow attribute to some of the links. It is also very useful to restrict the flow of Pagerank to pages that won’t be showing up in natural search results but are useful to users.
What pages might they be? Well for example have you ever seen a sitemap or login page turn up in the search results? Virtually never. So while you want users to access the page you don’t want to waste Pagerank on pages that won’t get you any free traffic. So all you have to do is apply the rel=”nofollow” attribute to all links to those types of pages.
Anchor text
While anchor text is not a part of the Pagerank formula. It is too important not to mention. If you are going out there and trying to get backlinks and Pagerank for your website it is important to mention anchor text. What is anchor text? It is the text in which a link is contained. You will have noticed I’m sure that while you read web pages you will notice some links without an actual web address visible just words are visible. These words are seen as keywords to the search engines and are very important to showing the search engines what the page linked to is about.
So if you are linking to yourself make sure you use the keyword for the page that is most relevant to that page. Doing so will boost your rankings for that keyword for that page.
Summary of PageRank
Pagerank is important in the ranking of your website but is not the only factor. While it is generally perceived as the most important factor and certainly is one of the most talked about factors by Google themselves. Don’t take it too seriously but backlink building is very important to the authority to your website and will result in more traffic if combined with PageRank and all the other ranking factors.
