While there is a wealth of great information on Warrior, there's also a *lot* of myths, misinformation, conjecture, and some really bad information.

For those of you struggling to get your head around rankings and backlinks, perhaps this will help.


"RANKINGS" DEFINED

The term "ranking" by itself doesn't mean much, sort of like the term "color". Ranking is always in relation to a keyword or phrase. Statements like "ranking in the #1 spot" or "How do I get my site on the first page?" by themselves are meaningless.

A search engine database is relative - there's no set order of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. It's not a table like a spreadsheet. Where a particular page sits in the database, or SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages), is only in relation to a particular search, meaning a keyword or phrase. Further, Websites aren't listed in the SERPS, pages of a website are.

Where we rank in the SERPS is one specific ordering or listing of the database for a specific keyword or phrase. That's why a page might rank #3 for "red bikini bottom" and #141 for "bikini bottom". Same database, different ordering of it for different queries.


WHY RANKINGS CHANGE

(This applies to primarily to Google; each search engine uses somewhat different criteria and values). The goal of a search engine is to display the most relevant pages, in order of 'importance', for a given search query. When a search is entered, the database produces a list of relevant results and orders them. The order is determined by a number of factors including onpage values, Pagerank, backlinks, trustrank, and authority.

When a page is first indexed, Google does an initial 'approximation'. Because many of the more 'costly' calculations aren't figured in yet, a well-optimized site can often place well for it's 'targeted' keyword/phrase when it's first indexed.

Within some period, usually a few days to a few weeks, a more thorough valuation is done. At this point, that well-optimized page, that doesn't yet have much else going for it, drops significantly. This is often referred to as part of the "Google dance".

Over the next period, backlinks start to be found, perhaps more are being added, and the page will often begin to creep back upwards.

Of course this is an oversimplification; Google's algorithms are very sophisticated and complex. It's believed there are somewhere around 100 factors that are calculated - some that add to a page's 'importance', some that subtract.


BOOSTING RANKINGS

In order to improve a page's overall values, we want to optimize the page itself, and we want to build it's total "backlink value".

Generally speaking, it's 'easiest' to target one keyword/phrase per page. Assuming that is our goal, the first thing we want to do is optimize the page itself.

The main factors are (roughly in order of importance):

• Domain name
• Page title (title tag)
• H1 tag
• Keyword density
• Meta description
• Meta keyword

Beyond that, we can add some additional boost by linking internally to our 'target' page. Wherever you have the opportunity on other pages, create a keyword link to your 'target' page.

Once our page is optimized, the rest comes down to building 'importance' which is essentially 'backlink value'. Backlink value is the number of backlinks times the 'strength' of each backlink (whatever PR it's passing, it's trustrank, and authority). In otherwords, total backlink value is the addition of each backlink's value combined together.

In order to boost our rankings once our page is optimized, we have to increase it's overall backlink value higher than those pages ahead of us.

If we're trying to boost our rankings for keywords we're not as well optimized for, we'll need that much more backlink value.


BACKLINKS

A backlink is simply a link pointing to our page from another page that is recognized by the search engine (not all backlinks are 'found' - those that aren't, add no backlink value).

The value of a backlink is determined by where it is, and the link itself. For the link itself, using our 'target' keyword/phrase as the anchor text (the clickable part) gives it the highest value. The amount of backlink value it gives us for ranking purposes is based on where it appears on the page (higher is better), the Pagerank, trustrank and authority of the page it's on, and the context, or relevancy of that page to our keyword/phrase.

Ranking for a keyword/phrase comes down to optimizing our page for that keyword/phrase, then gaining more total backlink value than the tops sites we're trying to beat.


PAGERANK

While you hear many people say "Pagerank doesn't matter", it does matter when we're trying to boost our total backlink value. Why? Because part of the value of a given backlink comes from how much Pagerank it conveys. And that is a function of the Pagerank of the page where the backlink resides.

For example, all other things being equal, a backlink residing on a PR-5 page adds considerably more backlink value than a backlink from a PR-2 page.

Keep in mind, Pagerank is not a static value, it changes, ebbs and flows. The PR you see on your browser, or at a Pagerank checker, is the value that it had at the last "update". Google 'exports' the PR values once every few months. A site that shows a PR-3 may not actually be a PR-3. The only thing that shows is that when Google did the last "update", it was a PR-3. Like rankings, Pagerank is fluid.

That being said, there is no way to know the actual PR of a page other than on the day Google exports that info. But it's "all we have" and can be at least a relative indicator.

Pagerank, as the name implies, is assigned per page, not per site. Pages from a given site can, and often do have different PR values. Usually, the homepage, which is usually the oldest, most optimized, and has the most backlinks, is the highest, but this isn't always the case. As such, a backlink from a "PR-4 site" often doesn't convey the backlink value of a PR-4 page. If the actual page the link is on isn't a PR-4, than that's not the value passed. Still, a backlink on an inner page of a site who's homepage is a PR-4 is usually stronger than the backlink on an inner page of a site who's homepage is a PR-2.

FOLLOW / NOFOLLOW

The "NoFollow" tag was created by Google (other search engines don't consider it) for webmasters to tell their crawler not to 'follow' a link on a page. It also discounted the passing of the page's PR through that link. Currently, a link that is tagged "NoFollow" does not pass PR value to the link. That does not mean that backlink has no value - it does - it means however that it's value is relatively low.

While Matt Cutts at Google says they're moving towards ignoring "NoFollow" tags, they haven't yet, at least where passing Pagerank is concerned.

What this means for ranking is that "NoFollow" links are low-value backlinks, regardless of where they are.

Hope this helps~

Mark