What Is Google PageRank?
PageRank is the heart of the software that runs Google. It's a system for ranking webpages developed by Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
PageRank relies on the nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of links a page receives. It also analyzes the page that links to the linked page. Links from pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."
Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for a search query.
So always try to get links from webpages with a PageRank of 3 and above. Anything lower is generally a waste of time.
But what is also important is the number of links out of the page that you're receiving a link from. It's almost definitely more beneficial to get a link from a webpage with a PageRank of 4 that only contains a few external links, than one from a page with a higher PageRank, but contains hundreds of outgoing links.
The reason is because every outgoing link has a share of the PageRank that a page offers. So the more outgoing links there are, the less PageRank each link gets.
Lastly, concentrate on getting as many different quality sites as possible to link to one page on your site, usually your home page. Do not spread the links to different pages. This will maximize the PageRank of your main page, plus those of the subpages.
How To Optimize Your Webpages For Higher Rankings In Google
Here are what I believe to be the two most important ranking factors used by Google. My findings are as a result of my ongoing optimization experiments of my network of websites on Google.
The top two Google ranking factors are:
- PageRank
- Incoming Text Link Keywords
I've explained what PageRank is above and why its importance in getting higher search engine rankings. Add incoming text links keywords and you have the formula for high search engine rankings.
Incoming Text Link Keywords
Always provide text links for linking to your site. Avoid image links.
Google does index image links, but without any text for it to index, it won't help your link popularity rating for your important keywords.
In addition:
- Include the most important keyword phrase in the text link, using the EXACT spelling.
- Do not pluralize the keyword phrase in the text link, if your visitors usually enter the singular version of an important keyword phrase, and vice versa.
- Avoid excess words in the text link, where possible.
- The linked to page must have the text link keywords in the body of the page; otherwise Google will discount the page as a relevant page.
- Include the text link keywords within the title tag of the linked to page. It is possible for a page without the text link keywords in the title tag to get top rankings. But I have discovered that around 80% of top 10 rankings have the text link keywords in the title tag, so always include it.
Well, there you have it. Those are what I consider the two most important ranking factors used by Google. Other factors are considered by Google, but their importance pales in comparison to the two discussed here.
Follow these tips whenever you optimize your webpages and they will quickly shoot up the Google rankings.
