When one page links to another, Google considers it to be effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes for a page across the whole web, the more important that page must be.
The importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself really is, meaning in Google calculations a page's importance comes from the votes cast for it. These votes are then taken into account when the page is ranked.
As a general rule of thumb, Google Page Ranks along with Alexa ratings are the best indicators of how well your SEO work is. The more relevant one way links that you have pointing at your site, the better off you are. That's a basic rule that will apply throughout your SEO operations. These must be quality, related links. Avoid "link farms." These are sites that link to hundreds of unrelated sites in link exhanges.
Page Rank matters because it's one of the most influential factors that determine a page's ranking in Google's search results. The best way to increase your page rank is to contact people with relevant and complementary content. This means content that does not compete with your own but that enhances it. These links are most likely to last and they will not only increase your Google Page Rank but they will also provide relevant hits via the links themselves.
How is PageRank Calculated?
Google calculates the PageRank PR of all pages it indexes, taking into account all the links to and from each site. When a page ?votes? for other pages by linking to them, it shares out some of its PageRank value amongst these pages.
This algorithm means that a link to your site from a page with PR4 (i.e. a Page Rank of 4) and five outbound links would be worth more than a link from a page with PR8 and a hundred outbound links. It's not just the Page Rank of the page that's important, but also the number of links it has.
The more links there are on a page, the less Page Rank value your page receives from them. You should also remember that it takes progressively more Page Rank to move up a level. It is generally pretty easy to achieve a Page Rank of three. Once you achieve a Page Rank of four, your site is getting formidable. Increasing past this mark may prove difficult and will require very important content. Reaching 8+ is very difficult. These ranks are usually reserved for sites that are crucial for the functionality of the internet.
Google repeats its PageRank calculatons many times at each update, and each time the calculation is made it gets more likely to be accurate. Total accuracy can never be achieved, however, because one site's PageRank is entirely relative to the others?. You should understand that the results searchers end up with can really only be properly worked out by Google, because they're the only ones with access to the whole index.
Any newbie in home business is keen to get a Page Rank (PR) for his/her website or blog. Google gives PR based on the value of the webpage. Does it promise anything? Does it make your webpage rank higher in the search results? Do a search on Google for any keyword or key phrase and chances are that a zero PR website may come on top of the search results.
PR and Search Rank (SR) are two different things. May be, the original intention was to show search results based on PR only. But our genius SEO gurus will leave no stone unturned to manipulate any process. So, Google bosses had to come up with different and constantly changing algorithms to make any SEO manipulations redundant. But SEO experts will not sleep so easily as to give up their efforts. Astonishingly, we talk of transparency and what not in governmental administration but when it comes to private enterprise, everything is a secret!
It appears the originator of this conundrum was Jon Kleinberg who fathered the so-called web-link analysis at IBM. Later, Eugene Garfield of the University of Pennsylvania developed 'citation analysis' in 1950s. In 1995, Larry Page and Sergey Brin started work on the Google search engine which has now more than 78% share globally by mid-July 2008. PageRank takes its name after Larry Page and is not patented by Google but by Stanford University.
According to the definition given by Google, " PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic 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 votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important"."
Without going into the detailed mathematical theories like Markov chain, probability theory etc., PR is directly proportional to a webpage's sum of the products of incoming links' weightage and their respective PRs and inversely proportional to the sum of the products of outgoing links' weightage and their respective PRs. Now weightage reduces according to the number of outward links! That is the whole rigmarole. If a webpage does not have outgoing links (i.e., hyperlinks), the denominator would be zero! So, the PR will be infinite because division by zero gives an infinite value. Such redundancies are cleverly avoided in programming logic because the PR is on a scale of 0 to 10 like the Richter scale and supposedly, logarithmic in nature.
Likewise, even if the denominator is not zero, but if the numerator is zero i.e., the webpage has all worthless incoming links, the PR would be zero. Now I would place some outward links having PR 6 or more on my webpage but there is no guarantee those outward links would maintain that status for long! So, whether I like it or not I have to choose Google, Yahoo or similar strong sites which can be presumed to exist till the deluge. So also, my incoming links should be strong - at least, some. But I cannot expect Google or Yahoo to place a link on their pages to my webpage. So, our genius SEO gurus would suggest stable sites, forums, social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook etc. where I can leave comments or start discussions without spamming to get some good incoming links via my signature.
All this takes a great effort and time. Links should be built over a period of time gradually. But whether all this effort is useful or not depends on whether one gets traffic to one's webpage or not. Then one starts depending upon Pay Per Click advertising and spends a fortune if not wise enough to drop the cards at the right time. After this, one concludes only organic traffic is the key to everything. So, enter SEO gurus. Have a honeymoon for sometime with SEO independently or otherwise.
Both Joyce Jackson & Mohan Potukuchi are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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