What is the Google PageRank: An Easy to Understand Introduction

Jan 13
08:54

2009

Andrew Antaro

Andrew Antaro

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A very popular question is, “How is the Google PageRank assigned to my website?” This short article offers you a simple and easy to understand introduction to the Google PageRank.

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THE GOOGLE PAGERANK EXPLAINED SIMPLY

A common question amongst website owners is,What is the Google PageRank: An Easy to Understand Introduction Articles “How is the Google PageRank assigned to my website?”  The answer is not as maddening or mysterious as most people imagine.  This short article offers you a simple and easy to understand introduction to the fundamental factors you need to know about your site’s Google PageRank.

THE INTENT OF THE GOOGLE PAGERANK

Google’s aim with its PageRank (PR) system is to objectively and accurately assess the importance of each of the billions of webpages in cyberspace that are all fiercely fighting with each other for top placement in Google’s search engine results.

Explained simply, Google’s strategy is that, any site that has many other websites linking to it (i.e. Inbound Links or External Links) must be popular. Why else would so many other sites have hyperlinks pointing to it?  Google counts the number of websites that have a hyperlink leading to your site and uses this to calculate your site’s PageRank.

THE PAGERANK IS A POPULARITY CONTEST

Google’s strategy is founded upon the uniquely democratic nature of millions of autonomous websites that have the free choice to post a link to a third-party site or not.  Accordingly, each External Link a website has is regarded as a VOTE in an intercontinental internet Election.  Sites with more votes will have a higher PageRank.

Amongst SEO professionals, this is called “Link Popularity,” and this whole system can be thought of as the planet’s biggest popularity contest.  Google’s PageRank can, first and foremost, be viewed as a “PopularityRank.”  For example:

As of January 7th, 2009, www.coca-cola.com has 2,570 Inbound Links and a highly impressive PR8, while www.7up.com has 447 Inbound Links and a PR5. At the extreme, www.wikipedia.org has a PR9 with over 77,000 Inbound Links.

ALL EXTERNAL LINKS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL

This hypothetical “transnational net voting” is not exclusively democratic, however, because each individual vote is not valued equally.  Google does not weigh all Inbound Links to your website evenly.  Instead, it determines each link’s value through a complicated mathematical algorithm that only a genius has any chance of understanding.

That being stated, the two most essential factors which determine an External Link’s SEO value are as follows:

The frontmost factor is the Google PageRank of the webpage that contains the link to your site.  To illustrate, a link to your site from Wikipedia with a PR9 is vastly more valuable than a link from someone’s private Blog with a PR1.

The second most significant factor is the link’s pertinence to your website.  Google compares the keywords on your site and the keywords at the site linking to you, and it calculates the External Link’s “Relevance.”  For example, if you sell computers, then an article about “computers” with a hyperlink to your website is vastly more valuable than an article about “gourmet cooking” with a hyperlink to your website.

INITIATE A LINK-BUILDING CAMPAIGN TODAY

An essential SEO strategy is to implement a link-building campaign for your site.  The best options you have for acquiring External Links to your website are business directories, classified ads, business and personal profiles, magazines and article databases, and collaboratively exchanging links with other website owners.

For Instance, if you set the reasonable goal to get two new Inbound Links per week, then, within two years, you should earn a very respectable Google PR5.

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