What Is Google’s Page Rank And How Do I Improve It?
Lots of you can be forgiven for not even knowing when Google last updated its page rank system. However, any website owner out there will NOT be forgiven for not knowing what a Page Rank actually is!
For those of you who have a basic knowledge of Google’s Page Rank system, I can tell you that it was last updated on the 7th November. Some of you may even be able to coincide this date with your website suddenly experiencing improved positions or increased traffic for specific keywords? On the flip side there may be some of you who can actually link it to a point in time where your website lost positions or traffic practically overnight.
The fact is, if you’ve never bothered finding out what the phrase ‘Page Rank’ actually means, you need to start learning right now! With this in mind I think it would be good to give you a quick overview of how Page Rank works and the impact this rating system can have on your website.
So What Is Google’s Page Rank?
Google’s Page Rank is a system devised by Google’s very own Larry Page. It is essentially a ranking system of zero to ten (with zero being the lowest) that determines how authoritative and relevant Google deems a webpage to be. Every new site that’s created and indexed by the search engine will be assigned a ‘0’ straightaway.
So How Do You Improve it?
A webpage’s rank is determined by two main factors under Google’s system. These are:
Website Structure – When Google visits a website, it wants to be able to crawl it easily. If Google it’s quickly able to find out what your site is about, it comes to the conclusion that the user will also have a similar experience when visiting your website. This therefore gives Google the confidence to promote your website above others when it’s listed for a particular search term.
Basically, Google wants every page on your website to be linked clearly and logically. Google will frown upon a site that has lots of stand-alone pages that cannot be reached via other pages within your website.
Links –The links that you have coming to your website are just as important as its internal structure. Every link coming into your site will pass on some authority (or link juice, as it is known). The amount of authority will be determined by the quality and relevancy of the website that the link is coming from. If you have thousands of links coming from poor quality and irrelevant websites you will be unlikely to see any improvement in your website’s Page Rank.
With all of the above in mind you really should take the time to work out what your website’s Page Rank is and see what you can do to improve it. A little bit of effort and preparation may help your website’s overall performance in the SERPS, which potentially means more traffic, more enquiries and more revenue for your business!!
(“What are SERPs?”, I hear you ask? Well that’s a whole other story. You’ll have to check back for my next blog post to find out!).
See you soon!
