~~~Search Engine Optimization~~~
Today, I'm going to do my best to summarize what Google PageRank is
all about. This would normally be an impossible task for someone like
me, because it's pretty complicated. However, I recently had the
honor of editing a paper entitled, "PageRank Explained (or Everything
You've Ever Wanted to Know About PageRank)" by search engine
programmer, Chris Ridings, owner of Search Engine Systems. The full paper can be found in PDF format here.
The document explains what Google PageRank is, how it is determined,
and how significant it is to high rankings in the search engine
results pages. Further, it discusses the accuracy (or inaccuracy) of
the Google Toolbar, and also goes on to describe how Google actually
calculates PageRank. For you geeky types who love all sorts of
charts, graphs and formulas, you'll be in heaven when you read it!
For the rest of us, it's definitely a tricky concept to understand. I
hope that summarizing the main points here will give you a good feel
for PageRank, and also make it easier for you if and when you decide
to delve into Chris' paper.
The main thing that I came away with is that PageRank is not the
be-all and end-all to high rankings in Google (which is what I already
suspected when looking at many of the Google results pages). PageRank
is just one factor of many that needs to be looked at when optimizing
a site for the search engines. Whether or not you decide to try to do
things to "manipulate" your site's PageRank is up to you. As you'll
see once you understand PageRank, it's something that's difficult to
artificially manipulate, which is why it works well for Google.
Basically, PageRank is Google's method of measuring a page's
"importance." When all other factors, such as the Title tag and
keywords, are taken into account, Google uses PageRank to adjust
results so sites that are more "important" will move up in the results
page of a user's search, accordingly. Google looks at which pages link
to each other to determine this importance. If Page A links to Page
B, then Page A is saying that Page B is an important page.
Here are four important things you should know about PageRank:
1. PageRank only looks at the voting ability of incoming links to a
page, and how much they recommend that page.
2. Every page of a site can have a PageRank, not just the main page.
3. You can pass PageRank to different pages of your own site through
the internal linking structure of the various pages.
4. Naming and titling hyperlinks using keyphrases is a separate thing
from PageRank. Using keyphrases within your links may help with your
search engine rankings, but not your PageRank.
The following few sentences from the paper sum up a formula that the
Google founders published in their original research paper at Stanford:
"The PageRank given to Page A by a Page B pointing to it is decreased
with each link to anywhere that exists on Page B. That means a page's
PageRank is essentially a measure of its vote; it can split that vote
between one link or two links or many more, but its overall voting
power will always be the same."
In other words, for PageRank purposes, it's better to have a page with
only a few links on it pointing to your site, than a page with tons of
links on it pointing to your site. If a page has a PageRank of seven
(out of ten), and it's filled with many links to other sites, those
other sites only get a tiny portion of that seven PR because the
PageRank gets divided amongst all the links. So in effect, just
because a page has a high PageRank, it doesn't mean it's the best one
to be linked from. A page with a five PR but with less outbound links
may actually benefit your site's PageRank more than the seven PR page
with tons of links. Chris does a great job of diagramming this in his
paper.
Another important aspect of PageRank is "PageRank Feedback." Pages
linking to each other can create a feedback effect that can increase
the PageRank of those pages. Here's how Chris explained it to me when
I asked him for clarification:
"Let's say that page A currently links to nowhere. If we add a link
from page A to page B, then page A is saying that page B is important.
This means the measure of page B's votes is also increased. Page B is
now saying that the pages it links to are more important than they
otherwise would be. So the measure of those page's votes will be
increased.... and so on (with the pages they link to through the link
structure). The effect is diluted as it moves down through the links.
If we could point our web browser at page B and through clicking on
the links, get to page A, then so could the Google algorithm (at least
one of the pages linking to page A has become more important). If a
page linking to page A is more important, then so is its vote, and
subsequently page A becomes more important! So by linking to page B,
page A has made itself more important, thus creating PageRank
Feedback."
An interesting thing about PR Feedback is that you can use it to your
advantage via the internal navigational structure of your site. Chris
believes it's very important to keep as much PageRank within your site
as possible. Therefore, he recommends only linking out to other sites
from low PageRank pages of your site. He gives some nice examples of
ways to do this. Personally, I feel that if you already have your
links pages set up and working for you, it might not be
worth changing things to ensure that your links pages are low PR
pages. However, for those of you who like to take advantage of any
and all possible optimization techniques, it's certainly something to
think about!
All in all, what I took away from this document is that your PageRank
or your Link Popularity strategy should not necessarily be focused on
finding pages with the highest PageRank to link to you. For PageRank
purposes, all links are good, although some may be better than others.
Common sense tells me that getting links from any relevant sites that
seem good and appropriate for your site can only help your PageRank.
This document seems to prove my common sense opinion. The thing is,
one never knows who in the future may be linking to the sites that
link to your site. So if a particular page has a low PR when you
first get linked, it's very possible that in a few months that site's
PR will be higher, and will pass some of that increase on to your
site. Plus, as your own PageRank increases due to your linking
strategies, you'll be passing your PR on to your linking partners, and
things will come full circle!
You also must remember that even though you may be tempted to want to
request links to your site from mostly high PR sites, in actuality,
these links will be harder to obtain. For instance, the Rank Write
site is a high PR site with the main page having a PR of eight (the
links page is a PR seven). However, we are extremely picky with what
sites we will link to. In fact, we rarely add links to sites that
request them. Most of the links on our site are there because we
found them on our own and believe they are cream of the crop sites.
I'm quite sure that Google counts on this sort of thing happening. If
we linked to every single SEO resource on the net, whether good or bad
or somewhere in between, our own site would lose some of its
credibility. In order for us to maintain our high level of authority,
we have to be very picky about our outbound links. I'm sure that other
high PR sites do the same thing. The "pickiness" of our links is what
makes them so valuable.
The moral of the story is that if you have a new site, chances are
that most high PR sites will not simply add a link to yours just
because you've offered them a reciprocal link. You will need to search
out sites that are on the same "level" as your site because they will
be more likely to exchange links with you. Don't worry, though...if
you have a great site, and the sites that link to you also contain
valuable content, you'll still see a benefit in PageRank as the whole
lot of you eventually become more popular. Once again, it all comes
down to making your site the best it can be!
Jill
~~~Send Us Your Questions~~~
If you have questions about online copywriting or search engine optimization (or both!), just zip us an email to questions@rankwrite.com. We've had some folks ask if their question
was "too basic" to be printed - and you don't have to worry about
that! There are no "stupid" search engine optimization or copywriting
questions, so ask away!
