What exactly is PageRank and what does it all mean?

PageRank is a good way to determine just how visible your website is in Google land. The better your page rank, the higher up in the organic search results you will be. That’s FREE advertising and less spend on your CPC.  Many people think the “page” in PageRank actually stands for the placement of your page within a search on Google, it does not.  PageRank is named for Larry Page, one of Google’s original founders. PageRank is very complicated score of your sites overall awesomeness according to Google.

The theory behind PageRank is that the most important pages on the internet are those pages with the most links.  Each link counts as sort of a vote from one page for another.  However, this is not the only factor used to determine your page rank and the ranking computation is complicated.  PageRank also looks at the relevance and importance of that page that is “voting”.  That means, if you are in the legal profession and you have a random link to your website from a low ranked dating website, that link isn’t going to improve your PageRank it will hurt it.  The other factors that can actually harm you is if that same site has mass quantities of links to other sites.  Low ranked pages with more links actually have LESS weight when it comes to “voting.” When it comes to links, Quality is much more important than Quantity.

Don’t try and Fool Google

Trying to build your page rank by trying to fool Google is considered Black Hat SEO technique. Black Hat SEO can cause you big trouble. Getting random links from irrelevant websites or link farms, can actually get you banned.  Often people purchase mass quantities of links in an effort to boost their SEO.  These links are often to link farms or irrelevant website that are done automatically.  This is bad for you site and your business.  And Google knows. If you aren’t consulting with a marketing professional, you could do more harm than good.  And undoing the bad can take a very long time.  Now, you can’t always control who links to you but you can control who you link to. This type of backlinking is a sure way to eventually get black listed with Google.

How can I increase my PageRank?

Increasing your PageRank, in theory, sound easy.  It’s often time consuming to do it right but if done correctly, the work pays off for years and years.  The number one way to increase your PageRank is to have quality content that other people want to link to and that Google feels is AWESOME.

If you would like for information on how to increase your PageRank, contact Swoboda Marketing.