Google Pagerank

The astoundingly huge number of websites on the Internet today has brought about a correspondingly huge demand to find ways to rise above the competition. The race is on among the various websites to consistently rank high in the search engine results pages or SERPs of the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

For websites that rely on a healthy influx of visitors such as monetized blogs and other income generating websites, the primary focus is on how to draw in a large number of people on a consistent basis. For this particular purpose, achieving a high Google Pagerank has proven to be an effective course of action.

How Google Pagerank Started

Google PageRank is the result of the combined efforts of two Stanford University programmers named Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who developed the ranking system in the mid 90’s. It took the two of them 3 years to devise an algorithm that could rank webpages numerically depending on a certain set of factors, which we will cover in more detail later on in this article.

The first successful prototype was finally finished in 1998, after which they went on to establish the Google search engine. Over the years, Google PageRank has become the de facto standard by which their search engine ranks individual webpages.

The Google Pagerank Algorithm over the years

The original Google PageRank algorithm that was developed by Page and Brin was actually a lot different than the one that is commonly used today. A great many changes have been implemented in the course of its history, and while the original algorithm can readily be viewed on many websites all over the Internet, the one that is actually used today is somehow shrouded in mystery.

Google Pagerank defined

Google PageRank is quite simply a system by which websites are ranked by a number from 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest possible ranking. A good way of looking at it is that a high Google Pagerank is somewhat like being highly regarded by the community–in this case the online community. A higher Google Pagerank means that your website enjoys a higher vote of confidence by Google. In relation to this, any links from websites that have a high Google Pagerank sites also enjoy this “trusted” privilege.

How Google PageRank affects your website

In today’s current cyber climate of fierce competition and overcrowding, a high Google Pagerank, can spell the difference between your websites eventual success or failure. A website that aims to generates a healthy flow of revenue through the continuous influx of new visitors, should definitely take PageRank very seriously.

Many people have the mistaken notion that a high Google PageRank automatically assures a high SERP ranking. This is not the case at all, and the reality is that a high Google Pagerank has very little to do with even Google’s search engine results, and other search engines do not even take this factor into consideration.

What Google PageRank can be useful for is for websites that rely on a good flow of traffic such as the monetized blogs that we mentioned earlier. A high Google Pagerank can affect everything from how much you are able to charge advertisers to place ads on your website, to how much you can eventually sell your website for. If you have a high enough ranking, you can even charge other sites for the privilege of linking to their site. 

How to achieve high Google PageRank

Numerous techniques have been devised over the years to help websites achieve a high Google Pagerank, but the most effective way to do that is still by doing what every good blog should do in the first place, and that is to provide quality content.

Another factor that you should keep in mind is that Google PageRank is heavily dependent on links. Both incoming and outgoing links have major roles to play in your PageRank. Every type of link that you can gather–including linkbacks, trackbacks, and backlinks are taken into consideration. The combined value of these incoming links has a lot to do with achieving a high Google PageRank.

But then again, you should also as much as possible gather links from websites that have a high Google Pagerank. The value of a link depends on the ranking of that particular site that you are linking from. You could have plenty of links from websites that either don’t have a PageRank or have a relatively low one, and these links may not be as effective as only a handful of links from sites that have high Google Pageranks. The converse is also true: the higher your PageRank is, the more valuable your site will be to other websites who link to it.

One other thing that you should consider is that the older your website is, the more trusted and favorable it is to Google. A website with plenty of pages, a lot of incoming links, and also plenty of internal links to other pages within your website–all these are well regarded by Google. It is easy enough to link to other pages within your site; a good way to do that is by featuring a “recent post” section somewhere on your opening page.

Many people have actually been known to buy incoming links from sites that have a high Google PageRank. This is not really a good idea for many reasons, some of them being that they cost money, and is therefore not really financially feasible for a new website, and more seriously, when Google gets wind of your actions, you may be penalized or suspended.

The bottom line

Quite simply, the most effective and efficient ways to achieve a high Google PageRank is by getting linked to by plenty of websites AND by hosting quality content. Having plenty of quality content will not only attract more links to your website, it will also require more pages, which will in turn make your website more attractive to Google