Understanding Page Rank
April 19, 2006
Page rank is Google’s way of measuring the importance or relevance of a certain page. It was develop in Stanford University by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Page Rank is a trademark of Google and continues to play a major role in many search engine tools. Although it is not the only factor that Google uses to rank a certain page, it is the most important value in ranking the site. The basic principle in ranking the importance of a particular page goes like this. If page X links to page Y it is casting a vote for page Y. The more votes cast to page Y the more important it becomes. Also, the vote that is cast by page X will play an important role in the calculation of the Page Rank for page Y. The content, text used, the kind of language it is written or the size of a page has very little importance in the calculation. Meaning, only vote counts, but the not all votes are created equal. A vote from a site with more page rank, will count more then a vote from a site with little or no page rank. Further understanding can be read on the Introduction to Website Statistics.
In calculating the Page Rank of a page, there is a standard equation that is being followed. Page Rank rates a page from the lowest 0 to the highest 10. One of the strategies in having a higher Page Rank is that the content or the new material in a webpage is linking to other pages with high Page Rank. This will mean a higher Page Rank for the new page. Moreover, if you have higher Page Rank, you will have a chance to be in the top of Google’s priority list. Obviously, this will be very beneficial to website owners because this will increase the number of traffic to their site meaning more visitors. However, this idea gives rise to the selling of links.
Although this can be more expensive, it can be an effective marketing strategy. The higher the Page Rank the higher the price of the link, meaning more revenue for sites with higher Page Rank compared to sites with lower Page Rank. Usually a site with Page Rank of 7 will have a selling value that could range from two hundred to three hundred dollars a month. This is the reason why many site owners with higher Page Rank sell their links because of the big amount of money they can get. However, Google has announced publicly that they do not encourage this kind of thing. If you are caught buying and selling links for the purpose of conferring, your link will be devalued that is your link will be ignored in the calculation of other pages Page Rank or even worst banned from Google.
Even though the idea mention above is one of strategies available to increase the Page Rank of your page, they are considered dangerous and can result in your site being penalized. There are many proper ways to increase the ranking of your site; one of which is a good content page. Moreover, it is a better idea to get many links from sites with low Page Rank rather than to desperately try to get one link from high Page Rank sites.
If you are a web designer, it is very important that you fully understand your website statistics how Page Rank works if you do not want your site to be left behind or wake up one morning that your site cannot be found in ay search engines. Your Page Rank, in part, will determine the status of your ranking in the Google’s listing. However, it is only one of the factors in getting your site to be in the Google’s top listing. Google also combines a text-matching technique to find pages that are important and relevant to the search term. Once you can combine these tool effectively, you can and will climb up the rankings.
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