Links and How It Affects Your PageRank
Before we discuss further about this important post, try to remember that whenever you hear the word “PageRank” it means Google, it’s a trademark of Google and it belongs only to Google (exclusive rights), not to any search engines. So why are we focussing on Google today? Well, because Google’s search engine holds almost 78% (July 2009) share in the internet and it is but right that Google has earned this post exclusively. So don’t worry about the news regarding Yahoo and MSN (Bing) going together, I believe Google will be the heavyweight champion for a very long time.
What is PageRank (PR)
PageRank (PR) is the value that Google assigns to one of your webpages, this represents how important that webpage in the internet. Please take note that your webpage is being ranked and not the website as a whole. So how does Google calculate PR? Quite simple, it evaluates incoming (inbound) links to your website, but of course it doesn’t mean the more links the merrier. In Google’s understanding, these inbound links are pointing to a webpage which has its own importance. The link is saying that “this webpage is important because it’s informative, it’s relevant, it’s of good quality, it has useful content, it has passed certain criteria, or it’s very valuable…” In short, inbound links are considered votes to one of your webpages because of the reasons stated above. Now to evaluate that link, Google also considers the source of the link or vote, the value of the vote depends on the reputation of the voter (website). If the website is spammy, it can give you more harm than good, so be careful in your campaign. Take note, it is a web page that is being voted and it is also a web page that is casting the vote not the websites themselves.
How Does PR Affects My Website
Now that you know what PR is all about, you might want to start your campaign right away to gather all the votes that you need. Continuing, there are two ways for you to land on the front page of search results. First, by having a nice PR (PageRank Technology) and secondly by having unique good quality content in your website (Hypertext-Matching Analysis), you may read the full story in Google’s website entitled Technology Overview. So don’t be surprised why websites with zero PR lands on the top ten of search results, because the content of their website is relevant to what the searcher is looking for based on Google’s analysis.
Now, Google says that if your PR is good, your chances of landing in the frontpage of top results is more likely, isn’t that lovely. Nice traffic from people who needs you your information the most. Well it’s ony right to land on the top, after all websites have voted for you. Getting those votes are not that easy, it requires time, effort, discipline and money, but sometimes it’s fun and entertaining. Acquiring unsolicited one way inbound link is unparalleled and it’s the most rewarding link of all, it’s not difficult to acquire it, all you need to do is write unique useful articles in your site that others may use. Every webmasters’ dream is to have the best traffic in the web, the traffic that search engines deliver and this is what a good PR can bring.
