PageRank – When to Spread and When to Focus it
Posted by admin on July, 6th 2010
Google’s PageRank algorithm was Google’s only ranking factor when it first started. As it only focused on link popularity Google was originally called “BackRub” a name which luckily was changed!
PageRank is also known as “Link Juice” to SEO enthusiasts, every time a website links to your website they pass on some link power (link juice) and promotes your site up the search engine results. You can get higher PageRank by gaining links from other sites but there’s a twist to the tale; a website with higher PageRank passes on more link juice than a low PageRank site. In real terms this could mean that 1000 links from small personal websites could be worth the same value as one link from a news website! You can imagine that everyday thousands of people would link to the latest gossip on news or magazine websites, every one of these links will pass on power onto the news websites and they have incredible PageRank power.
When a website links out to another website it doesn’t lose any power itself, it just gives out more power to the site it links too. Let’s say a website had a PageRank power of 1000 and it linked to 5 external websites on it’s homepage, each website will be given a power of 200 (1000/5) and the original website will still have the power of 1000.
Another thing every SEO’er should know about PageRank is that each page is treated separately. If everyone linked to a website’s homepage then this would receive all the power, if they all linked to an ‘inner’ sub-page then this that page, not the homepage would receive all the link power.
Once link power is added toward specific webpages that power will be passed within the internal links of the website. Now if you have an important homepage then you should ensure that every page on your website links back to the homepage and passes through a lot of link power to it. Top selling items on an ecommerce store should perhaps be linked to in the sidebar on every page of the website, this would make that specific page rank higher in Google when the relevant keywords are searched for. Categories are useful tools to pass on PageRank as they are usually linked to within navigation bars and/or footer links, a website selling different sports equipment can ensure that each sport has a relatively even amount of PageRank to each category page even if only certain sports are linked towards.
So if you are selling one product/service then focus your PageRank onto the main page of your website by linking to it from every other page and blog post. If you have a range of products then create categories for your products and make sure that they are linked to from the main navigation bar and/or footer. Best selling products/services should be linked to from every page on the website as well so they have more link power in Google’s search results.
The internal links of your website should also have descriptive Anchor text as that also plays a big role in SEO. If you have a webpage about ‘Rainbow Umbrellas’ then link to it using the Anchor text “Rainbow Umbrellas” it’s simple!
I will be writing another blog post on Anchor text in the upcoming days so I’ll see you again soon,
Real Web SEO
Related Posts
- Google PageRank (PR) Update!
At last, Google have updated their PageRank score on web-pages across the whole of the internet! The last Google Toolbar PageRank update was way back on the 2nd of April 2010 and it’s been a huge wait this time around with 2009 having 5 updates and 2010 having only one. You can quickly tell the [...]
- Using Google PageRank to avoid un-trusted websites
Websites are like friends, if you hang out with the wrong crowd then you can soon find yourself in trouble! What other websites are linked to yours either by you linking to them or them linking to you? Are you part of a spamming network of interlinking spam sites or selling links? We have seen [...]
- Anchor Text for Keyword Rankings
You probably know that the number of external links effects your search engine rankings but do you know the importance of what those links say? The ‘anchor text‘ is the text displayed on an a link for example here is a link to RealWebSEO.com with the anchor text “SEO Nottingham”: SEO Nottingham The text on [...]
- Getting the most out of High PR Backlinks
When getting a backlink from another site what’s the first thing you look for? Google PageRank? Yahoo In-link Checker? NoFollow tags? Many SEO workers miss out a very important statistic: The Number of Out-Going Links Out-going links give you a good indication of how much power each link is worth, the less out-going links there [...]
- Why links take time to Mature in Google
According to trusted SEO sources links can take between 2-6 months to fully mature in Google, but why? The time it takes SEO to take effect can be frustrating but it holds back some very clever techniques to maximise profits from SEO and also people who want to run tests on Google’s algorithm. IF links [...]
Find out more about Juno Blinds
Remote control and electric blinds by Controliss
Leave a Comment