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Google's Page Rank metric is a simple 0 to 10 scale of the "importance" for any given page, and perhaps it is it's simplicity that seduces people to obsess over this little number. But what exactly is it, how should you use it?
Page Rank first presented in a research paper by Google Founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page in their paper, "An anatomy of a large scale hyertextual web search engine" Page Rank has become a bit of an obsession with some web masters and internet marketeers, who perhaps lose sight of the fact that it is only a part of the whole ranking algorithm. So what exactly is Page Rank? It's formula is this: PR(A) = (1-d) + d ( (PR(T1)/C(T1))+...+(PR(Tn)/C(Tn)) ) where - PR(A) is the Page Rank of page A
- PR(T1)is the Page Rank of page T1
- C(T1) is the number of outgoing links from the page T1
- d is the damping factor between 0 and 1, usually set to 0.85
The Page Rank of a page is therefore the sum of the Page Ranks of all pages linking to it (or incoming links), divided by the number of links on each of those pages (outgoing links). So what? From an internet marketing viewpoint, as is widely known, incoming links are good. Another thing the algorithm tells us is that no incoming link can have a negative effect. At worst, it can have no effect at all. There has been a good deal of speculation about "bad neighbourhood" links, but certainly from the Page Rank algorithm, your site cannot be brought down by bad incoming links, and this passes my logic test for any SEO speculation, in that it makes sense. As a site owner, you cannot control who links to you, so you should not be actively penalised by the action of others. Secondly the fewer outgoing links on a page that links to you, the better. You get twice the Page Rank passed to you from a page with only 5 links on it, compared to one with 10. This explains why many people seeking a reciprocal link are now offering to write a new page of content for your site. They want to put a big juicy external link to their site from a page on your site that has few, if any, other external links! You can also make Page Rank work for you by ensuring that pages on your site that have many external links have a lower relative Page Rank to reduce the amount of Page Rank that is leaked. Finally, if we assume that a new page in Google's index starts life with Page Rank 1, then by simply creating more content we increase total Page Rank of the site! A site of 10 pages will have a combined Page Rank of 10, a 20 page site, Page Rank 20. So by creating new (great!) content and controlling the distribution of Page Rank we improve the Page Rank of our site as a whole. Remember that Page Rank takes NO account for RELEVANCE of the search term queried. At best it is one (admittedly important) part of a larger search ranking algorithm. Also bear in mind that the Page Rank score that Google gives us access to is, by their own admission up to 3 months out of date so should not be held in too high an esteem. I don't judge a site solely by its page rank. Webmasters should not be obsessed by this little metric. Make sure your internal and external link strategy follows the advice above, but then make sure that the rest of your internet marketing and SEO strategy is sound. |
