Page rank was invented by Larry Page, co-founder of Google. Page rank is intended to measure the importance of a website on the internet and is sculpted by the amount of links a page has pointing at it, and the quality of those links. It is not a measurement of how relevant a page is to a particular term...it just measures the importance of that page. Therefore, by increasing the page rank of a web page, we can increase the importance of that page. However, if the page is not relevant to the search phrase in question, it won’t show up in the results no matter how high the page rank is.
The page rank you can see displayed on the toolbar of your web browser is different to the actual page rank used by Google to calculate the results. The toolbar page rank goes from 0-10 where as the real page rank can run into the millions. The difference between the two values in unknown, however we do know that the toolbar page rank is not linear. A toolbar page rank of 6 is not twice the value of 3. An increase of 2-3 is fairly easy, whereby an increase from 4-5 would take a considerable amount more effort. From this we can’t assume that if a publisher has a website with a page rank of 5 and their competitor has a site with page rank 6, that the difference is neither large nor small. It could be that their real page rank is miles away, or maybe that they are actually quite close.
Page rank is definitely a grey area for SEO’s, and the calculation changes regulary. However it is safe to assume that the value of page rank is still vital in search engine rankings, and also that it measures the importance of a website, not the relevance. As this is the case, Link building is still of upmost importance to gaining a website higher rankings. Gaining high quality links from authoritative websites will no doubt increase your page rank and also your position in the results. It is also vital that you have a good variation of domains linking to your site. A broad link profile is always the best.
When coming up with a link building strategy, it is important that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Try to have a varied approach; there are many ways in which to build links. Below is a list of four approaches that could be used together to produce a healthy link profile:
1. Links from authoritative domains
Possibly the most important step. Try to identify which domains are the most ‘important’ in your field, and how you could go about striking up a relationship and gaining a link. Examples could include relevant trade bodies or education centres.
2. Directories
Submitting your site to directories is a good way of gaining links from a large amount of different domains. Be careful when paying for links, this can be a dodgy tactic, and always make sure you place your site in the most relevant category.
3. Social Media
Setting up social media profiles and optimising them can be a great way of gaining links. Avoid being spammy and try to be ‘natural’ and you should reap the benefits.
4. Blogging
Setting up and writing a good quality blog can be another great tactic. Remember content is king, so keep your blog updated and full of great information and hopefully you’ll find people will want to link to your blog.
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