Google PageRankPlease enter a website URL (such as http://www.google.com) below.What is Google PageRank?Google PageRank is a major part of the methodology that Google uses to establish what websites are worth listing at the top of search results. In particular, PageRank reflects two basic things: reliability and popularity. The popularity component is derived from how often a site is linked to by other trusted (as in, high PageRank) websites. The reliability component is derived from constant search indexing by Google to establish that content is not being generated simply to trick the search engine. What drives PageRank?Although Google's PageRank algorithm is a trade secret and is tweaked on an ongoing basis, a few components of PageRank are fairly obvious from SEO (Search Engine Optimization) research. Freshness of contentBy far the biggest thing Google is looking for is fresh content. A website that is regularly updated with news, articles, blog and events will quickly gain PageRank versus an otherwise similar but static website. All websites should consider some form of content management system to ensure they can easily add news content on a regular basis. In fact, that's why my business is called Pro Content and Design. Content comes first. Age of the website The website's age has a fairly significant influence, especially for websites that are treated as reliable, but don't present a lot of fresh content. Likewise, young websites will gain quickly as they age as long as they are not incurring penalties for using black hat SEO techniques or are just sloppily organized. Search engine optimization Websites should be built in an organized manner. While SEO often gets a bad name, it is not inherently bad. It's just used by bad people. Google actively encourages white hat SEO efforts. An organized structure -- emphasizing headers, titles, robust content and a system of internal links that does not have dead ends -- is important. Inbound links from reliable websites Google wants search results from popular websites. The easiest way to figure out if a website is popular is to follow links from other websites. However, this has given rise to what is known as link farming, the practice of building websites purely so Google can follow the links into other websites and thereby improve the end website's PageRank. To curb link farming, Google's search spider, GoogleBot, shuffles through the code of websites and evaluates them for common black hat methods. Those sites that turn up as link farms are then blacklisted and are not used to calculate PageRank. This is the equivalent of internet hell, and should be avoided at all costs. Google wants good links to your website from good websites with good content. Google wants a robust marketplace of ideas, because pulling items out of that marketplace is how Google pays its bills. © 2008 Pro Content and Design. All rights reserved. |
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