PageRank Simplified: Part 1

PageRank is intended to help Google return search results considered “most” important by humans

When a search query is executed Google first fetches the most relevant items for that specific term and THEN sorts and displays those results based on the relevant importance or PageRank.

Google uses the linking structure of the web (built by humans) to determine the relative importance of any given webpage.

The function that Google uses to calculate PageRank is highly complex so I am not even going to get into it. You can go check it out on Wikipedia if you’re interested. There is actually quite a bit of useful information there, including some nice diagrams that may help it all sink in!

Why should you care about PageRank?

PageRank directly impacts the importance of your website in search results returned by Google – if you’re PageRank is weak – so is your website…according to Google.

It’s not enough to optimize your website for specific keywords and phrases you also have to ensure that your optimized pages are acquiring the maximum PageRank possible (both internally and externally) by designing and implementing a strong linking structure.

PageRank is all about linking!

PageRank is distributed by outbound links and acquired by inbound links…so the more unique pages that link to a specific web page > the more important that page becomes > and the more PageRank that page can then pass on to additional pages!

I’ll get more into the details on how to develop a strong linking structure in next PageRank post…until then, if you have questions fire away!

This blog is Part-1 of the series PageRank Simplified.

Tagged as: PageRank, SEO, Web Marketing