PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is also called the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E).



Google assigns a numeric weighting from 0-10 for each webpage on the Internet; this PageRank denotes your site's importance in the eyes of Google. The scale for PageRank is logarithmic like the Richter Scale and roughly based upon quantity of inbound links as well as importance of the page providing the link.

The PageRank Concept

Since the early stages of the world wide web, search engines have developed different methods to rank web pages. Until today, the occurence of a search phrase within a document is one major factor within ranking techniques of virtually any search engine. The occurence of a search phrase can thereby be weighted by the length of a document (ranking by keyword density) or by its accentuation within a document by HTML tags.

Improving Your Page Rank

There are numerous tips floating around in webmaster circles about how to improve your ranking in search engine results on Google.

*Get Those Inbound Links: Since Google ranks your pages according to the number of links pointing at your page, it stands to reason that you should try to get as many links pointing at your pages as possible. This is so obvious that I'm only mentioning it for completeness sake.

*Submit to directories and sit relax. Start one by one and submit your link in all web directories. If you can, try to give a link back (reciprocal link on your page) to free directories, some directories does not need it, but if you provide them, their owners will look for your approval first.

*Your Title Tag: Google seems to give weight to the title of your page. By title, I mean the text that is sandwiched between the HTML tags in the section of your web page. If you use a Web editor that automatically inserts a title like "New Page", remember to change it to some meaningful text with your keywords inside to reap the benefit of this feature.

*Update your website every day by adding more unique content. If you site has some information for a visitor then it is 100% chance for him to come back to your site again.

*Keyword Density: It has often been observed that Google considers keyword density a large factor in ranking pages in search engine results, more so than many other search engines. You can read more about keyword density and how you can improve it on your pages from my other article, Improving Your Keyword Density for Search Engine Positioning.

*Keyword-laden Links: According to a paper published by one of Google's founders, if the links pointing to your page has the relevant keyword text in them, it will cause your page to be ranked higher in search engine results. For example, a link with the text "Cheap Shoe Store" pointing at your site will cause your site to be listed earlier if a visitor searches for "cheap shoe store" than if the link simply said "click here". You can find a copy of the paper online at The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine.

*The Google Toolbar: The Google Toolbar can be obtained free of charge for Firefox and Internet Explorer. It gives you an idea of how important Google thinks your site is (in general) by showing the Page Rank of any page that you visit.