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By definition, Google PageRank is based on the number of inbound links to a page and the PageRank from the pages on which those links are placed. It is only a small factor in the way in which Google ranks sites now. Other factors such as LocalRank have far greater importance. For example, LocalRank is a more relevant figure because it is calculated based on links from related sites, so, in effect, it reflects how much other experts in your field respect your knowledge.

The Toolbar PageRank that you see is only updated at MOST every 3 months and is not an accurate reflection of overall PageRank. Google have claimed they play with the number showing on that bar just to see reactions in the SEO community. You need to monitor traffic and how much you get and for what types of keywords to see how you are doing within organic search. PageRank is only useful as a relative measure.

Furthermore, when fretting over how to increase your PageRank, you must remember that it increases exponentially so that you need 10x more link authority to get from PR1 to PR2, 100x more link authority to go from PR2 to PR3, 1000x more link authority to go from PR3 to PR4, etc., which means far too much time spent worrying about the sheer volume of links you will need and not enough worrying about getting links from sites that can give you relevant traffic. At the end of it, even if you have obtained your 1,000 or 10,000 new links, you still may find yourself outranked by a page with much lower PR because of on-page relevance or the number of people who follow their ranking and don’t bounce back into the search results page.

Personally, I would turn off the PR on your toolbar and pay it no attention and simply work on getting good, relevant links from sites you respect.

Labels: google maps, google toolbar, inbound links, link building, link popularity, local rank, PageRank

Anyone who's been around the web design industry for a while has seen many trends in linking come and go. First there were link farms, then link exchanges, forum spam, blog comment spam, links bought and sold based on PageRank, mass production of online press releases and linkbait articles, and now leveraging of social networking.

SEO professionals spend large parts of their work life arguing about whether links have to be topical to bring benefit, whether bought links will be found and filtered by search engines or if linking out is going to lose a site its PageRank and hence its place in the search results. This all misses the point of linking in the first place - to tell users about other sites on the internet they should visit. The end result of this is a lot of bad advice floating around on the internet for small business owners about what they should or should not do when they first set up a web site, or discover the art of search engine optimisation.

Search engines originally trusted links as a means for determining the quality of a site because people tended to recommend other sites they liked. On this very simple basis the idea works incredibly well. You wouldn't send a friend or a customer to a site they wouldn't like, would you? Because a link from one good site to another good site is, inherently, a reliable recommendation, should you ever turn down that link simply because the referring site happens to sell products in a different industry? If you have a new site, and you need people to know about it, and you have a friend or a business partner with a website, why wouldn't you ask them to link to you. Even if this link is ignored by search engines, it could still bring traffic to your website.

Labels: link building, website promotion