The PageRank of a website is an important aspect of search engine optimisation (SEO). By no means is it the only metric used when looking at assessing link opportunities but it is a crucial tool in the link building technique to measure the value of a website.

It refers to pages only, not domains, so for example of your homepage is PR5 this doesn’t mean you have a PR5 domain.

But what is it and how can it help your business’s overall marketing efforts?

Toolbar PageRank

This displays the site’s PageRank in the Google toolbar but it is updated at random intervals so it isn’t as up-to-date as often reported. The scaling is somewhat complex e.g. a PR7 is not 1 unit better than a PR6 but is actually x8 as important.

Real PageRank

This is used internally by Google and is a very small part of the algorithm. It is used by the search engine giant to let them know which pages are important and which it should crawl more often. It is updated multiple times a day and doesn’t reflect Toolbar PageRank at all. Never use it as the sole tool to measure a page’s quality- it is scaled from 0 to 1.

Advantages

  • Raw indicator of link popularity • Shows if the site has been penalized by Google

But don’t get confused…

PageRank is not an indicator of the value of a link prospect. It isn’t a reflection of the relevance or quality of links coming into a page, or whether a page has been flagged for spam.

What is more, PageRank is not a static reflection of a page’s quality. At one point, Google.com went from a PR10 to PR9 but surely you would still want a link from that page? And even if you have a higher PageRank that doesn’t necessarily mean you are ranking above another site.

Therefore you shouldn’t use PageRank alone as an indicator of performance- any reputable SEO firm will know that and use an array of link building techniques to achieve high quality, relevant links.

About the Author

This article was written by Custard-media.com, specialists in digital marketing. Speak to the team today about they’re fantastic SEO and link building services.