SEO - What is Google PageRank and Why You Should Care About It

If you have a new website and you want people to visit it, then you are probably going to be interested in learning about PageRank. So what is Google PageRank, and why does it matter? Well pretty much, PageRank is what the search site Google uses to determine the quality and popularity of a webpage. Thus, it really is choosing if the site will appear at the top of the search engines results. So if you want your site to come up in search results, then you should care about what PageRank things about your site!

When PageRank first came out, it usually ranked the sites with the highest keyword density at first.
During that period someone with basic seo skills was able to get a website in the top 10 results without to much hassle. People were using that weakness to rank their sites higher. Now that time is over and in order to get in the top 10 results on google you have to work harder and build a lot of back links to keep your head out of the water and generate some google organic traffic from google.

So how does Google PageRank rank your website now? Well, in theory, Google thinks that if a page has a lot of links leading to it, then it must be a pretty important site. Thus, if you have a lot of links out there on other sites leading back to your website, it is going to do wonders for your search engine ranking. In fact, you can think of a link on another site kind of like a vote for your site. So, say website A has a link to website B; then it would be like website A was voting for website B! Of course, it does not just stop there. Sites that have a higher ranking have more weight when voting. Thus, if you are linked to a lot of small, low ranked sites and then another site is just linked to one high ranked site, they could be ranked above you.

Of course, with any system there are flaws. People tend to post their links anywhere to try and get their ranking up. In fact, if you have ever come across a web page that has nothing except a ton of links on it, then you just uncovered a link farm. This is a site that is made to not be found by people. The only things that usually find this page are the Google Crawlers. Thus, they find the links and count it as a vote for another site. However getting your link on a link farm does not count as a positive vote for your web site. Keep in mind that all links are not created equal! Link farms are considered spamming by Google so try to stay away from link farms. In fact, getting your links to several link farms websites may get you banned from some search engines and especially Google.

To Your Success!