Top 5 factors that determine PageRank

Most of you are probably familiar with Google's PageRank. For those who do not know a lot about PageRank, it is a ranking system by Google which ranks individual sites from 0 to 10...10 being the highest. Google's ranking system is probably the most used rank system on the Internet. It is used by advertisers to determine the importance of a page they want to advertise on. It is used by domain buyers and sellers to determine the value of a website. Furthermore, it is also used by common people to determine the popularity of a web page.

pagerank joke
Note: Some site owners might see "N/A" when they check their Page Rank. This means that your site is new and that you would have to wait till the next Page Rank update to get your page rank.

Without any further delay, lets start with the Top 5 factors that determine PageRank. Please note that the factors are not ranked in any particular order. Fifth factor may not be any less important than the first factor!


1. Backlinks
You would have noticed that websites have a "link" section and blogs commonly have a "Blogroll" or "Friends" section. Why is that? It is a technique to increase your Page Rank. If site A has a link to Site B then according to Google, site A is voting for site B. The more the votes a site has, the higher the page rank will be. One important thing to note is that not all links/votes are worth the same. If you get your link on Google (highly impossible) then that will impact your page rank greatly compared to your link on a cheap new blog. Thus you should always try to get backlinks from sites that have a higher PR than you or have at least the same PR.

2. Traffic
It is important to have high amount of traffic coming to a website in order to have a good PR. It is highly unlikely that a site with low PR will get a lot of traffic but there are sometimes when that happens. Most of the time, good PageRank and high traffic go hand in hand. So if you want to increase your PageRank then you would have to first increase your traffic through different marketing techniques. I would not elaborate any further on this factor since I think it is very obvious.

3. Keywords
Keywords is a very broad term when it comes to Search Engine Optimization but what do I really mean here? Keywords are a set of words that describe your site. For example, my blog has keywords "SEO", "Marketing", "Blogging", "Moneymaking" etc. Your site may have something else depending on your content. Keywords at different places have different importance. You can place keywords in URL, title of your main page, description meta tag, headings etc. You would actually need to have a lot of knowledge about SEO to get this one completely. The first thing that you should do is add a meta tag description to your site or blog.

4. Pages indexed
This is also a very important factor when it comes to determining PageRank. The greater the number of pages indexed by search engines (especially Google), the greater your PR. To get your pages indexed, you will have to manually submit your pages to search engines. Doing this will not only help you get a higher PageRank but will also drive more traffic to your site.

5. Unique Content
Yup believe it or not, but content is extremely important. Do not expect to start a useless blog and get a high PageRank even after submitting your sites to search engines and getting a lot of links. This technique may have worked for some but it may not work for you. You must write unique and interesting content on your site or blog in order to have a good PR. Remember, if you keep writing copied content then it is possible that your site may possibly get banned by search engines completely and then you will be left with hardly any organic traffic. Furthermore, unique articles will encourage other bloggers or webmasters to link to your site or articles and thus will get you more backlinks.

This was my list of 5 factors that I think are most important when it comes to determining pagerank. One thing to always remember is that all these factors are interconnected. For example, if you write unique content then you will get more visitors and your site's popularity will increase which will help you get a higher PageRank.

There are tons of other factors that are useful in determining a websites's PageRank. If you think that there are some other factor(s) that are more important then the once mentioned then please express your opinion.

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More Info about Google Ranking

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was happy you put unique content in your article, that is the most important one, but the others also have equal weight. Its just that people often overlook the need for new and unique content.

Webmaster said...

so informative article, i wanna translate to turkish for http://googletrafik.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

To put it bluntly, there are only 2 factors that determine PageRank. Number of inbound links and the weight of those links.

It's important not to confuse Content Score with PageRank Score. Your keyword density and keyword proximty play a very important role when determining Content Score, but have nothing to do with PageRank.

Although I agree that high traffic can help in increasing PageRank by generating "natural" backlinks, it is not a factor when calculating PageRank.

It was stated, by Google, that having more pages and posts on your site will increase your "potential" for higher PageRank, but having hundreds or thousands of pages will not automatically give you PR. As I mentioned before, it depends on quality and number of backlinks.

It is a common misconception among Internet marketers to believe that the content of a site, and the anchor text of hyperlinks play a role in determining PageRank. Although they are important when determining Content Score, they are also not factors when calculating PageRank.

Dan said...

I think you are right but you can't deny the fact that without good content, it is possible to get a good PR. I mean few webmasters may have managed it somehow but it is not common.

Also, what I was trying to say was that everything is related to each other. Unique content = visitors = popularity = backlinks etc

I would like to thank you for your great input.

Anonymous said...

"Unique content = visitors = popularity = backlinks etc"

Agreed. But in retrospect, I should have stated that I was referring to the technicalities of PageRank. All the factors you mentioned here will inevitably affect PageRank, although indirectly.

I only meant to clarify that the PageRank algorithm does not include content.

Dan said...

I am not too sure about Google's algorithm as they like to keep it very secret. But I think you are right.

Thank you for reading my post and taking interest.

Anonymous said...

Question - How do trackbacks affect PR? Are they treated like backlinks?

Dan said...

the word trackback may be a little confusing for you. Think of it this way. Trackbacks are established when someone writes about a post that you have written.

For that new post to count as a trackback, there should be a link to your original post...and since there is a link, it will count as a backlink. However, inner pages of a blog are not worth as much as the homepage. Thus, even though that trackback will count as a backlink, it will not have much value.

But overall, it means that people like your articles and you will be getting more visitors. :)

Anonymous said...

Great information here, I always wondered what the factors in PR were. I still have a way to go with my relatively new blog. I get a resonable amount of traffic, but yet to see a PR > 0.

Pete Bennett said...

Nice site and traffic ideas

Pete

www.msofficeexperts.com

affiliatedomain said...

I can only thank you for the great contribution.

Amarnath said...

well can we exchnage the links...
www.amarnath-r.blogspot.com

Yanto said...

Well, I believe writing personal experience in blogging or in adsense is the real fresh unique content. Thank you for sharing the precious tips. I am happy to have found this blog. :) The tips you provide are easy to understand and follow.

http://acespower.blogspot.com

Dan said...

@Yanto - Yeah you are right Yahoto. Personal experience translates very well into unique content. I am glad you like my blog. Keep visiting. :)

Anonymous said...

Nice article, but I don't agree in everything for you. That's the beauty of reading various blogs.

Anonymous said...

thanks for explaining pr simply

Meredian Mortgages said...

all the factors mentioned above are right but keyword and unique content are the main i think BTW i use the keyword stuff a lot and it's really very helpful.

seo marketing said...

This is a great reading. Thanks for sharing this information. We have few readers who would like to read this stuff. We will pass it on to our readers for more feedback. We are dealing with seo firms and would like to get feedback from you too. This is a nice postings indeed. Thanking You.

SEOP.com said...

Thanks for sharing these info. Now that I know, I better start working on these to increase my PR.

seo lahore said...

Thanks for sharing.

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