Google ranks its pages based on how important it feels they are to the internet world and PageRank is one of the ways Google measures the importance, authority and reliability of a web page. It’s also one of the many factors used to determine which pages appear in search engine result pages, and where. The higher your PageRank, the higher possibility you will rank higher on Google as you are considered an authority site. PageRank is important because it can differentiate your site from a similar site. For example if there are two websites with comparable content, inward and outbound links as well as similar on page SEO – the one with the higher PageRank will appear higher up in search engine results. This will give you the edge over the competition in your field
No one is 100% sure how PageRank is influenced (except Google of course) but it is believed that a number of factors are taken into consideration by the algorithm, such as the number of sites that link to a particular page supported by its popularity and by the quantity of inbound links. As well as the PageRank of the pages providing the links, indications also suggest that page size, time since a page was last updated, how many changes have been made to a page and text in a headline or hyperlinked anchor texts contribute to how PageRank calculates its results.
PageRank is determined by a number between 0 and 10, the least popular websites on the internet have a PageRank of 0 and the most popular earning PageRank of 10.
The main reason why you should try and increase your PageRank is so that it is seen as an authority site in your industry, not just to earn better search ranking. It isn’t a straight forward process however, requiring some good quality link building, effective on-page SEO, regularly updated and user generated content from blogs, internal link building, and good links for your inner pages, better site speed, higher conversion rates and a prominent presence in social media. All these factors should help improve your PageRank.
Links from other sites are also a great way of getting higher PageRank because the search engine crawlers will see that there are inbound links that point to your site from authoritative websites with good PageRank, therefore showing that the content on your site is recommended by quality sites. The more popular your site appears, the more you will improve its PageRank. Furthermore, when you achieve higher PageRank you will find that more people want to link to your page, which will in turn increase your popularity on the internet. In turn this will increase your ranking in the SERPs for your particular keywords.
Today, PageRank is only one of more than 200 different elements used by Google to calculate a page’s popularity, which has rendered PageRank all but dead in the water as far as development is concerned and it hasn’t been updated since November 2013. In 2014 Matt Cutts of Google hinted that no more visible updates to PageRank should be expected in the future, this does seem to be the case and was acknowledged further by Google’s John Mueller who said in a webmaster video “there will probably not be another Toolbar PageRank update ever.”
See updated information about Google PageRank on our Blog Here
