Improving Pagerank

Understanding Pagerank and How to Improve your Rank

Get the low-down on Pagerank, what it means to your website, and how you can get your number up.

• Search Engines
• Web Design

NZS.com has dedicated a lot of time to finding New Zealand online content. It's become evident to us that a lot of Kiwi sites are jolly hard to find. We regularly meet people at events etc that hand us their business card with their Web site on it. You take a look and see the site has no Google PageRank. This is generally because their site has no links to it from anywhere on the Web at all!

It's a real shame to see this, because often they've spent thousands of dollars creating a site that looks pretty swish. It's just marketing money down the drain, and in the end gives the Web a bad rap. I can imagine them saying at some point "We've spent a lot of time and money developing this site, but we get nothing much out of it, the Web is a waste of time."

To stop your Web site being invisible, make sure you get it linked from high profile directories and content sites. What's the point of having a site if people can't find you?! Also, if you're a bit more serious about it, then commit to an ongoing Web site promotion program - for most Web sites this is the key to getting a good return on your investment.

PageRank is a tool used by Google to rank all pages on the Web. The higher your PageRank, the better. A high rank indicates that the great G views your page as more important than a page with a lower rank. The Google-meister describes PageRank as: "using [the Web's] vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value."

How does it work?
In a nutshell, Google reads all the inbound links to a page. For instance, if page X links to page Y, Google sees this as a vote, by Page X for page Y.

Sounds like an online democracy?
Well, these elections aren't 100% democratic. Google doesn't just go by the number of links to a page; it looks at the importance of the page that has cast the vote. Votes cast by pages with a high PageRank have greater weighting than those cast by pages with a lower PageRank. Google also takes into account many other factors: how long the links remain active, the rate at which your site is gaining links, click throughs to your site from Google searches and the stickiness of your site (how well you can retain your visitors).

And the winner is?
After analysing a page's inbound links, Google assigns the page a rank out of 10. To see the PageRank of your site and others, simply install the PageRank reader on your Google Toolbar.

So what can I do to get a better PageRank?
The good news is that you can do things to improve your PageRank:

• Fill your site with useful, informative and interesting content that users will want to share
• Exchange links with other quality sites - getting highly ranked sites to link to yours will improve your ranking, so make sure you're swapping links with well ranked sites. Note: if you link to sites that have been delisted by Google, your site may also be removed from Google's index
• Submit your site to online directories, like the NZS.com directory
• Let people know about your site by adding your Web address to your business stationery, email signature, press releases and advertising
• Maintain your site, as letting your site become inaccessible for periods of time may affect your rank

Search Engine Optimisation images from Flickr: Pagerank, Transparent Screen and Mac + Starbucks.