Google Pagerank Explained

byRobert-A

10.9K followers

Updated 5 years ago

Do Backlinks Help Page Rank?

Hi Folks

I had a member ask me about backlinks and what were the best ones to try for and of course would they help get their site a higher rank in the SERPs?

If you've been trying to get organic traffic then you've probably heard the term "Google Pagerank". But what is Pagerank and how does it affect search engine rankings? In this blog I will try explain and give you the answers to those questions.

First off, what is Google pagerank?

Google developed the 'pagerank' system several years ago for the purpose of estimating how important a web page is. The higher the pagerank, the more important Google thinks the webpage is. Google uses this estimation as part of its ranking algorithm.

So where does pagerank come from?

Simply put, Pagerank is all about webpages linking to other webpages.

Every page that Google indexes has a pagerank value associated with it. Every time one page links to another page, a portion of that pagerank value passes to the page it links to. It follows that the higher ranking pages pass more pagerank to the pages they link to.

What happens is that when one page links to another page, it's kinda like the page that does the linking is voting for the other page. So to get pagerank to your webpage, all you have to do is get other pages to link to it.

Pagerank is really just a mathematical calculation that determines how important a webpage is based on how important the pages that link to it are.

An important point to remember is that pagerank is passed on a page by page basis. Many website owners assume that a sites pagerank is determined by its home page. While it's true that the homepage is often the highest ranking page within a website, it doesn't have to be. Any page on a given website could rank higher than the homepage.

The myth that the homepage will have the highest pagerank comes from the fact that many website owners used to take part in reciprocal linking programs where they would exchange links to each others homepages. So, by default, the homepage wound up with the highest pagerank simply because it had the most links pointing to it.

Do Links From One Page Influence Search Engine Rankings?

Pagerank is simply not as powerful as it once was. There was a time when all you had to do to rank well was to get enough websites to link to you. Now a days the ranking algorithm is much more complex. Many other factors are taken into account. However, pagerank does still play a reasonably important role so getting backlinks is still a major task for SEO. It's just that the way we go about getting those links has changed.

How do you check a sites pagerank?

Google has a free toolbar that you can download and one of its functions is that it will display the Page Rank of any webpage you're looking at.

To finish - stay away from reciprocal linking campaigns, whatever benefit they once had is long gone.

It will always be best if you build your website to the best of your ability. This means create well written content and you'll get backlinks naturally.

Have a great New Year folks and be successful in 2019.

Robert Allan