The importance of Page Rank

Page Rank or PR as it is commonly known is what really defines the location of a website on a Google search results page. A large part of SEO efforts should be directed to this area, because it is sometimes easier to work on than tearing your hair out trying to figure out keywords.

To view your page’s PageRank you can download the Google Toolbar or use an online service like PR Checking Tool.

In simple terms PR defines how popular your website is. The more popular it is the higher up it shows on searches. The simple logic behind this is “if the site is popular, then it must be important”.

Surprisingly, this simple logic has driven the optimization efforts on websites for many years now. A high PR number also means that bots give you priority to be crawled over as opposed to lower ranked sites. This in turn results in the newest information being displayed in the summary of search results.

Although many shortcuts and loopholes to abuse this system have been found by web developers, over the years Google has steadily plugged them all. Now, the system basically looks at how many backlinks you have. In other words, “how many sites are linking to you?” The more you have the better your PR. So what you have to work on is building up links that point back to your site from other websites. You should try to get higher ranked sites to link to you as that gives more weight to your backlinks.

However, if you link back to any of these sites you will be penalized as it is viewed as a reciprocal link by the system. You will also be penalized for linking to notorious (in terms of abusing the system) websites. Usually these sites can be easily recognized by their PR status, which is Zero.