Google Pagerank is a score ranging from 0 to 10 given by Google and can be viewed from their toolbar, or my personal favorite, with a Firefox Plugin called Quirk SearchStatus. In addition to showing Google Pagerank Quirk SearchStatus also shows Alexa rank (not that useful) and highlights nofollow links (very useful – see my backlinking tips post). Alternatively, if you’re wanting to do a quick check you can also find out Google Pagerank via this website.

Using Paid Links for PageRank Score Boosting

Some people will sell links from high Google Pagerank pages, and this can boost pagerank, but I would strongly discourage this practice. In my personal experience artificially propping up a websites google pagerank score by what is often a link derived from an otherwise unrelated webpage does not seem to offer significant advantages in search engine results pages (serps). Not only that, but it’s also inviting trouble from Google if you get caught purchasing links.

Google PageRank Score Correlative with Good Serp Listings, but Often Not Causal

That being said, I have noticed pagerank often being correlated with a sites overall health and visibility in search engines. I believe it is actually MORE valuable to have a large number of pages with a decent pagerank than a few with a very large Google Pagerank score and many with a significant drop off.

“Deep-linking” Subpages Is Key

This former configuration appears to ultimately result in more organic search rankings and ultimately traffic as a whole, and is a product of good off-site SEO or backlink building practices. This can be achieved by getting links from a number of means such as: directory submissions of various types, so-called “social bookmarking”, and going to the hot or popular section frequently on popular web2.0 social media destinations with a high pagerank.

The key here is that more than just your website’s homepage is being backlinked, but that there are many subpages, ideally each focused on their own niche keywords which they are each individually well backlinked for. This style of linking reflects what would often occur entirely “organically” or naturally on each new post on a popular site which has visitors that read, value and enjoy the content, and then link to each post as its presented to the public. If you don’t already have a popular enough blog that your visitors give your high quality posts (“linkbait”) automatically, then you can also simulate the same experience for search engines in a true fake it until you make it fashion by ensuring that each and every “linkbait” post you  produce are targetted for appropriate keywords and then backlinked. I have several good backlinking rules of thumb that can be used consistently to produce good results, and increase your Google Pagerank, and consequently actual rank in search engine results pages (serps) as well.

Read more about the Google PageRank algorithm on Wikipedia.

Tags: backlinking, google, seo