If you are or want to be an SEO expert Google PageRank is simply a must-know subject and if you know nothing or very little about it you really need to keep reading. I believe any SEO expert needs to know about each form of ranking concerning Google in order to provide the best service for their clients.PageRank or PR is Google’s system of ranking and then indexing pages of your site, it was developed by the Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
The Google Toolbar
This complex algorithm is the heart of Google’s indexing and is the most difficult to master. Google uses the Internet link structure to assign pages relevant page rank. Pages that are considered to be of high quality will be represented by a higher PR. A page PR will have a massive impact on where it is ranked in the SERPs and therefore will greatly affect the amount of traffic your site receives.
The Internet link Structure
If you want to view an approximate PR of your site, either download the Google toolbar or use an SEO tool like Smartrank. This will give you a figure between however, this is only an approximate page rank and your true PR is something that is only known to Google and kept top secret.
Google PR
An important aspect to remember is that Google PR is calculated for each page of your site and the PR of all your pages will participate in the calculation of PR on your domain. Your PR will be firmly based on the number of quality links pointing to your site, however, can be nullified by the page the link is coming from. For instance, if the page the links are coming from has a large number of links on it, the PR given to your site will be less, therefore your perfect link will come from another site with very few links.
Real PageRank
Real PR ranges from 0.15 up to a very large number. Most Seo experts agree that the link between toolbar PR and real PR is based on the logarithmic scale as below:-
The main thing to observe with the above is that the jumps between PR get harder and harder the further up the scale you progress, therefore getting a PR should be fairly easy however the jump to 4 will require a lot more effort, and 5 even more! Also as you can see from the above scale every page is awarded at least a PR 0.15 even if it has no links pointing to it, however, this is simply a theory amongst SEO experts.
Local Rank
This form of ranking is an algorithm that re-ranks the results returned for a certain query based on the interconnectivity between the results. To put it more simply the algorithm is run on the return results pages only and it will rank the site with the most links within the results pages. However, it will not rank links from your own internal urls or to be more specific from the same IP address. So your best bet is to get links from pages with a PR that rank in the index for your chosen keyword.
Software that differentiates between expert and authority sites. The way it does this is by assessing the link structure. If you have a lot of outbound links your site will be classed as an expert site, if you have a lot of inbound links your site will be recognized for its authority. Authority sites always rank best with the major search engines.
How to use Site Structure to Benefit your PR
I could do a whole post on this if not two, and I intend to at some point in the near future. What I want to say very quickly under this heading is that PR can be passed between pages of your own site. Simply knowing this makes it possible to organize your link structure in such a way that allows all pages of your site to benefit. Therefore you should build links to all of your pages from external sources but then also make sure all your pages pass that link juice to other pages on your site namely the home page. This will give your top-level domain an added boost. To put all this into perspective you should try and remember the following formula of how a higher PR helps your overall ranking within the SERPs.
