What is Google PageRank and How it Works?
In this article I am going to discuss what a pagerank is & how it works?
First thing you have to remember is when we say pagerank it means Google Pagerank. Although the guiding principles for Google pagerank also apply to ranking algorithms of other search engines also, like Yahoo& Bing.
Google Pagerank (PR) is a numerical value ranging from zero to ten which is assigned to each & every page that exists on internet. Higher the pagerank means higher the visibility for that website in search engine result pages (SERPs)
Benefits of High Pagerank:
If your website has high PR;
- Your website will be crawled first before other websites having lower PR. It means your website contents would be indexed before your competitors. So you would have an advantage of early inclusion in Google index over your competitors.
- More pages of your website will be crawled. Google crawlers would go deeper on websites having high PR. So more & more of your website content would be indexed by Google.
- Google crawlers would visit your website more frequently. So your latest contents would be included almost immediately once you publish them on your website.
Why Google created the concept of Pagerank?
The concept of pagerank was essentially created for deciding which website should appear in search results for a given search query. So if someone is searching for say for example ‘movers & packers’ on Google. How Google decides what are those websites it should display on page one of the search results? Initially pagerank was the only factor which was considered for deciding the position for any website in SERPs.
As on today, there are many factors which are considered for deciding at which position a website is displayed in SERPs & Google pagerank is one of them. Why I am saying that pagerank is one of the factors which decide how the website is shown in SERPs & it’s not the only factor? This is because it’s not always that a website with pagerank 9 or 10 will appear at first position & its quiet possible that a website with a page rank of 0 to 8 may appear before the website having page rank of 9 or 10. I have discussed these factors in another article.
How Google decides Pagerank of any website?
Two important Page rank factors are relevancy & reputation. Relevancy is a factor which is on the page whereas reputation is how many people are linking to you & what is their reputation. So clearly ‘on page’ & ‘off page’ factors decide your Pagerank. If you have relevant content on your pages & you have incoming links to those pages from websites having high reputation (high PR) your page would have high PR. It is necessary to note that the links coming from relevant niche websites are valued more than links coming from irrelevant websites.
To summarize, pagerank depends upon on page & off page factors. You should have good & relevant contents on your page & those pages should have backlinks from relevant & reputable websites.