PageRank

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The next factor that influences link quality is Google PageRank.

PageRank is a patented method that Google uses to measure the relative importance of a page, on a scale of 0 to 10. Here's how Google describes it:

Here's the simple description that Google used for its PageRank earlier:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

Now on Google's page http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html you'll see a new, longer explanation, though the meaning is the same.

Google counts PageRank for each separate page of a website. And if a page has outbound links, it will add a proportional part of its PageRank to each page it links to.

So, if a page with a high PageRank has a link to you, your page will seem to Google more weighty, and you'll get part of its Page Rank, too, and this'll help you get a better position in Google's results page, thus bringing you more traffic and sales.

Where can you see a page's PageRank?

To view webpages' PageRank, you need a special Google toolbar that's designed for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox web browsers — it's free and installs within seconds. Just use this link to find it: http://toolbar.google.com/

So let's see. Install Google toolbar and load this page:
http://www.intel.com

The view of Google toolbar in Internet Explorer web browser

You see this green scale saying PageRank? It shows http://www.intel.com has a PageRank of 8. That's really much.

And what PageRank is considered high? Though it largely depends on the market where you compete, I'd say that generally, PageRank of 5 and above is quite a lot!

And, just because I believe anyone may be curious, I'll tell you (though you can easily check it yourself) Google itself has PageRank of 10, Apple's and Wikipedia's homepages have got 9 today — and Intel has 8. So you see, very high PageRank like this is something hard to imagine.

By the way, PageRank values change from time to time, when Google updates its PageRank — and I won't be surprised if Apple soon gets PageRank 10, like it used to have before.

Quite sure, for many reasons PageRank is far from being the sole important factor in optimization. Therefore, don't get carried away and don't make achieving a high PageRank the #1 point of your linking strategy. PageRank is just one of the many factors Google takes into account when calculating the ranking for your Website. And it's not the most vital one. Not by a long shot.

Still PageRank is rather important for organic link building. But you have to be wise and careful with it. Look at this example:

If ten of your incoming links carry the PageRank of 5, six links have a PageRank of 4, and the remaining 50 have PageRanks of 0 to 3, this looks all natural and dandy. However, if all ten of your backlinks have the PageRank value of 5, Google may frown on this and devalue all these links.

Why? Because when sites put links to you because they want to, not because you asked them to, it's hardly possible that all of them have the same PageRank. Google has similar logic — it doesn't look natural if you've got links from ten PageRank 5 pages. What it does look like is that you simply went ahead and purchased ten high PageRank links pointing to your site. Even if you didn't, Google may still think you did and devalue them, so be warned.

Remember we're trying to make our link growth look natural. And in the natural scenario, the PageRank values of the sites that link to you are usually different. So firstly,

Try to be getting links with different PageRank.

And secondly, here's a rule that I devised from my own experience:

Not more than 15-25% of your incoming links should have a PageRank of 5 and above.

Does Google PageRank change? How often?

Yes, Google PageRank changes — and it changes constantly. But it's only Google who knows real PageRanks for sure. And, Google exports its PageRank values to Google Toolbar now and then. So what you know now isn't necessarily the real PageRank that Google knows.

A big SEO guy Bob Mutch would have a lot to tell about Google PageRank. He has recorded all PageRank updates till Ferbruary, 2008 that were visible on the toolbar. Check it, if you want to know how often the toolbar values changed (but there's no strict system though).

Is PageRank leak true?

Many clients ask me: "If I have a lot of outbound links, they're getting part of my PageRank. Does this mean my PageRank is leaking away from me to others?"

Nope.

If you link to other site, that site gets an add-up to its PageRank, and this add-up is proportional to the PageRank of your own site. But your PageRank still remains yours — noone's taking it away from you. This is too much of mathematics but basically, though a slight PageRank leak exists, it happens for other reasons buried deep in what I call "Google science" — and you won't be even able to notice this tiny leak.

These PageRank talks can be endless. If you want to ask more, send your questions to — and I'll try to answer them.

DO IT NOW! Install a Google toolbar and check how big your Google PageRank is.

How many outbound links a page has on it?

As I told you before, a webpage that has outbound links (i.e. links to pages outside its website) gives a proportional part of its PageRank to each of the links (putting it simple). Therefore, it's useful to know how many outbound links the page has — so you can know what to expect if you get a link from this page.

For instance, just yesterday I was looking at two pages. The first one belongs to a well-known desktop applications developer. It's got PageRank 5 and has about 200 outbound links, so each link gets PageRank 0.025 part of the possible maximum value (divide 5 by 200 to count). And, another page is a software forum that has PageRank 3 but only 15 outbound links on its homepage, so I've got a chance to get 0.200 of the maximum possible PageRank from it, which is much better than 0.025.

(All these figures and calculations are relevant and I only provide them for the example. Google's formula for PageRank distribution is more complicated than just dividing it between all links.)

I believe now you see it's always wise to look at many factors and count real figures before choosing where to get links from.

Age of site

Search engines trust older sites more, so when you're getting a link, it's good to look at the site's age.

When I say "old site" I mean a site that is 8 or 10 years old — but that's an ideal. The most important point here for you to know is: sites less than 1 year old are considered very young.

Quite naturally, young sites must prove themselves before they can start ranking for much of anything important. And well aged sites are largely respected by Search Engines.

Link popularity of the website and the webpage

That's what you're trying to achieve in fact, too. Link popularity is the authority that comes due to having a lot of websites link to you. If an authority page links to you, this link will be more trusted by search engines.

So it's good to know how many sites are linking to the page you're getting a link from.

These were the main points that help you judge on the quality of a potential link. Of course, there are much more things to look at, though some of them are not as crucial as these Q-factors. Here's a big list of things important for the quality of links.

Some of the factors I just talked about depend on you, like anchor texts and description, others only depend on your link partners (use of keywords in the title and body text of their page), and some, like Page Rank, are "closed territory". Still all of them make sense to know and check, before deciding which links to get, or even which links are worth paying for.

So as you see, Search Engines' voting system has nothing to do with equality, and you have to take this into account when building links.

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