Ahhh ........ Page rank. An oft and hotly discussed topic.
"PageRank", (PR), is Google's measure of the trust they assign to a
webpage.
You can see PR by installing the Google tools bar on your
browser.
http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/toolbar/FT3/intl/en/index.html For
FireFox browsers and
http://toolbar.google.com/T4/?rd=f for IE.
Google "Page Rank" and the first listing, (http://www.google.com/technology/)
states: (My Bold).
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."
Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which
Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important
pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google
combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages
that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far
beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all
aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking
to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.
So in essence it means that your site is judged not only on
content but by the importance and relevance of the links leading to it.
A link to your site on a site with high PR means more than a link on a low
PR site.
Links from a topical site mean more than from one that is not.
Links built out of anchor text are worth more than just a URL.
PR is based on a sliding scale from 0 to 10.
It takes a LOT of links to build a PR of 10.
The "page rank" search above shows the highest PR in the top listings at a
PR of 7. (Even for Google's explanation page.)
There is a very technical article on PR at
http://www.iprcom.com/papers/pagerank/
How to get links on high PR sites is a problem.
Google has stated that they frown upon buying links.
Exceptions to this are industry portal sites that charge membership fees,
E.G. Thomas Register for $475 a year. (http://www.thomasnet.com/)
This leaves you to find industry specific sites that will link to you and
the best way is to build information pages that gives them a reason to do
so.
As stated last week,
Get working to find relevant sites that would wish to link to
yours.
Industry portals, article sites, blogs, news releases, topical sites,
networks, groups, associations, SNS, (Social Networking Systems), your
imagination is your limit.
Next Week 8 - Metrics. Interpreting web stats, adding
stats/tracking programs. |
