What is page rank (pr)?
Number of Links on the PageThe fewer outgoing links on the page that you are receiving a link from the more PageRank value you will receive. The PR gained from the link will be divided and shared with all the other links on that page. So if you get a link on a PR6 page that has 100 outgoing links you will receive less value than a PR4 with only 10 outgoing links on it.
PageRank is currently a very important factor in getting well listed in search engines, particularly Google. If you focus on building a good quality site that people will want to link to freely than your PageRank will increase by itself. But if your site is new or you sell a competitive product than you will have to work hard to increase your PR with a linking campaign. Remember that Google only updates PR about once a month so be patient and make improving your PageRank a long term goal.
How to Improve your PageRank?
The more relevant and important incoming links to your website the better your PageRank will be. The easiest way to start to improve your PageRank is to exchange link with related websites that already have a high PR. A better (although more challenging) option is to get relevant high PR websites linking to yours without you having to add their link on your site. There are many directories that will list your without having to exchange links, but most of them either charge a fee or make you wait forever to be listed. So you either have to exchange links with other webmasters or develop a valuable website that others will want to link to freely.
The role of SEO in this case is…
1. Off-site: to maximise incoming PR by increasing the number of incoming links and the quality of incoming links.
2. On-site: to harness incoming PR so that none of it is wasted (on broken links) and that most of it is channelled to the most important pages of the website (i.e.: the homepage, main category pages)
To sum up, PR isn't a factor in SEO, neither is it a direct result of SEO. But the makings of a high-PR website are very similar to those of a high-ranking website. And because of that, the concept of PR can be used to...
* properly apply linking techniques
* measure the effectiveness of these techniques
Let's get one thing simple and straight - The more valuable your page, the more likely it will win out over all others right? So you must know what the most important attributes are that make a great page and construct all pages in this manner to effect a page rank increase.
So if you don't care about page rank let's consider page value the key player here and try to see what works.
Let us have a look at the most important factors in determining Page Value
1. Key Words
How can you rank well for a key word that isn't on your page? - You Can't!
So, you must have a nice little scattering of the right words, mixed in with some similar words for long tail keyword power.
Be careful not to "stuff" your page though. The rule of thumb is don't go above 3% with any one keyword phrase, but to make it easier to apply, just don't write the same keyword more than onces every 25 lines. Easy!
2. Link Dilution
If you have hundreds of links pointing out of your site it tells us and the search engines 2 things, either you are generous with your outbound linking to other sites or you are selling links at an alarming rate.
Err on the side of caution here. The less links you have going to other sites the better. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that having no outbound links (notice I sad "Outbound" not internal) will help a page gain PR faster.
3. Inbound Links
In general, the more links that come into a page, the more it makes the page look like a winner. Of course the search engines can see exactly where those links come from and know how to value each and everyone. Because of this, volume is important but so is the quality of where the links come from.
Most people don't get this point and go after mass links, which can somewhat help, but a couple of hundred links from a link directory is worth one good link from an article directory.
The search engines like links from the middle of content, it says more than a link from a page full of NO content and hundred of links
It's not rocket science - If you can't get quality, get quantity, but if you can get BOTH!
Another thing about links worth noting is that it's good to have links from a variety of sites, so just because you have a couple of high value links, doesn't mean you have it covered. A variety of links looks like a natural form of valuable inbound linking and the more variety the better.
4. Page Age
The older the page, the more it says to the search engines "I've lasted this long and I'm going to be around longer".
You see, there are millions of websites that come and go, but a lot of the ones that go are the spammy ones, the ones that stay are genuine resources, so they rank. Now if you're a young page or site, you can't control time, all you can do is wait it out, but age is only one factor, you can win in other PR categories.
An old, wise sage makes a valuable page.
5. Page Length
A page with five thousand words can tell you far more than a page with 300. For this reason the search engines rate a bigger page better. Most people overlook this one, but it is still one of the single most important factors when you want to improve page rank and winning search engine result positioning.
I wouldn't put a page on my sites with less than 600 words, because I want to give away good value information, with more knowledge and in depth detail, and I want to let the search engines know that my pages matter.
Next time you write an article and just want to get to the end, have a think about what you're trying to achieve.
Those were the main factors in getting a high page rank, but there are a couple of less important ones worth touching on, so here's a little more...
Factors like good meta tags and alt tags and those little, more finnicky, seo type things are icing on the cake tricks.
All the meta tag prowess in the world wont rank you higher if you don't get the big 5 page rank factors right though and for that reason, I don't place PR value on them.
Don't get me wrong they are important for letting search engine know what YOU think your page is about, but they will make up their own minds (if you can describe their program as a mind).
Synonyms and words and phrases that are similar to the keywords you use tell the search engines the in page content is very much on topic and useful and thus valuable, but again, it's the cherry on the sundae.
One that I'm highly dubious about, but have to mention just out of the interests of fair representation is traffic. There is a school of thought that says if a page is well patronized then it is seen as valuable, but I'm not sure if this adds up as google can't be aware of the traffic a page gets, as it doesn't have your own page hit rate data from other search engines.
