This is a guest post from Keredy Stott, Punch Communications
If you’re delving into the world of search engine optimisation for the first time in a bid to improve your small business’ organic search rankings, you will be forgiven for not knowing where to start. Google, the favoured search engine in the UK, keeps its cards close to its chest and often the only option for search engine optimisation (SEO) professionals even is to make educated guesses to how the algorithms actually work. Nevertheless, the more you understand, the better position you will find yourself in.
What is PageRank?
There are many terms to understand and PageRank is one of those significant ingredients by which Google decides where to rank websites in a search. During the crawling and indexing process of the world wide web, Google assigns a certain amount of weight to each page it comes across and gives it a number from 0 to 10. If a page has a PageRank of 10, this means Google really likes it and has determined it has a lot of authority. It works using a random surfer model, which means if you were to continuously and randomly click through links on the internet you are more likely to come across certain pages because the web is populated with so many more links pointing towards that page.
What authority fully means to Google is another question altogether but in basic terms, the higher the PageRank, the large number of other pages there are linking to it, therefore making it influential, or an authority. For example, Amazon, an extremely popular online store, currently holds a PR of 9. Having a good PageRank may help position your website towards the top of the rankings but it is the weight that is passed between links, or link juice, that really comes into play when thinking about PageRank in SEO.
What is link juice?
The fundamental principle behind SEO is about having lots of links pointing to your site and, better, to have an exact keyphrase (that a Googler might use when looking for your business) paired with an exact URL. Google crawls the internet via links between and within sites and you want to make the algorithms believe that your business’ URL is the most relevant for said keyphrase – X keyphrase is equal to X page.
Imagine the PageRank and link system as a series of canal locks through which trustworthy link juice flows. Amazon, with its PR 9, has its lock almost fully open. If you get a backlink from a PR 9 site such as this, more authority gushes into your page than it would from a PR 2. For example, although this is by no means an accurate calculation, one link from a PageRank 7 page could be equal to one hundred links from PageRank 3 pages. PageRank weighting is carried from page to page so quality of the linking page is as important, if not more, as the quantity of links.
The web is a great big canal network flowing with gallons of link juice so make sure you get the right locks to open your way. If in doubt, acquire the services of a specialist PR and SEO agency to help your business build a robust backlink profile across the internet and to climb up the Google rankings.
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