The Beta News

As I mentioned earlier today I’m working on improving my Google PageRank. According to Website Grader my current Google Page Rank is 2.

With a bit of research I’ve already found several “mistakes” or “errors” on my blog, but let me start out by explaining a bit about Google PageRank.

Note: I will try another thing I learned today in this article, using headlines in the text. Please let me know how it worked for you.

What is PageRank

PageRank is an independent measure of Google’s perception of the quality/authority/credibility of an individual web page. It does not depend on any particular search phrase. For the public (you and me), Google conveniently reports this as a number from 0-10 (10 being the best). So, assuming for a second that your web page and your competitors web-page has the same relevance – then whoever has the higher PageRank gets the better ranking – and shows up at the top of the results page. This is why PageRank is so important. Your relevance is based on your content (if you’re a blog reporting on Web 2.0 and technology, your relevance for rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle searches is going to be understandably low). Your PageRank is what counts.

How PageRank is calculated

PageRank is primarily determined by how many other web pages are linking into you. Google considers this kind of inbound a link a vote of confidence. But, here’s the trick: Not all inbound links are created equal. Web pages with more credibility that link to you have more “value� to your PageRank than those with less credibility. Its really simpler than it sounds. If a 100 blogs with PageRank 3 links to you it counts for something, but if a site with PageRank 6 links to you it counts for much more, actually much more than the 100 with PR 3.

I’ve found this definition of the various ranks:

0-3: New sites or sites with very minimal links
4-5: Popular sites with a fair amount of inbound links
6: Very popular sites that have hundreds of links, many of them quality links
7-10: Usually media brands (NYTimes.com), big companies or A-list bloggers.

The PageRank is calculated by some fancy scale I don’t quite get, but the important thing is that the difference between PR4 and PR5 is likely 5-10 times than the difference between PR3 and PR4. So, there are likely over a 100 times as many web pages with a PageRank of 2 than there are with a PageRank of 4. This means that if you get to a PageRank of 6 or so, you’re likely well into the top 0.1% of all websites out there. As mentioned my PR is 2, so I still have a long way to go.

What’s your PageRank?

There are two ways to figure out what your approximate PageRank is. One, you can download the Google Toolbar (the PageRank feature is not turned on by default, so you have to enable it after installation).

The other way is to use the Website Grader or a similar online tool.

What I’ve learned until now

SEO, SEO, SEO. Get a lot of good links in to your website and get some links out that has relevance to your site. Google actually uses the outgoing links to determine what your site is about. The content you link out trains to Google to put your site into context.

One of my biggest mistakes is the way I link out. Let me give you an example:

Wrong way: I’ve written an article about fidg’t. You can read all about the new social address book and how to use it. You can click here to read the article.

Do you see my mistake? I use here as the anchor text for the link. Google has very little chance of finding out what that link is about. Search engines uses the anchor text when they look at links. Besides that its not very userfriendly and easy to miss. Here is what I’m going to do from now on.

Right way: I’ve written an article about fidg’t. You can read all about the new social address book and how to use it.

The second way is much better than the first for multiple reasons. First, the link is easier for readers to click on (and know that it’s a link). But, more important is the fact that we now have the anchor text as “new social address book and how to use it�. When the search engine spiders “see� this link, they factor in the anchor text when determining what the target page is about. The reason that the anchor text is important (vs. the page title that the original article itself has) is that generally when you are linking to external sites, you control the anchor text. As such, this gives Google an external point of validation around the site content of the external site. Giving the site a link is a “vote� for that site – and the anchor text you use is a “contextual vote� that helps Google reaffirm the theme of that website.

Phew…so from now on there will be no more “click here” links on Petersen-inc.dk. The PageRank is going to improve.