If you have been around search engines for any length of time, you have probably heard of the Google PageRank for a particular web page. The Google PageRank is a measure on a scale of 0 to 10 of a web page’s importance as compared to other web pages. It is also important to note that web pages are ranked and not entire web sites. Of course a page with a higher Google PageRank will appear towards the top of a search engine’s results listing. Think of it as a popularity contest. The sites with the highest PageRank are likely going to be the ones you see first when doing a Google search on its keywords. Many search engine optimization specialists try to figure out just exactly how Google ranks its pages but the algorithm is proprietary and not every detail is known. Plus, Google can change its ranking algorithm at any time it wants. What this means for you is that you understand that search engine optimization is never a one-time process. Google uses around 100 different metrics to rank web pages. Let’s look at some of the most important criteria that Google uses to establish PageRank:
External web pages pointing to your web page are important to ranking. To simply put it, the more pages that point to your site, the more popular the Google search engine deems your site is. However this metric does not guarantee a high PageRank for your web page in and of itself. The quality of the links pointing back to your web site is evaluated as well. Pages that link to your pages with higher page rankings are weighted as more important by Google.
Use keywords in the anchor text of the links to your pages. This goes for your own internal pages as well as the external pages. The Google search engine places more weight on links to your page containing your targeted keywords.
Make sure your web pages contain at least 200 words of relevant content. The Googlebot will “read” your web pages and classify it according the keywords it finds and you focus on. Remember to always write for people and not just for search engines as this is what will keep visitors coming back to your site.
Don’t try to get links too fast. Don’t strive to get links back to your web pages at an extremely fast rate because the Google search engine might determine that you are trying to what they call “spam” the internet. There’s nothing wrong with making several posts each day to your favorite forum or blogging sites however it is quite different if you are able to generate an excessive amount. An excessive amount would be a total number of links that could only be generated by machine methods or link farms. It’s not to say that your web page will get blacklisted but it will raise suspicion.
The older your web pages are the better. It’s almost as if new web pages are put into something that mimics a probationary state by the Google search engine. That’s why you should not waste any time getting your web site online as long as it is complete.
Update your site regularly. This is where content management systems like WordPress can be a definite advantage because you can add new content easily everyday if you like. The Googlebot evaluates that if a web page is constantly changing then it must be important thus it gets more weight towards the PageRank.
