Increase Page Rank: Ride the Google Rollercoaster

Let's face it, chasing success on Google can be a bit of a roller coaster ride.

There are so many things to track and Page Rank is only part of it. There's search position, indexing and backlinks, just to name a few.

So will you go up or will you go down? Will your Page Rank stay at 4 or will it drop you over a surprise edge?

One thing's for sure: things don't stay the same for long. Google readjusts the Page Ranks every few months and the ride starts all over again. You can see the effect this has - its always marked by huge amounts of discussion on newsgroups and forums (including squidu of course)

Google is well known for that initial surge of traffic when your page or your lens is just finished. It's pretty good at indexing new stuff, especially blogs. Unfortunately you'll often find that initial spike can drop away for a few months until the Page Rank is calculated properly. It's a bit like a huge, thrilling plunge at the start of your ride, but then the rest turns out a little disappointing.



Here's another thing: you can certainly get your whole perspective flipped upside down when things don't go as you expect.

Maybe you've collected a ton of links but you have no Page Rank and no position on a search.

Or perhaps a page which you've done no promotion or SEO on suddenly appears on page 1

Above all, you are definitely in for some G forces during your ride on the Page Rank roller coaster (that's G for Google, not Gravity)

OK - I know you're not an idiot. You might be new to this game though and might appreciate a friendly explanation. What is Page Rank anyway?

Page Rank is the 'score' that Google uses to measure web pages. It goes from 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest. The highest Page Rank levels are pretty hard to get and only the major sites get these. Even Page Rank 5 is tough, but 3 and 4 are definitely possible for your average web citizen.

Google uses Page Rank (plus some other factors) to decide where your pages will appear on its search results pages.

So a good PageRank will help you to appear higher on the search results. That's good, right?

How does Google work out the Page Rank of your web page? It looks at all the other pages on the web that link to your page. These links are like votes for your page: the more incoming links you have, the higher the Page Rank will be.

Google crawls the web constantly looking for pages, finding the links on these pages and following these links to new pages. Over time, it gradually builds a picture of how the web is connected by all of these links. Impressive, huh?

Each page on the web shares its Page Rank with the pages that it links to. People talk about 'link juice' flowing between pages, and that's a good way to think about it.

The more outward links a page has, the less Page Rank each of the links is able to pass on.

So the amount of Page Rank 'link juice' which another page can pass to you depends on:

(a) the Page Rank of that page, and
(b) the number of outgoing links that page has

So, you can increase Google Page Rank by getting links from other pages. This is even better if these pages have a high Page Rank themselves, and don't have too many outgoing links.

Hold on, you're saying there are other search engines out there?

It's true, Google is dominant right now but there are others.

There are some strong opinions out there over whether Google or Yahoo is best. Some people actually hate Google and devote their bloglife to finding reasons to slam them and in looking for other alternatives.

If you are studying your site performance on Google vs. Yahoo then you're in for another interesting ride. The twists and turns of these two rival search engines make for a crazy adventure.

One goes up, one goes down, one finds all your pages and the other takes months to find anything at all. One gives you a spike of adrenaline at the start where the other is a little more sedate, but gives you a good ride in the end.

Now obviously this lens is about Page Rank and this is a Google term, so there's definitely a bias here.

My advice is to stick out the ride to the end with both search engines for the best results.

Don't take the sudden drops personally. Ignore all the excitement and keep building those pages and links.

So how do you check Page Rank?

Right now there's only one official way to do it - via the Google Toolbar

You'll get a little green bar at the top of your web browser which blinks up and down according to the Page Rank value of the pages that you are browsing.

This can be a real distraction from your rollercoaster ride. It might even make it worse. If you are a little SEO-obsessed then it's pretty easy to start ignoring all those interesting web pages and just look at that little green bar.

It can appear a little flaky too. Sometime you'll load up a page which you are sure has a Page Rank of 4 but the Little Green Bar just stays stuck at zero. This can be a recipe for mild panic after your months of work.

Remember too that the Page Rank information reported on the Little Green Bar is different to the secret Google scores. This is just the public number. You'll find your reported links and your search position changing all the time, even if the bar stays the same length!

It's a useful tool but don't get too obsessed with it. Despite all the great advice in this lens, remember that Page rank isn't everything. This goes along with some other good advice - don't get too obsessed with checking your Google position, checking links or analyzing your competitors positions. It's a waste of time which is better spent building a new page.

Now finally, I should tell you that there are other places where you can find your Page Rank. Try seaquake.com (an interesting little tool anyway). Take a look at the Google Directory (of course a page has to be on the directory for you to see it)

OK, so we talked about how Google works out the PageRank for your pages. We know it's based on the number of incoming links to your page, and also the Page Rank of the pages that link to yours.

Now, what do we do with this? We want results, right? How do we actually increase Page Rank?

The key to this is to grow the number of quality backlinks over time. This is what Google is looking for as a sign of a good web page with useful content.

Zero backlinks is bad, but also a huge spike in the number of backlinks is viewed as a bad sign too. Google guesses that you might be adding the links yourself, or using link baiting, or other dodgy techniques.

So aim to grow the number of links gradually over the course of a few months.

Remember that quality links come from pages with good Page Rank themselves. This makes sense, right? If a page is voting for you and this page has votes too, it's a more valuable vote.

Page Rank is an important part of your position in the search results.

So, how does Google work out where to place you for a certain keyword search?

"The best links you can get are from quality pages (with good Page Rank) which cover related topics to yours."

This is where content and link relevance come in. Google looks at the content of your page to see where you'll appear on search results. It also looks at the sites that link to yours. What topics so they cover? If they talk about apples and have a link to your site, there's a good chance that your site is about apples, or fruit, or something relevant.

What does this mean?

The best links you can get are from quality pages (with good Page Rank) which cover related topics to yours.

I knew you'd ask about this.

Squidoo has its own Lens Rank system but if you want visitors from Google, you need to worry about the Page Rank of your lenses.

How do you get this and what's special about Squidoo?

The great thing about Squidoo is that it's just so easy to build a page and get it hooked into the Squidoo internal linking system.

Just by building a lens you're placing yourself somewhere within a high Page Rank site (PR8 last time I looked). That has to be good.

The key here is to make sure you have a good flow of the lovely Page Rank juice coming from elsewhere within Squidoo. You do this by getting links to your lens and you get PageRank-friendly links by gathering favorites, joining groups and getting yourself on those 'special' lists such as the Top 100.

You can this a step further by promoting your lenses outside Squidoo. Here we're talking about the usual stuff - collecting links from other web sites.

Hopefully by now you're feeling brave enough to jump on board and try out some of these techniques.

My advice is to enjoy the ride (now you know where all the bumps are)

You're allowed to scream if you want to but the idea is to have fun and get to the end without getting a nervous breakdown. Watch out for the little green bar!

Ultimately you know you can't cheat the Page Rank coaster. You have it ride it through to the conclusion. There aren't too many shortcuts.

Remember: keep building quality links, gradually over time. Your Page Rank will improve and you will get there.

We've talked a lot here about how to increase Page Rank by allowing link juice to flow from other pages to yours.

Did you know that there's another way to actually create Page Rank yourself?

So instead of working out how to transfer it from somewhere else, you can get busy creating some of your own.

How do you do this?

The clues are all here in this lens, but if you need some help finding them, just sign up for my free guide Squeeze More Results from Your Website.

I'll show you how to create Page Rank yourself.

I'll also show you the other things that you need to make your website successful.

I'll also add you to my subscription list so I can start sending you free tips and advice on great website design.