PageRank, traffic and Google search results

Google's PageRank algorithm is what Google uses to determine where in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) any given page should appear. In other words, it is an expression of the relative importance of a webpage in comparison to the rest of the Web.

One of the most important business objectives for any blog or website should be to feature as highly as possible on search engines. To do this, you need a good PageRank. However, that doesn't mean you should specifically implement techniques to increase your PageRank - that's not how it works.

A good PageRank (PR) is a reflection of a useful and relevant website. In other words, PageRank is automatically awarded to blogs and sites that produce high quality, relevant content that engages their readers.

About your PageRank

So what is a good PageRank? Well, this really depends because Google uses a number of metrics to work this out. One of these metrics is longevity (Page load time is also an important factor - just in case you aren't compressing and caching pages), so new sites don't generally get as a high PageRank as they should. However, longevity is a sign that a website is of high quality, so your PageRank should improve with time - all things being equal.

In general, a PageRank of 1 or 2 is not great. There's little value in obtaining back-links from these sites (unless they are new and of high quality, so that the PageRank will improve). A PageRank of 3 - 5 is reasonable. The chances are these sites are fairly decent - especially PR 4 and 5.

Once you are dealing with sites that have a PR of 6 or higher, you are working (almost exclusively) with good quality sites.

PageRank, links and traffic

If your own blog or site has a PR of 6 or more, then you should be aware of the value your site holds for others. Don't enter easily into mutual linking agreements, or give away back-links too easily. Chances are you've worked hard to get where you are and this should be recompensed in one way or another.

What's Site prebuilder's PageRank?

There are a number of ways you can find out your Google PageRank. The easiest is to download the PR extension for FireFox, or use the Google toolbar. A search online will also bring up a whole bunch of online tools you can use to check a page or site's PR.

PageRank and organic search traffic

Once you have built up sufficient high quality content, authority and reputation online, the chances are Google will begin to reward you by placing your content higher up in their search results.

Google recalculates PageRank every now and then, and the results can be quite easy to detect. For example, the traffic graph shown at the top of this post shows a marked jump in the volume of organic search traffic coming from Google to Site prebuilder. This jump co-incided with a jump in PageRank from 4 to 6.

In fact, ever since Site prebuilder's PageRank went from pretty good to really good, organic search traffic has been pouring in. For some keywords, the amount of traffic coming in has jumped by an order of magnitude. For example, we went from hardly featuring at all for the phrase "blogging" to receiving hundreds of impressions a day. Cool, huh?

How did we do this? Watch this space. I'll write about our search enhancement strategy in due course...

Remember that you can learn a lot about Internet marketing from my new book entitled "Internet marketing with WordPress".

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