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If you are trying to get a higher search engine ranking, you will probably have come across the term “Google Pagerank” or “Google PR” while you have been doing your research. If you are not sure what page rank is or how it can affect your search engine rank, read on for an easy to understand explanation of Google Page Rank and how to get a page rank.

In simple terms a page rank is an indicator of the quality of a particular page on website. By quality I mean the number of links that the web page has pointing to it rather than the actual quality of the content on the page. 

A page rank is a whole number from 0 - 10, where 10 is the highest quality and 0 is the lowest. To find out the page rank of a particular page you need to download and install the Google Toolbar which is free. Page Rank applies to a page on a website, not to the whole website.

If the toolbar is grey, this means that a page has no page rank. If your website has pages on it that have a grey toolbar this could mean that

• The page is very new and has not yet been indexed by Google OR
• The page contains duplicate content and is in Google’s supplemental index rather than its main index OR
• Your website has been de-indexed/dropped from Google for some violation (less likely

If the toolbar is white, this means you have a page rank of zero. A PR0 is very common for a new website or a new web page as it take some time to build enough links back to your website to achive a higher page rank. It is also worth noting that Google typically only updates the page rank on the toolbar every few months so if you have a new website it may take  months for page rank to show on the toolbar for your website. However, Google is always updating the page rank of sites on an ongoing basis, so the page rank shown on the toolbar is not a true pagerank, it is a snapshot of your page rank from a given time.

To increase your page rank you need to get high quality backlinks to your website. A backlink is simply a link from another website to your own site. The best way is to get links naturally by writing such good content that other webmaster’s want to link to your website, but in reality most webmasters build backlinks by distributing articles, submitting their website to directories, exchanging links, distributing press releases, commenting on blogs and more. You can find out exactly how to increase your page rank here.

It is not just the number of backlinks to your site that count towards page rank, it is also the quality of these links. So for example, a link from a PR6 page is will increase your chances of getting a higher page rank, more than say, a link from a PR4 page. The number of links on the page that is linking to you also affects how much page rank (also known as “link juice”) is passed on to your web page. A link from a page that has 5 other links on it is of more value than a link from a page with 40 links on it.

Page rank is not linear, so it is much more difficult to get from say a PR4 to a PR5 than it is to get from a PR0 to a PR3.

Google Page Rank plays an important part in how a web page is ranked in Google’s search engine results but it isn’t worth much if you haven’t researched your keywords and optimized your web page. Page rank is a useful indicator of how popular a website is, but it is only part of the equation. So, do take notice of your website’s page rank, but don’t get hung up on that little green bar. The most important thing is that your traffic is increasing, not your page rank.