How to Increase Your Google Page Ranking

The most common question webmasters have in relation to Google is: “How do I improve [or increase] my PageRank? Before we go in to answering this question, it is important to take into consideration what PageRank is, how it is calculated, and what it means for your site.

Google PageRank, based on a scale of 0 to 10, is the means by which Google ranks the worth of particular site. Theoretically, a site with a PageRank of 8 is generally of more use to the average visitor than a site with a PageRank of 3. Accordingly, sites with a higher pagerank rank higher in the Google search results for a given keyword than those with a lower pagerank. The goal of google’s search results is to provide the user with the most trustworthy sites that include the particular keyword phrase they have entered into the search field.

PageRank is calculated based almost entirely upon two factors: how many other sites link to your site, and the PageRank of those sites that link to you. Ideally, you want a lot of sites with a high PageRank to link to your site. Getting many low or zero PageRank sites to link to your site won’t do you much good. In fact, there is some evidence that Google penalizes sites that have an abnormally high number of low PageRank sites linking to them. This situation is usually indicative of someone trying to cheat the system by simply adding links to useless pages in so-called “link farms.” So, in a sense, Google is capable of recognizing whether your site hangs out with a good crowd or a bad crowd by what kind of sites link to yours. It is much better to get a few sites (preferably a .ORG or .EDU) with a high PageRank to link to yours (especially those with PageRanks higher than your own) than a bunch of sites with low or zero PageRank.

PageRank is crucially important because it determines, in part, in what order your website will show up in Google’s results. Besides PageRank, the other factor is largely website content – i.e. what your site actually contains, what keyword and keyword phrases are present in your text and how often they appear. If two sites have basically the same content, cover the same topic, and have the same keyword saturation (the percentage of keywords in the entire text), then the one with the higher PageRank will almost always come out on top.

Okay, now for ways to improve your PageRank, legally and fairly:

1. Build quality websites. If you construct a website that is useful to your visitors and has something original to contribute, other webmasters will recognize this and will want to link to your site. Some of the best websites out there that are meaningful with lots of useful and original content also have thousands upon thousands of good inbound links. No one wants to link to a site that is poorly constructed, or fails to offer any original or useful information/service. Simply put, the better your site is, the more links you will get, the more visitors will visit your site, and the higher the PageRank you will receive (which will, in turn, bring you more visitors, and the cycle continues).
2. Actively seek out healthy link partnerships. It usually isn’t enough simply to build a good site and wait around for someone to notice. Contacting webmasters with similar websites in an attempt to exchange links is a good idea – if you do it right.
3. When looking to exchanging web links, you’ll want to partner your site with other high-quality sites, preferably those with a PageRank equal to or greater than your own. Since Google calculates PageRank based upon the PageRank of sites linking to yours, this is of significant consequence to your site. And, of course, if your site is truly useful and professional, you are sure to get at least some webmasters to agree to link to your site. You can’t expect 100% success, and sending out individual link requests can be a bit of a chore. However, we believe that it is indeed a worthwhile endeavor for those serious about improving their PageRank.
4. Stay clear of “link farms,” fake SEO gimmicks, and low-ranking websites. If you pay some company to submit your site to 1000 FFA (free-for-all) pages, don’t expect to get your money’s worth. Getting a link to your site on thousands of low quality, low-ranking websites can actually decrease your PageRank, and overall standing with Google. Google’s ranking mechanism will be able to detect that your site is listed on so many of these undesirable pages. In many cases, this is seen as an attempt to inflate your PageRank unfairly, and sites may be penalized as a result. Instead, spend your time submitting to credible directories and exchanging links with other relevant sites. The process can be time-consuming, but it is the only way to generate safe, site-specific traffic.
5. Likewise, refrain from using such illegal practices as “cloaking” in order to artificially inflate your PageRank. Google defines cloaking as “[a term] used to describe a website that returns altered webpages to search engines crawling the site. In other words, the webserver is programmed to return different content to Google than it returns to regular users, usually in an attempt to distort search engine rankings. This can mislead users about what they’ll find when they click on a search result.” Using cloaking or other illegal tricks can – and almost certainly will – result in the penalization of your site, or removal from the Google index altogether.

We realize that these suggestions and strategies offer no silver bullet to increasing your Google PageRank. However, they are time-tested methods of truly increasing your PageRank over time. If you are committed to the task, and have created a useful website, there is no reason why you cannot significantly raise the PageRank of your site. Visit our blog for information.