Google Page Rank.

We often hear of Google Page Rank and this topic is imminent in most Internet Marketing forums. We know higher Page Rank means that the website or blog is of some quality but what is Page Rank? and How is it determined?

Page Rank(PR) is a tool that Google uses to determine a sites quality and effectiveness. It is determined by the number of quality backlinks a site has. What is determined as a quality backlink?

Link building is the most trickiest part of SEO. Most website and blog owners go about link building by the reciprocal link method. It simply means both sites links to one another, so a fair and win-win situation for both parties. Each of these links carries a different weight which is determined by their Page Rank.

If your site is of PR 3 and you link to a site of PR 5 and this site links back to you, then the weight of the link from the PR 5 site to your site is higher than the weight of the link from your site. This is because the link which is pointing to your site is from a PR 5 site which Google have already determine to be a quality and important site to them. The weight of that link can be higher if the PR 5 site that linked to your site is of the same content as your site. Google rates link of the same content to be more higher and important than from a link of a different content.

The limitation to reciprocal linking method is that when a site has too many links that points to other sites. This effects the weight of the link. When you link to a site of this type, even when the PR are the same and your site has only two links pointing out from your site, then the weight of the link you receive is lower.

The best is still a one way link and this carries much more weight than reciprocal links. If you inject real quality content and very useful resources to your site, then eventually your site will achieve this.

Search Ranking.

When it come to getting ranked well in the search engines most people think in terms of their website as a whole. Where does my website rank in Google? Where do I rank in Yahoo? These are the questions search engine optimization companies get asked all the time.

The first thing we must know is the term being searched for. The website owner may be searching for their site under the term "architectural hardware" and not be showing up at all in Google or Yahoo for that term. But if they searched for "architectural products" they could be on the first page of both the major search engines.

Next we have to think of a website site not only as a single entity but as a collection of pages brought together to make up that logical and actual whole. Much like a non-fiction book a website is usually about a single subject. In the case of a business that subject is the business itself.

Of course the most important page of your site is the home page. This is the one that most visitors will see first when entering your site. It should attract and interest your visitors enough so they don't just click away looking for something "better". But, depending on the size of your site, you could have several or even hundreds of other pages each of which has the potential of ranking in the search engines and attracting and interesting visitors as well.

A larger site has distinct advantages in a highly market. With more pages there is more for your visitor to see, learn and do. So he or she stays longer. The longer the visitor stays on your site the better your chance they will save one of your pages as a "favorite place", buy your product or use your services. Another advantage is the more pages the better your odds of getting indexed and ranked well by the search engines. Additionally each page can be optimized for a specific search phrase. This increases even more the opportunity for Yahoo or Google to rank your site well within their search results.

Those inside pages are an inside track from the search engines onto your site. Once the visitor enters your website you have a chance of turning them into a client or customer no matter what page they entered on.

Type any term into Google or Yahoo and you will get an idea of how important the inside pages are to a website's search engine ranking. Let's take a couple of terms at random. I just typed "computer monitor" into Yahoo. All but one of the pages that came up in the natural listings were pages within a site. That's nine out of ten. I typed "lap dog" into Google and it came up fifty-fifty. Five had "lap dog" in the domain name. Five were domains with pages that had "lap dog" in the name.

Moral of the story is treat each page of your site as an individual part of the greater whole and optimize it separately and well.

Search Engine Secrecy.

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The search engines try to be good at keeping their methods of ranking websites top-secret. You never quite know exactly why such-and-so company wound up in the #1 slot and your company is way down on page 3. You wonder if it's because the search engines like it better. Or because it knows the secret handshake.

So, you start doing research?and there's a lot of conflicting information out there:

Maybe Google will rank you higher if your site doesn't have Flash. But then you hear that it might be able to read your Flash presentation text after all.

Or, the search engines might favor you if your site's URL has keywords in it. But those keywords might have to be separated by dashes. Or underscores might work...

You've heard that filling your site with keywords is the only way to get noticed by the search engines. But what if you want to have a very simple, clean, neat-looking site with few words? Isn't there a way you can hide all that icky-looking SEO stuff somewhere in the code of your pages? Shouldn't your web designer be able to help out?

And, what's this about links? Do you need to have a big links page with the addresses of every site you've ever heard of? Will that help?

Sometimes, your site can rise or fall in the rankings without you making any changes at all. One week, you're #4, then the next you're at #32, and then you rocket back up to #11. How does that even happen if you have been on vacation the whole time and haven't touched your site? The more research you do, the more hopeless the entire ordeal seems. Why bother trying to figure out the mysteries of the search engines? It certainly seems easier to just give up on SEO entirely and to do something else with your time.

Are they just out to confuse you?

Why would the search engines go to all this trouble to keep their logic and qualifiers so secret? Why not just publish their requirements and make it easy for you, the overtaxed small business owner, to get exactly what you want?

That would make it too easy for everyone?not just you.

The answer is that if the search engines published their requirements, it would be almost too easy for anyone to get the results they wanted. And this means not only would it be easier for you?the small business owner?to get attention, but it would also be easier for big corporations to lock your site out of the top 10 results and for sleazy old site spammers to pull the search engines' attention away from your awesome site and over to their crummy ones.

In a way, it would probably make getting into the top 10 even more difficult for you?because it would increase the level of knowledge your competition has about search engine processes as well.

They want to get to know you, not have you tell them what they want to hear.

Also, the search engines want to hear what you've really got to say. If they told you exactly how to get into the top 10, straight from the horse's mouth, it would be like walking into a job interview where the interviewer has already given you answers to the questions they're planning to ask, and all you have to do to get the job is to read the answers. Now, while that might make the interview easier and less stressful, the interviewer isn't going to get a picture of your capabilities, personality, or really anything about you. They're going to get the answers they want to hear, but when you come in to work, they may be sorely disappointed by your performance.

The search engines would have a similar problem if they gave everyone the answer to how to get well-ranked. The search engines' goal is to give people who are looking for a particular resource or an answer to a question?searchers?the best and most impartial answers they possibly can.

If they laid out a simple process for getting well-ranked, they'd have everyone telling them what they want to hear, and then they'd have a harder job of sorting the information they get into the type of referrals and information that searchers want. They'd have to develop more hurdles and filters just to deliver results that make sense for their users.

They're not just being mean.

The search engines aren't trying to confuse you or to keep you out of a secret club. They're not trying to make your life hard. They're just trying to keep their results fair and to give high-quality answers to the searchers using their services.

If you want them to rank you well, keep that in mind. Make sure that your site is a good resource for people who are looking for the types of products and services you provide. Add information to your site as well as promotional copy and images, so that searchers can get the answers they're looking for. The search engines appreciate that.

Make your site a resource instead of just a sales force, and along the way, you'll make the search engines happy to recommend you to information seekers.