What is “Pagerank?” A high Google PageRank a.K.a. “PR” always attracts attention in the blogosphere. For those of you not familiar with pagerank I’ll give you a brief definition: pagerank = a numeric value that represents how important your website is and how well your website ranks when compared to all other webpages. Here is the more advanced definition of pagerank [courtesy of Wikipedia]: “a family of algorithms for assigning numerical weightings to hyperlinked documents (or web pages) indexed by a search engine. The PageRank system is used by the popular search engine Google to help determine a page’s relevance or importance. It was developed by Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin while at Stanford University in 1998.”

How can you determine your pagerank?

• Download the Google Toolbar - Although I don’t use Google Toolbar, you can use it to view any website’s pagerank. The only downfall to using Google Toolbar to determine a website’s pagerank is the fact that it’s updated every 3 months. You may be frustrated wondering why your pagerank hasn’t increased for awhile and it could be due to the fact that the google toolbar hasn’t been updated for awhile. Though the Google Toolbar isn’t updated very often, having it installed can definitely save a lot of time when checking the pagerank of every website that you follow.

• Type your URL into PRchecker - At PRchecker, you can simply type in your URL or the URL of another website, click “generate,” and its corresponding pagerank will be displayed very quickly.

• Display a PR widget on your site - At RankStat, you can copy coding to put on your website which allows your website to display it’s pagerank to you and all your visitors. Is it free? Yes, it’s free and it really allows your website’s to flaunt their high PR’s. Obviously you probably don’t want to display your pagerank to visitors if it’s at zero, but if you consider your PR to be quality, consider adding this coding. Not only is there RankStat, but there’s PRchecker which has slightly different widget designs. There is also a smaller display box that you can get for your website over at PageRank.net. Check this one out if you’d like a tinier display box.

How to determine your future pagerank?

Though I’m not sure how accurate this tool is, it is supposed to determine the future pagerank of your website. I like the concept and if you see an increase in your pagerank, it may be motivating. Check it out, try it and let me know whether or not your pagerank jumped.

What if your pagerank is at ZERO?

If your pagerank is at zero, there is a lot you can do to increase it. Never let your pagerank discourage you from putting forth your best effort. In the end, a low pagerank could be due to a number of factors:

• Your website is new - New websites take awhile to move up in google rankings and generally take awhile to build traffic and great content. If your website is new, you’ve got nothing to worry about at a PR0. Keep working hard to create valuable content and your pagerank will quickly and naturally increase.

• You have zero / little number of backlinks to your website - If you don’t promote your website and / or haven’t developed any worthy resources for other webmasters or bloggers to link to, you probably haven’t gained many linkbacks to your website from others. What you need to do is keep promoting, write some awesome content, and promote some more. It’s very difficult to boost your pagerank if you don’t add a lot of worthy content to your website that encourages linking from others!

• You’ve pissed off Google - Making google mad with activities such as: keyword stuffing, selling links, posting duplicate content and failing to comply with google’s rules will usually force google to crack down on your shady behavior and lower your pagerank. The lowering of your pagerank can be devastating to a blogger and should definitely be avoided.

How often is pagerank updated?

Pagerank is updated on a continuously - it’s constantly being updated for all websites 24/7. You may have heard that pagerank is only updated every few months. Only the pagerank that is displayed on the google toolbar is updated every few months. If you’ve been using google toolbar wondering why your pagerank hasn’t increased for awhile, chances are that it hasn’t been updated yet. Don’t worry though - it will ;)

How to become a PageRank Superstar:

Comment on “Do-Follow” blogs (i.e. Non-”Nofollow”)

Check out a comprehensive “Do-Follow” blog list over at Courtney Tuttle’s website. If you are able to dig through this massive list and find some blogs that you’d enjoy reading and sharing some comments on, you’d be getting free links back to your website. The owners of these sites have decided to be friendly and disabled the “no follow” link in their comments section. If you can find some sites that you really enjoy commenting on from this list, you’ll help your blog’s pagerank.

Submit your blog to directories (for a full comprehensive list, check out Strongest Links OR Web-Directories)

Here is a list of 10 free directories that are worth submitting articles to:

1. DMOZ
2. SearchSight
3. Chiff.com
4. LDMstudio
5. Clickey
6. Mavicanet
7. IllumiRate
8. BusyBits Web Directory
9. Arakne Links
10. WebSitesPromotionDirectory

Here is a list of 10 paid directories that you can consider submitting articles to:

1. Yahoo! Directory
2. Business.com
3. Best of the Web
4. WhatUSeek
5. Linksgiving
6. GreenStalk
7. RubberStamped
8. InCrawler
9. Family Friendly Sites
10. GoGuides.org

Use Article Marketer To Get Massive Backlinks:

Article Marketer - I’ve heard great things about using the paid version of article marketer. I have considered signing up and utilizing the $400 dollar lifetime membership. If you think about it, $400 dollars is nothing compared to the hard work it would take you to submit each of your articles to 100 websites for backlinks. With Article Marketer, all you need to do is basically re-write your articles (to avoid duplicate content), click submit, and article marketer submits each article to over 100 article directories with backlinks from each directory to your website. Using article marketer really could prove to be valuable, especially if you target quality keywords. Try the free version and let me know what you think. Do you like the interface? The free version obviously doesn’t have as many quality features as the paid version and didn’t really bring in much traffic for my website when I tried it out. I have talked with several other bloggers that all use the paid version of Article Marketer and think it helps out a lot!

#1 Secret To Increase Your Pagerank (Shh…It’s A Secret…)

The number one secret to increasing your website’s pagerank is to create quality content. In the end, content is king and no matter how many links you have coming into your website, content will prevail. When you can create a high-quality website with great articles that keep people at your website, your pagerank will increase. Creating timeless content is a win-win situation for you as a blogger because not only will you be increasing your pagerank by posting quality content, you will get more links to your articles that are full of quality content. Nobody wants to share-link love with a short, halfhearted article - but they will not hesitate to link to an article they consider “a great resource of information.” On one of my other sites, I first created a couple of phenomenal resources and just from the incoming links to those 2 resources, I’m already up to a PR 2. With AndrewPavelski.com, I’ve definitely cranked out the quality content, I just haven’t got a PR boost yet! Just wait though, it’ll jump in no time ;) Just remember, quality content is not only king at increasing pagerank, but it is king of creating a successful blog. If you usually post an article everyday, yet feel rushed with each article, it is probably a better idea to slow things down and post every other day and focus on packing each of your articles with quality information. Think of your articles as a resource to other bloggers and websurfers: if a ton of great information is included within your post, others will feel compelled to: blog about it, bookmark it, link to it, and share it with others!

Buy “do-follow ” links on other websites

Buying links on other websites can get you and the seller into some trouble, but can also boost your pagerank. If you can manage to buy any links from educational (.edu) websites, chances are you’ll notice a nice improvement in your pagerank. Most education websites have higher than normal pageranks due to the quality of content and the amount of content. If you know anyone that is selling links for what you consider a fair price, you may want to purchase them to get some advertising and a link back to your website!

Get others to link to you for free

Do a link-exchange with some of your blogging buddies or write some valuable content that you know others will want to link to. Getting free links is great and should definitely be your number one goal. Until you can get a bunch of free-links from others to your website, I wouldn’t recommend getting involved in link buying. You’ve got to first prove to yourself that your website is online and will stay online for awhile before you waste any money on links.

A basic re-cap of how to increase your pagerank:

• Get other websites to link to you (especially those with a higher PR) - participating on other websites, writing guest posts, or even buying links on websites with a higher pagerank can help you out.

• Get yourself some free links by submitting your links to directories

• Comment on “Do-Follow” websites (i.e. website’s that you receive a link to your website for your participation in the comments section)

• Write timeless content, pack each article with great information

• Use article marketer to gain massive backlinks
  

Some interesting PageRank facts:

• Relevant websites to your niche that link to your articles will boost your PageRank the quickest

• Unrelevant websites that link to you do boost PageRank, but not nearly as much as relevant ones

• Pagerank increases as the amount of pages on your website increases - Google loves when you add more content and increase the number of pages within your website. Keep updating your site with new, quality content and watch your pagerank move on up!

• Deep-linking to articles within your own website will help you maintain balanced PR’s

• The number of outgoing links from your website determines the value of your links - A related website with only 10 outgoing links that links to you helps your PageRank a lot more than a website with 100 outgoing links that links to you.

What is my current pagerank?

My pagerank is currently at ZERO, but the fact that it is at zero doesn’t really bother me. I’m not going to let pagerank convince me that I’m making a mistake with my website, especially since AndrewPavelski.com is fairly new. I plan to focus on the improvement and consistency of my blog and I think positive results and an increased pagerank will definitely occur! Who knows what my website will be ranked 1 year from now if I keep plugging away with quality content. The most important thing to learn from this article: the key to an increased pagerank is quality content, not links.

What is your current pagerank? Are you doing anything to boost it up? What is your future pagerank? Let me know your pagerank in the comments section below!

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